iOS 4: Life Without A Jailbreak

It’s been almost a month now, that I have gone without having my iPhone 3GS jailbroken, ever since I decided to update to iOS 4.0. While I had been unhappy with the decision at first, after a couple of weeks, it now find myself needing less and less from jailbreaking apps. This is a great thing and unfortunate at the same time.

Many jailbroken developers work hard to create great tweaks that made iPhone OS 3.x much more logical to use. However, with iOS 4, many of these features are being included. Multitasking , Folders, Orientation Locking. These were all things that 3.x never had and was some of the biggets reasons I would jailbreak.

Of course, Winterboard is my favorite of all apps, and I do miss it dearly right now. I have so many things I want to start working on, but it will have to wait until August 1st ish.

So is life on iOS 4 without a jailbreak really that bad? Personally, I could survive at this point, I just miss winterboard.

“Kootenay Creative” – Design Services in British Columbia

It’s almost that time folks. A project I have been prepping for quite some time now is about to surface.

I am heading out of Alberta and moving to the Kootenays in beautiful British Columbia. In my venture out to the mountains, I’ve been preparing the initial steps of my new company called “Kootenay Creative”.

The project is geared towards the surrounding towns and cities, including Castlegar, Nelson, Trail, Rossland, and more, all in the Kootenay area, but it still open to the entire world, thanks to the power of the internet.

I will be providing the usual services, and plan to have an in-house print shop ready by next Summer, possibly earlier. So if you know anyone in the area, feel free to send them to me.

I’ll keep you updated on my trip and let you know when KootenayCreative.com goes live.

Apple Sells 1.7 Million iPhone 4s. Only Costs $187.51 To Produce

Apple has done it once again. How they manage to stab us in the back and yet we still love them, I have no idea. Even through all this chaos I still want an iPhone 4 just as much as the next person, but it doest make me more angry when I see these numbers and how much the iPhone 4 really costs to produce.

Various blogs have been covering this subject, discussing the price of the production of the new iPhone 4. When you see that 600,000 pre-orders have turned into 1.7 million iPhone 4 sales through this Saturday, it’s hard to not get angry at how much we have to fork out for the device.

The Sunday transactions haven’t even been tallied up yet, but Steve and company already have another reason to look smug. That total eclipses the 3GS’ already phenomenal 1 million units sold over a weekend, and stands pretty much head and shoulders above any other launch the mobile world has yet seen.

Another report by iSuppli details the costs of creating these devices. Between iFixit’s teardown of the iPhone 4 and iSuppli‘s subsequent analysis of the components, we’re finally gaining some fairly telling insight as to how much it costs to physically produce a fourth generation iPhone. As you might expect, it isn’t overtly expensive to manufacture Apple’s updated smartphone. As it turns out, the iPhone 4 costs approximately $200 to manufacture – $187.51 to be as close to “exact” as possible, according to iSuppli. Kevin Keller, who helped orchestrate the iSuppli analysis, tells Businessweek that “over the years, the iPhone has generally tended to hover in the $170-to -$180 cost range because Apple seems to be trying to hit some kind of budget.” Cupertino has managed to procure millions of little parts in a relatively”inexpensive bundle.”

To be honest, I guess they do deserve it, this isn’t easy work. Nonetheless, I sit here angry, frustrated and in love with the new iPhone 4. I patiently await the Canadian Release date.

iOS 4 Traffic Is Insane!

Cydia Repo and MMi getting hit hard

Some of my readers are from MMi, and if your like me, your experience some serious hiccups in not only our MMi site, but even Saurik’s main server for Cydia is getting hit hard. Both sites and many others can barely manage to stay afloat with thousands upon thousands upon thousands trying to get their new iOS 4 updated jailbroken and unlocked.

Surprisingly enough, the Dev Team has already managed to release an update to ultrasn0w, thus allowing all basebands up to 3.1 to be be unlocked and used on any carrier. This is what a lot of people need and it’s great to hear this.

However, you still need to jailbreak. The tools are coming soon!

Try to keep up with us at MMi!

iPad Theme Design: Image Sizes and Names

With the mad rush of WinterBoard updates last weekend, I imagine a ton of us want to get working on iPad themes and even updating our previous themes to work on the iPad.

Unfortunately there isn’t a lot of documentation out there, other than whats included with the SDK for developers, on what is exactly new to the theme process with the iPad, so I’ve decided to start to collect any knowledge on theme design for the iPad. I don’t have a ton of information to offer at the moment but I’m hoping the community chips in.

More references can be found here if you have a developers account:https://developer.apple.com/iphone/appstore/ipad.html#gettingready

Wallpaper Size:
Portrait Size: 1024×768px
Landscape Size: 768×1024px
132dpi resolution. It is important to note the DPI, as this is different that the usual 72dpi we see on our monitors and the iPhone.

Icon Size:
72 x 72 (Icon)
48 x 48 (Spotlight)
Additional Images Used in Apps for the iPad

Default-PortraitUpsideDown.png
Default-LandscapeLeft.png
Default-LandscapeRight.png
Default-Portrait.png
Default-Landscape.png
Default.png

Icon Pack For Showing Samples Of Your Theme: by Chris Spooner

I know a lot of you have already tackled this, so please feel free to start adding to this list. Let’s get to work!

Facebook Gets HTML5 Video Playback Support

If you’ve been a fan of using Facebook on your mobile device, specifically  your iDevice, your going to be very pleased with facebooks addition of HTML5 Video Playback Support. That being an iPhone, iPod or the new iPad.

So what exactly does this mean? Well, in the past, Facebook used Flash to play it’s videos, leaving the iPhone and iPad kind of useless when it comes to viewing your friends or family’s videos. Up until now, the facebook page always gave an message “Sorry, Video playback is not supported at this time”. Well that’s all over now, as we can start to kiss flash videos goodbye.

It was a stealthy, barely noticed move. But it certainly is a monumental development, particularly for the millions of iPhone, iPod, and iPad owners perpetually confounded and frustrated by the inability to watch the videos posted to Facebook that used to be played solely in Flash.

It looks like those days are over, as folks are beginning to report a strange and much-welcome phenomenon this morning.

It turns out Facebook is ditching the Flash-centric model of video support and running with open arms to HTML5 video playback support, which is now in place on the mega-social networking website. As a result, iPhone, iPod touch and iPad junkies can now check out videos that turn up in friends’ newsfeeds. No more absent plug-in graphic.

Of course, the move hasn’t been without an occasional bump, as some iPhone users, for example, report being able to watch the vids in the news-feed but not on the actual profile page of the individual who posted the clip. Nonetheless, the step made by Facebook in this new direction is significant and represents yet another industry shift in favor of Apple’s staunch anti-Flash attitude and business model.

While most Facebook fanatics will likely be elated by the transition of the social networking giant into HTML5 support territory, Flash fans, on the other hand, will all but certainly take this move as yet another major slap in the face to Adobe and its quickly-eroding support base.

Image via MacStories

Adobe Creative Suite 5 Will Rock Your Socks Off!

While I can’t take credit for this article, It’s so good I couldn’t help but sharing it here. I’ll share a segment and video, and you can read the rest of it over at WebDesigner Depot.

Adobe will unveil its new Creative Suite 5 on Monday April 12th at 8AM PDT, just a few hours from now.

You can catch the official launch online here, however, if you can’t wait, we’ll be revealing all the juicy details before the official launch… right now!

The Adobe team kindly invited us to an exclusive sneak peak demo of Creative Suite 5 and they also provided us with a pre-release copy for this review.

In this post, we’ll be sharing some of the highlights of each application in this exciting new release, with some detailed info on the new applications. We’ll also discuss whether we think CS5 is worth upgrading to or not.

That being said, get ready to be amazed… there are tons of new features to get excited about in this release.

2. Content-Aware Fill
This is probably the most exciting new feature in Photoshop CS5. Using this tool, image elements can easily be removed by having them automatically painted over with background details that are intelligently matched from the original image using a proximity match.

It’s super accurate and really feels magical beyond belief. This tool will probably become one of the most used tools in Photoshop from now on, with designers wondering how they ever managed without it.

Goodbye GoDaddy! That Was Painful!

I am finally free of GoDaddy’s wrath. I have officially moved all of my websites over to BlueHost.com now and could not be more pleased and impressed.

After struggling with GoDaddy for almost 6+ years, I feel like a weight has been lifted from my shoulder just knowing that my sites are no longer with them. Their support was horrible, and they almost never had the balls to say they fucked shit up. Their control panel, while it looks cool, its extremely horrible to navigate.

BlueHost has been A+ since day one, and have been the most polite customer service I’ve had in a long time. To top it all off, If i were to submit a support ticket, I get a response almost an hour later or sooner. These guys are on the ball and I highly recommend them!