One More Tap » iPhone

Screencasting Using Display Recorder for iPhone, iPad or iPod touch [Jailbreak Only]

xcool — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 02:49:31 +0000

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!

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.

Steve Jobs’ Thoughts on Flash

xcool — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 04:13:11 +0000

This one’s been long awaited. The article was dated 27 April 2010 – I based this on the file name of the “Thoughts on Flash” image that appeared in Apple.com’s front page.

Read from the CEO himself after the break.

Apple has a long relationship with Adobe. In fact, we met Adobe’s founders when they were in their proverbial garage. Apple was their first big customer, adopting their Postscript language for our new Laserwriter printer. Apple invested in Adobe and owned around 20% of the company for many years. The two companies worked closely together to pioneer desktop publishing and there were many good times. Since that golden era, the companies have grown apart. Apple went through its near death experience, and Adobe was drawn to the corporate market with their Acrobat products. Today the two companies still work together to serve their joint creative customers – Mac users buy around half of Adobe’s Creative Suite products – but beyond that there are few joint interests.

I wanted to jot down some of our thoughts on Adobe’s Flash products so that customers and critics may better understand why we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. Adobe has characterized our decision as being primarily business driven – they say we want to protect our App Store – but in reality it is based on technology issues. Adobe claims that we are a closed system, and that Flash is open, but in fact the opposite is true. Let me explain.

First, there’s “Open”.

Adobe’s Flash products are 100% proprietary. They are only available from Adobe, and Adobe has sole authority as to their future enhancement, pricing, etc. While Adobe’s Flash products are widely available, this does not mean they are open, since they are controlled entirely by Adobe and available only from Adobe. By almost any definition, Flash is a closed system.

Apple has many proprietary products too. Though the operating system for the iPhone, iPod and iPad is proprietary, we strongly believe that all standards pertaining to the web should be open. Rather than use Flash, Apple has adopted HTML5, CSS and JavaScript – all open standards. Apple’s mobile devices all ship with high performance, low power implementations of these open standards. HTML5, the new web standard that has been adopted by Apple, Google and many others, lets web developers create advanced graphics, typography, animations and transitions without relying on third party browser plug-ins (like Flash). HTML5 is completely open and controlled by a standards committee, of which Apple is a member.

Apple even creates open standards for the web. For example, Apple began with a small open source project and created WebKit, a complete open-source HTML5 rendering engine that is the heart of the Safari web browser used in all our products. WebKit has been widely adopted. Google uses it for Android’s browser, Palm uses it, Nokia uses it, and RIM (Blackberry) has announced they will use it too. Almost every smartphone web browser other than Microsoft’s uses WebKit. By making its WebKit technology open, Apple has set the standard for mobile web browsers.

Second, there’s the “full web”.

Adobe has repeatedly said that Apple mobile devices cannot access “the full web” because 75% of video on the web is in Flash. What they don’t say is that almost all this video is also available in a more modern format, H.264, and viewable on iPhones, iPods and iPads. YouTube, with an estimated 40% of the web’s video, shines in an app bundled on all Apple mobile devices, with the iPad offering perhaps the best YouTube discovery and viewing experience ever. Add to this video from Vimeo, Netflix, Facebook, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, ESPN, NPR, Time, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated, People, National Geographic, and many, many others. iPhone, iPod and iPad users aren’t missing much video.

Another Adobe claim is that Apple devices cannot play Flash games. This is true. Fortunately, there are over 50,000 games and entertainment titles on the App Store, and many of them are free. There are more games and entertainment titles available for iPhone, iPod and iPad than for any other platform in the world.

Third, there’s reliability, security and performance.

Symantec recently highlighted Flash for having one of the worst security records in 2009. We also know first hand that Flash is the number one reason Macs crash. We have been working with Adobe to fix these problems, but they have persisted for several years now. We don’t want to reduce the reliability and security of our iPhones, iPods and iPads by adding Flash.

In addition, Flash has not performed well on mobile devices. We have routinely asked Adobe to show us Flash performing well on a mobile device, any mobile device, for a few years now. We have never seen it. Adobe publicly said that Flash would ship on a smartphone in early 2009, then the second half of 2009, then the first half of 2010, and now they say the second half of 2010. We think it will eventually ship, but we’re glad we didn’t hold our breath. Who knows how it will perform?

Fourth, there’s battery life.

To achieve long battery life when playing video, mobile devices must decode the video in hardware; decoding it in software uses too much power. Many of the chips used in modern mobile devices contain a decoder called H.264 – an industry standard that is used in every Blu-ray DVD player and has been adopted by Apple, Google (YouTube), Vimeo, Netflix and many other companies.

Although Flash has recently added support for H.264, the video on almost all Flash websites currently requires an older generation decoder that is not implemented in mobile chips and must be run in software. The difference is striking: on an iPhone, for example, H.264 videos play for up to 10 hours, while videos decoded in software play for less than 5 hours before the battery is fully drained.

When websites re-encode their videos using H.264, they can offer them without using Flash at all. They play perfectly in browsers like Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome without any plugins whatsoever, and look great on iPhones, iPods and iPads.

Fifth, there’s Touch.

Flash was designed for PCs using mice, not for touch screens using fingers. For example, many Flash websites rely on “rollovers”, which pop up menus or other elements when the mouse arrow hovers over a specific spot. Apple’s revolutionary multi-touch interface doesn’t use a mouse, and there is no concept of a rollover. Most Flash websites will need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices. If developers need to rewrite their Flash websites, why not use modern technologies like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript?

Even if iPhones, iPods and iPads ran Flash, it would not solve the problem that most Flash websites need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices.

Sixth, the most important reason.

Besides the fact that Flash is closed and proprietary, has major technical drawbacks, and doesn’t support touch based devices, there is an even more important reason we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. We have discussed the downsides of using Flash to play video and interactive content from websites, but Adobe also wants developers to adopt Flash to create apps that run on our mobile devices.

We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform. If developers grow dependent on third party development libraries and tools, they can only take advantage of platform enhancements if and when the third party chooses to adopt the new features. We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers.

This becomes even worse if the third party is supplying a cross platform development tool. The third party may not adopt enhancements from one platform unless they are available on all of their supported platforms. Hence developers only have access to the lowest common denominator set of features. Again, we cannot accept an outcome where developers are blocked from using our innovations and enhancements because they are not available on our competitor’s platforms.

Flash is a cross platform development tool. It is not Adobe’s goal to help developers write the best iPhone, iPod and iPad apps. It is their goal to help developers write cross platform apps. And Adobe has been painfully slow to adopt enhancements to Apple’s platforms. For example, although Mac OS X has been shipping for almost 10 years now, Adobe just adopted it fully (Cocoa) two weeks ago when they shipped CS5. Adobe was the last major third party developer to fully adopt Mac OS X.

Our motivation is simple – we want to provide the most advanced and innovative platform to our developers, and we want them to stand directly on the shoulders of this platform and create the best apps the world has ever seen. We want to continually enhance the platform so developers can create even more amazing, powerful, fun and useful applications. Everyone wins – we sell more devices because we have the best apps, developers reach a wider and wider audience and customer base, and users are continually delighted by the best and broadest selection of apps on any platform.

Conclusions.

Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short.

The avalanche of media outlets offering their content for Apple’s mobile devices demonstrates that Flash is no longer necessary to watch video or consume any kind of web content. And the 200,000 apps on Apple’s App Store proves that Flash isn’t necessary for tens of thousands of developers to create graphically rich applications, including games.

New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.

Steve Jobs
April, 2010

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