True story: I finally did it and jailbroken one of my iOS devices. The victim happens to be my faithful first-generation iPad. I did it simply because I wanted to be able to do screencasting on my device.

You see, I have always been a fan of Street Fighter. I downloaded both Street Fighter IV and Street Fighter IV Volt the moment it was released. If you want a fighting game for your iOS device, the Street Fighter series is the one to get.

With the debut of Street Fighter IV Volt, online multiplayer became possible. I’ve spent countless hours before bed playing with people from all over the world. One thing I loved about the game is the ability to save replays of your favorite matches. Some of these replays were epic moments during game play. I hit the maximum amount of 20 replays quickly enough that I find it difficult to let go most of these replays.

At first, I thought of using a digital camera to record the screen while the replay plays. Not a very good idea. Truth be told, I’d even tried using my iPhone 4 to record the game from my iPhone 3GS. I’m a person who looks for perfection and has an eye for detail, and both options created videos that were lousy in quality or simply mediocre.

I did some research and found Display Recorder by famed jailbreak developer Ryan Petrich fitting my needs. There are other solutions out there, but Display Recorder gets the most attention. However, nothing’s perfect in this world, and so is Display Recorder. It does screencasting perfectly, but it doesn’t record any audio.

No worries there. We can always improvise. And I’ll tell you how in a while.

So, I set my sights on jailbreaking my iPad since its not my day-to-day device. I’m not going to detail the process of jailbreaking here, simply because jailbreaking is not the focus of this site and you can easily find hundreds if not thousands of articles on the internet regarding jailbreaking with a simple search on Google.

Once the iPad has been successfully jailbroken, I downloaded Display Recorder after paying the small fee of just $4.99.

Before you start screencasting using your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch, it’s a great idea to check out Display Recorder’s settings. The default settings are okay, but I’d change it anyways. Display Recorder’s settings are available under the Settings app. Refer to the attached screenshot if you’d like to copy my settings. Here’s the tricky part. The framerate is set using a slider, but there’s no indication of what value is being set. It defaults to 20 frames per second (fps) but I thought I’d set mine to 24 fps. This value is stored in a file located at /var/mobile/Library/Preferences/com.booleanmagic.displayrecorder.plist. Look for DRFramesPerSecond and change the value to 24.

By default, Display Recorder can be activated by pressing and holding the Sleep button. A prompt will appear to confirm if you want to start recording. Feel free to try recording some screencasts.

Earlier, I mentioned about improvising on Display Recorder’s inability to record audio. My Unibody MacBook Pro came with an audio jack that functions as both audio in and out. What I did was to connect one end of an auxiliary cable into my iPad’s audio jack, and the other into my MacBook Pro’s audio in jack. Here’s a selection of auxiliary cables on Amazon if you need one to get one for yourself. Next, I launch QuickTime Player and voila! Just be sure that the volume from your iPad is not set to too soft, otherwise you’ll have a hard time later.

Now that I have everything setup accordingly, I am ready to record screencasts on my iPad. For Street Fighter IV Volt’s replays, I recorded the replays from start til end. At the same time, audio from the iPad is routed to my MacBook Pro and recorded as well. I end up having two streams of recording on my computer. One for audio and the other being the video.

It’s a matter of dubbing them and synchronizing the audio using any video editing software that you have. Mac users like myself may want to use iMovie that came pre-installed. I’m not a Windows user, but I heard that Windows Movie Maker fits the bill.

Display Recorder isn’t all perfect, as I’ve mentioned above. During my recording sessions, I observed lags and some flickering. But the resulting video came out okay with a little bit of lag, but minus those flickering. I’m perfectly fine with this, since it’s tonnes better than recording by holding another camera or iPhone.

What do you do with the video that you recorded? Well, I uploaded mine onto YouTube, of course!

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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!

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I read David Pogue‘s latest article in the NYTimes regarding extending your battery life with a lot of interest. There are some mistakes in the article, particularly on how one can actually prevent apps from staying in the background by killing them – Pogue has requested the NYTimes people to amend his article.

What got me more interested was the fact that quite a lot of people don’t really understand how multitasking on iOS 4 works. One of the main reasons was the way Apple (and most likely Steve Jobs) dictated how multitasking should work on their mobile operating system.

Thinking differently, Apple thought that their multitasking implementation would help a lot in saving battery life. To a certain extent, they did.

iOS 4 Multitasking

Yoda: there is another.

Yes, there is an additional category of apps that remains running in the background when the users quit. Some example of apps in this category include those that plays music in the background like Pandora, some VoIP-based apps like Skype and apps that require constant usage of the GPS radio. These are apps that will drain your battery, per se.

Obi-Wan: So what I told you was true, from a certain point of view.

Certain iOS 4 compatible apps that go into a suspended mode, don’t really get suspended until 10 minutes later. Apple gave developers a grace period of exactly 10 minutes to complete whatever task that the app was actually doing. For instance, let’s say you are downloading a file in GoodReader (boy, I love this app a lot!). While the file downloads, you get an incoming phone call. You decide that the call is important so you picked it up. Moments later, you end the phone call and return to GoodReader. Your file may have been downloaded completely. GoodReader has just spent the 10 minute grace period to complete its task of downloading your file before telling the operating system that it is okay to put it (GoodReader) into suspended mode.

What happens if Good Reader didn’t actually finish downloading the file after the 10 minutes grace period is over? In this case, the app would have to give up the task and inform iOS that it is okay to be suspended. Failing to do so will result in the app getting killed by the iOS watchdog.

AppSwitch - Processes List

That’s where the idea of my recently released app, AppSwitch came about. The app was born out of the need to see what apps runs in the background, versus which doesn’t. Before AppSwitch, there were already a lot of apps that display a list of processes on your device. But I thought I could bring AppSwitch a level further.

A few months later, AppSwitch was born. And while it took a few weeks of “fingers and toe-crossed” moment hoping that it won’t get rejected, the app finally went thru Apple’s strict approval process.

iStat - Processes List

I tend to use AppSwitch to see which app remains running in the background, and decide if I should kill it from the Recently Used List. This has helped me save battery life by allowing only apps that I really need to run in the background and preventing others from running at all once I quit the app.

I’d have to say that we do get a lot of request from users asking to add a “kill” button into AppSwitch. Unfortunately, that will never be allowed by Apple.

You may be asking why would I want an app to see what other apps are running. Well, truth is, AppSwitch has its novelty and it’s other features like the Console can be helpful in troubleshooting an app. You can still kill apps from the Recently Used List.

On another note, you may also want to check out this article that I wrote many moons ago on how I actually maintain the long-life of all my battery-powered devices.

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Apple made an excellent job, opening up MobileMe’s Find My iPhone feature to the masses. Find My iPhone accounts are free, and can only be created using any iPhone 4, iPad or iPod touch (4th Generation or later) running iOS 4.2. Once you create an account using any of the aforementioned devices you will be able to use your Apple ID login to enable Find My iPhone on your other devices running iOS 4.2.

Here’s a quick rundown on how to set up Find My iPhone on your device:

1. Upgrade to iOS 4.2 if you are still running an older version of iOS. At the time of this posting, iOS 4.3.2 is already available. If you have never created a MobileMe account before, then you will need to create the account using an iPhone 4, iPad or iPod touch (4th Generation or later).
2. Tap on the Settings icon, scroll a little further down and choose Mail, Contacts, Calendar.
3. Next, tap on Add Account, followed by MobileMe.
4. Enter your Apple ID credentials into the fields provided. Your Apple ID is usually the same login you use when purchasing from the iTunes Store. If you need to create a new account, then tap on the Create Free Apple ID button located at the bottom of the screen. MobileMe users can simply enter your me.com or mac.com credentials into the fields provided.
5. You will need to verify your account to complete the setup. Take a peek in your email inbox, as Apple will be sending an email with a link that you will need to click to properly verify your account.
6. Once you have verified your account, return to the MobileMe screen you were previously in and switch on Find My iPhone. Click on Allow to verify that you really want to enable this feature.

If your setup is correct, you ought to be able to sign in to Apple’s me.com website and give Find My iPhone a test drive. You may also want to download Apple’s free Find My iPhone app from the iTunes App Store to help you locate your devices on another device.

Officially, this is the instructions that Apple has made available for everyone interested in Find My iPhone. However, anyone who understands iOS knows that this setup has its weaknesses. If a criminal gets hold of your device, he can simply disable cellular data on your device and render Find My iPhone inoperable. The best way to secure Find My iPhone is still via a passcode lock.

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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

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