Archive for the ‘iPods and Music’ Category
Unlocked iPhone Upgrade: links to live by
I decided to get off my butt and upgrade my unlocked iPhone from 1.0.2 to 1.1.1 last week…and it was a complete disaster. Here are some of the mistakes I made, how to avoid them, and the links which will bail you out.
- Check your iTunes version, and make sure it’s supported by iNdependence before you start. I’d become somewhat relaxed with my iTunes upgrades, only to learn halfway through the upgrade that 7.5 is not supported by iNdependence. A quick download of AppZapper to completely remove iTunes, and a download of iTunes 7.4 (you’ll have to dig around to find the file) later, I was back with a useable version of iTunes.
- Always do option-clicks on the “restore” and “update” buttons in iTunes. I didn’t decide to upgrade to 1.1.1 until after 1.1.2 came out, and I didn’t realize that clicking “upgrade” (like all the walkthroughs will tell you to do) was going to put 1.1.2 on the phone. If you make this mistake, and have an iPhone that’s been upgraded from 1.0.2 to 1.1.2, follow these instructions to save your phone.
- Start here if you haven’t already screwed yourself up; the guys over at ModMyiFone.com will take you all the way through the downgrade/upgrade process.
- The jailbreakme.com trick didn’t work for me. The ModMyiFone guides will take you through a nifty little process that lets you visit a website from your iPhone, and jailbreak it automatically. Unfortunately, it hasn’t worked for me (on two phones that I’ve now upgraded). Instead, unlock it with iNdependence, and install Installer.app manually through iNdependence.
Like I said, my phone was an absolute disaster…but I was able to upgrade my wife’s iPhone in about 15 minutes. Now, if only I could get her to consistently sync her phone…
Technorati Tags: apple, independence, iphone, unlocking
Quick Tip: Unplug that iPod during boot!
Here’s a quick hit for everyone. If you’re using a Mac (like my iMac), and you’ve got your iPod connected via USB - unplug it before rebooting.
I had a three or four minute extreme panic run when my Mac threw a couple of beeps out, and sat with a gray screen…three boots in a row. After some digging, it became clear that the beeps were flagging an unbootable disk; that disk was my 4G iPod, plugged in via USB.
technorati tags:ipod, boot, mac, apple, usb
Apple Roundup
Today was a big day for Apple fans, with the MacWorld announcments of the iPhone and AppleTV. Here’s a roundup of those sites that are doing a far more thorough job of coverage than we are:
AppleInsider
MacRumors
Engadget
Apple.com
We are super pumped about the iPhone; and if you spend a few minutes to watch Steve Jobs’ intro for the iPhone, you’ll probably share our excitement. Cheers.
technorati tags:apple, iphone, ipod, appletv
Samsung Camera Videos in OS X
My relatively new Samsung sports camcorder rocks the proverbial house. The thing is so small, solid and generally usable that I’m amazed it ever has time to charge.
That being said, we’ve had a hell of a time with converting its videos (which are .AVI DIVX files) into something usable on our Macs. Thus far, I’d been unable to convert the videos using any of the standard tools (DivX Toll, DivX Doctor II, etc.), and had been using iSquint - which works where Quicktime had not - to export the videos in .MOV.
I’ll still use iSquint, but it’s going to be for iPod conversions only…thanks to the solution below.
I took a few minutes and sent the following email to a lesser geek buddy of mine. You might find it helpful.
Yo -
I just discovered a much better way to convert the videos you shoot
with your Samsung video camera.iSquint works pretty well, but it’s really more intended for
converting videos to be iPod-friendly.This new method keeps the original file size, shape and resolution.
You can always export for iPod when you’ve done something in iMovie.First step: change the recording mode in the camera options of your
camera from TV to PC. Leave it there.Second step: download hexedit for OSX here:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/hexeditOnce you’ve copied your camera movies (*.AVI) over to your hard drive,
open one of them in HexEdit. Leave the settings as “auto”.It’ll open up a bunch of stuff that’ll look like garbage to you. Don’t
worry, this is hexadecimal representation of the file’s code. If you
look on the right side, you’ll see the letters “SEDG” twice: once on
row 70 (usually), and again on row B0. You want to replace each
instance (there are only two) of “SEDG” with the letters “DIVX”. Using
the Apple-F (Find) command has an option for Replace, so it simplifies
things a tad. Be aware that doing the “Replace All” command will take
a few seconds, as large video files have a ton of lines…I find it
quicker to “Find” then “Replace” twice for each file.Save the file, close it, and try to open it; it should open in QT by
default. If it plays, we’re golden.There may be some DIVX codecs that you don’t have installed….but
that’s super simple. Let me know if this doesn’t get your videos
playing.Once you’ve done that, you’ll probably notice that you’ve got a new
file called YOURFILE.AVI~, and the original called YOURFILE.AVI. This
is HexEdit automatically creating a backup of your file. Once you’ve
got things rolling smoothly here, you can turn off “Create Backups” in
the options menu of HexEdit, and it’ll no longer create those files
with the ~ at the end. You can also delete those files once your’e
satisfied. In the event that something goes terribly wrong, you can
restore the ~ files before deleting them.Essentially, Windows recognizes that SEDG nonsense…even though it’s
not standard. We know that the Samsung cameras are encoding in DIVX
format, so we’re just circumventing the weak attempt at further
Windows monopoly.
Tip: If you’ve got a bunch of files to modify, select them all in a
Finder window, and right click (ctrl-click), select Open With, choose
Other, and select HexEdit. It’ll open all of the files in stacked
windows.
Enjoy!