One More Tap » General

Thanks, Steve.

xcool — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 05:04:51 +0000

It is a sad day indeed.

I bought myself an iBook back in 2004, wanting to get myself out of PCs. I didn’t know that I’ve just entered myself into the world of Steve Jobs. Three more Macintosh computers, a few iPods and iPhones later, and I am still thrilled to be in this world that was changed by Steve.

Thanks for leaving a dent in our Universe, Steve. Rest in peace.

Marrying Airport Extreme with Airport Express thru WDS

xcool — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 15:41:40 +0000

I recently got myself the latest Airport Extreme 802.11n Wi-Fi base station, dubbed the 5th Generation to replace it’s cousin, a 7-year old Airport Express 802.11g base station. Everything went smooth with the new Airport Extreme, setup was foolishly simple and I was up and going in less than an hour of having the base station delivered to my home.

I retired the Airport Express into my desk drawer, and told my wife that we should keep the Airport Express instead of putting it for auction on eBay. Simple reason: the Airport Express is ultra portable, we brought it together with us during our stay in an Australian share house and that made us fully connected to the internet whenever we needed to.

Everything was fine, until this noon. I was sitting comfortably downstairs in my living room, trying to use my iPhone 4. Wireless signal doesn’t seem to be that strong. It could be the way my house was built, but I decided to put the blame on the iPhone 4 simply because it’s running on a beta version of iOS. Please don’t ask which version. That’s when the thought of extending the wireless signal came into play.

After searching high and low for some official documentation from Apple regarding extending the wireless signal of the new Airport Extreme, I found nothing but pieces of information regarding setting up a WDS for my scenario. After about an hour or so putting those pieces of information together, I finally managed to get the WDS up and running.

Here’s how.

First of all, it is advisable that you reset all your Airport devices to its factory default settings. I swear I would have sat there trying to figure everything in place, but a simple factory defaults reset, and then setting up the device from scratch really helped. In my case, I actually reset my Airport Express back to factory defaults.

Launch Airport Utility and select the base station that will become the main unit. In my case, the main unit is the new Airport Extreme, which is connected to my router and will be sharing it’s internet connection with the other Airport Express unit. Click on Manual Setup. Under the Airport tab, look for the Wireless tab. Click the Wireless Mode drop down box while holding the Option key on your Mac’s keyboard. I don’t use Windows, but I believe the right key for Windows should be the Ctrl key. You will see four options: Create a wireless network, Participate in a WDS network, Join a wireless network and Extend a wireless network. If you see two options only, then try again and make sure you hold the Option (Ctrl for Windows) key while clicking. Select Participate in a WDS network.

A new tab shall appear with the title WDS. Click on it. For WDS mode, choose WDS main. Make sure “Allow wireless clients” is ticked if you want to connect to this base station. I have mine ticked because this main base station is located inside my room and I prefer connecting to this base station whenever my Mac’s in the room. Under WDS Remotes, I entered my Airport Express’ MAC address.

That’s all I did for my Airport Extreme unit. I clicked on Update and the base station restarted itself.

Next, we’ll move on to the Airport Express unit. Under the Wireless tab, click on the Wireless Mode drop down box and choose Participate in a WDS network. I didn’t hold down the Option (Ctrl for Windows) key while clicking, but you may want to do that if you don’t see the right option. A new tab called WDS shall appear. Under WDS Mode, I chose WDS relay. There’s another option for WDS remote, but that is only necessary if I’m setting up a third, fourth or fifth unit to extend the signal from this base station. Make sure “Allow wireless clients” is ticked. In the text field labeled WDS Main, I entered the MAC address of my Airport Extreme base station. Finally, as mentioned earlier, if you have more units to setup, enter their MAC address under WDS Remotes. Update and restart the Airport Express to continue.

With that, I have successfully setup WDS using my Airport Extreme 802.11n paired to my Airport Express 802.11g. Your mileage may vary, as there’s no official documentation to support this. You will need to make sure that all your units are configured to match each others settings. Things to look out for include the SSID (Wireless Network Name), Radio Mode, Radio Channel, Wireless Security as well as the Multicast Rate.

Feel free to leave your questions in the comment section if you need assistance. I’ll try my best to assist. Happy WDS-ing!

Tips: Fix iPhone/iPod touch Losing Wi-Fi Settings

iOS Firmware – Downloading Straight from Apple

xcool — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 07:25:47 +0000

I thought I’d upgrade my iPhone 3GS (which was recently semi-retired, but has since found a new home in my wife’s handbag) with iOS 4.2.1, since that is the first version to ever support Find My iPhone. I wanted to be able to locate the phone (and thus, my wife) if required.

So, I went ahead and search for the direct download, knowing that Apple would not be offering the said firmware anymore from within iTunes, now that iOS 4.3.1 is out in the wild. I found a couple of sites, and managed to grab a copy. However, upon trying to perform the upgrade, I was greeted with Error 3194. Yes, the darned error code which basically means that you can’t install that particular version of iOS onto your device because Apple would not allow you to do so anymore.

The story behind this is, Apple would stop signing older firmwares whenever new ones are made available. Signing is a process that happens when you install new versions of iOS onto your device, whereby iTunes checks with Apple’s servers and ‘signs’ the installation. I’m not about to jailbreak my device, so I went ahead and installed the latest firmware, which is 4.3.1 (build 8G4).

Anyhow, since this post relates more to direct downloading the firmware from Apple’s website (Apple continues to offer older firmwares, although they wouldn’t sign it, I am not sure why), we’ll stay on topic and provide you with the locations. You are free to do whatever you please with the IPSW files that you download, which I know most of you will use it to jailbreak older devices.

iOS Firmware – Direct Download Links

iPhone Explorer – Gem of a Tool

xcool — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 03:59:34 +0000

Here’s a tool that I recently used to do some crazy stuff on my iPhone. Now when I say crazy stuff, this means things that Apple would usually not allow you to do, that is if your device is not jailbroken.

Before I continue, I’d like to say that I am not a jailbreak person and that I would never jailbreak my device. Okay, I actually jailbroke my original iPhone 2G so that I can use it outside of AT&T’s network, that’s all.

Apple designed the iPhone to be more interaction, less interruption. You interact more with the phone’s functions and apps that you download from the App Store – you don’t actually need to see what’s under the hood, or how the file system looks like.

Yet, some people love to tinker around with their gadgets, either for fun or to do some basic troubleshooting. iPhone Explorer by Macroplant solves your need to see iOS’ file system. It is a software solution that runs on both the Mac and PC. And it allows you to browse the files and folders on your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad, as if it were a normal USB pen drive. Files can be added and removed thru iPhone Explorer using drag-and-drop methods.

Recently, I decided to see if I can modify a certain game’s saved state on my iPhone 4 (cheating is okay, sometimes) and since my iPhone 4 is not jailbroken, this would not have been possible using any conventional method. I found iPhone Explorer to be very useful here, I managed to browse my iPhone 4′s file system soon after plugging it in.

As you can see from the screenshot attached here, iPhone Explorer conveniently displays my iPhone 4′s contents separated into two categories: apps and media. The apps folder is self-explanatory, while the media folder holds all your media content such as iBooks, music, photos, podcasts and voice memo recordings.

Before we continue further, I’d like to advice that you take precautions when working with iPhone Explorer. Browsing your device’s file system may be adventurous, but you are also subjecting your device to accidental file removal which may render the device inoperational.

If you browse the apps folder, you will notice names of apps that you have installed on your device. Clicking on the arrow next to the app’s name will reveal even more folders. This is where iOS apps store their working documents, preferences and yes, saved states. And since iOS apps are run in a sandbox environment, an app will usually write their data into one of these folders: Documents or Library. If you are looking to change your game’s saved state, I’d suggest that you look within these folders first. Using iPhone Explorer, you can actually drag the file onto your desktop and open them up using a text editor. Most of the files will appear as garbled characters. However, some apps, especially games may have data files that are written in plain text. These are the files that you can easily edit. I will not go into details here, however.

As for the game that I tried to cheat—I realized that the saved state is in plain text, and it took me less than a minute to complete the task with iPhone Explorer.

Again, I’d like to stress that iPhone Explorer may be a gem of a tool, but it could also render your device inoperable should you choose to remove files that are required. Play safe! iPhone Explorer is compatible with both Mac and PC, and is available from Macroplant here: http://www.macroplant.com/iphoneexplorer/.

iPhone/iPod touch Resets Its Date Back to 1970

xcool — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 15:37:21 +0000

This is a mysterious one. Ever since I got myself an iPhone 4, my original iPhone 3GS has been sent to semi-retirement. I occassionally use it, especially when my iPhone 4 is plugged to the wall socket and charging.

During a two-weeks trip to Australia, I brought my iPhone 3GS in the luggage as backup. And in order to conserve battery power, I decided to turn the device off instead of having it drip battery juice by sleeping. I never needed the iPhone 3GS throughout the trip. So, when I came back home, I powered the device back on. It worked like normal. It’d even sync with iTunes like normal. However, one thing was wrong until I realize it later. The date and time has been reset back to 1970.

I noticed the very same issue with my iPod touch as well. It was reset back to the same date and time in 1970. I guess this warrants an investigation.

A simple search across the internet made me realize that the battery may possibly be failing. It may seem very true for the iPod touch, which is about 2 years old now. However, my iPhone 3GS just passed its one year old birthday about five months back. I guess it all depends a lot on your usage pattern. As I have outlined before in my post regarding how I took care of batteries across all my rechargeable devices, this shouldn’t have happened, at least for the iPhone 3GS.

I’m still puzzled, but I’d rest my case that the battery on both devices are really dying.

One More Tap » General

Thanks, Steve.

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