General – Page 104

iOS 5 beta 7

By Jay Lagare on Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Finally pulled the trigger and registered on the Apple iOS developer program. First thing I did is, of course, download iOS 5 beta 7 and the required iTunes 10.5 beta 7. As soon as the downloads completed, I extracted the iOS 5 ipsw file and installed iTunes. Since this is the first time I’m installing iOS5, there’s no OTA update, and I had to update via iTunes:

Back up iPhone.
Restore iPhone. But press and hold the alt key before clicking the Restore button. This will let you select a specific ipsw file.
Select the iOS 5 beta 7 ipsw file.
Wait for the restore and sync to complete.

iOS 5 generally looks just like iOS 4. There were some minor cosmetic changes here and there but the biggest ones I noticed were:

Notification System – Instead of the old pop-up notifications, you can now opt for discreet notification banners that slide down from the top of the screen and quickly slide up. To (re)view pending notifications, there’s a pull-down notification screen. Pending notifications are also viewable on the lock screen. And by sliding (to unlock) the particular notification, you directly go to and access the notification in its corresponding app.
Widgets – The lock screen can also hold widgets, though right now there’s only the Weather and Stocks widgets. I’m pretty sure Apple will let app developers come up with widget extensions soon enough.
Browser – There’s now “Reader” full-screen feature accessible on the address bar. In addition, there’s open link “in background”. Which means to say open a new tab and stay in the current tab (as opposed to open a new tab and automatically go to new tab). Finally, there’s “Reading List” which is a cloud-based bookmark.
iMessage – the SMS app is now iMessage. It is a text messaging platform over data that works on iOS devices (for now). It will default to SMS when it is not available to you or the other party.
Camera – The camera app can now be accessed directly from the lock screen. And you can take a shot by pressing the + button. There’s also a switchable grid to help in framing photos.
Photos – You can now create and delete albums. You can add photos across albums. There’s also basic photo editing (rotate, enhance, red-eye removal, and crop). I’m not about to delete PS Express though.
iCloud – Store mail, contacts, etc in the cloud.
Twitter Integration – You can tweet directly from Apple’s built-in apps.

All pretty good and much-needed enhancements. Supposedly there are more enhancements in the final that were not included in the public beta. Can’t wait!

General

Sunday Afternoon Out

By Jay Lagare on Sunday, September 18, 2011

After mass and lunch, Michelle wanted to watch Crazy Stupid Love. I decided to skip it. It’s not exactly a movie that takes advantage of the big screen so I was planning to watch it at home. Nor would Jeanne appreciate watching it whether on the big screen or at home. And she would have had to pay full rate. But Michelle and Gretchen went ahead. It later turned out the movie was no longer showing in MegaMall or Galleria and they ended up watching Johnny English.

As for my dad, Jeanne and I, it was the Podium. First, we went to the bookstore where my dad looked for a C programming book. But there was none available so he just got a newspaper and a Winnie the Pooh book for Jeanne. We then headed to Cinnabon for coffee and cinnamon rolls. We drank and ate while reading: my dad a newspaper, Jeanne and I the Pooh book. Then, of course, a requisite visit to the toy store. Always a good stop. She actually didn’t want to leave until I asked her if she wanted to go to the grocery at which point she put back the ball she was playing with and let me carry her.

As there is no grocery at the Podium, we drove over to Hypermart. I got ingredients for different kinds of sinigang (prawn, salmon belly, pork, veggies), and orange juice. Jeanne was well-behaved and sat on the cart all throughout so we were done quickly. We then headed home. Great bonding time for 3 generations.

General

Unresponsive iPhone 4 Home Button

By Jay Lagare on Thursday, September 15, 2011

The iPhone’s home button had been rather unresponsive for a month or two. On standby mode, when I press it sometimes it takes some time before the screen lights up. Sometimes it doesn’t at all and I have to press it again, harder. The same unresponsiveness happens when I try to exit out of an application or try to launch the fast app switcher.

At first, I thought it’s just dust and lint so I blasted air through the available openings in the hope of dislodging any that may have accumulated. That didn’t work at all. I was starting to fear that I need to have the button replaced. But today, I found a possible solution here and here:

Open a built-in application
Press and hold the power button until the slide to shutdown swipe bar appears.
Release the power button
Press and hold the home button lightly until screen returns to icon screen

It does seem to work at first, but probably psychological, because soon it seems the button was back to its old unresponsive ways.

So I kept looking and I found one that does make sense here. I have my Accessibility triple-click Home button setting enabled. I figure that with this enabled, the OS will wait just a millisecond more to see if there’s an upcoming third click before responding. Turning off triple click improved responsiveness. Now how to shorten the double-click wait…

General

Greece Debt Crisis

By Jay Lagare on Wednesday, September 14, 2011

I recently read that not so long ago, debtors who were unable to pay their debts were imprisoned until they were able to. This doesn’t make sense really since how can you work and make money to pay when you’re behind bars? Supposedly, we have progressed beyond such medieval practices. But looking at Greece, you can’t help but wonder if we really have progressed much. Greece has a huge debt and is in risk of being unable to pay. So it needs to earn more (taxes), spend less (budget cuts), and borrow more. But lenders would only lend at a higher rate to reflect the increasing risk of default. This makes it harder to pay back the new debt. The European Community has also been providing bailouts in the form of cash and/or debt restructuring. But there are the strings in the form of austerity packages tied to the bailouts. These austerity packages include decrease in salaries/pensions, increase in tax rates, denationalizing companies, and selling government property. And again, these austerity packages, by possibly slowing down economic activity, makes it harder to pay back debt. Caught in this vicious cycle, you’d probably wonder if a prison cell is better.

General

Why We Are Shallow

By Jay Lagare on Tuesday, September 13, 2011

The post title is lifted straight from this Philippine Star article. What can I say? I have to agree. Most schools are focused more in raking in the tuition fees so it’s more of knowledge pumping, rote learning, more semesters, and less years, than really instilling critical thinking. After school, you probably end up working with an outsourcing company where the work being sent over from onshore is mundane and mindless grunt work (precisely why it’s sourced out, but we’re seeing improvements here). And every day we are exposed to crap on the newspapers (because crap is what’s happening), to drivel over the radio (apologies to friends who are Chico and Delamar fans), to retarded noontime TV shows, glorified tsismis (gossip) over SMS, Friendster, or Facebook (one reason why I quit those, at least Google Plus is still relatively clean), talk about showbiz over lunch and dinner, more TV (it’s not called the idiot box for nothing). Yeah, it’s no wonder why we are shallow. But there is always hope.