lars backlund | blog of lasseman

This evening I’ve downgraded an iPhone 3G from iOS 4 all the way back to 2.2.1. It was a little bit tricky but I finally figured it out. I’m back at 3.1.3 since not enough apps worked on 2.2.1 (for a brief iOS history on what has changed, see here).

Should you ever want to do it, this is how you do it. Note: The guides that were out there did not work for me, I kept getting Error 1600 all the time so this is what I did to make it work.

First off, at least for me, I could not jump straight from 4.0 to 2.2.1, you have to downgrade in steps. This means we first have to go from 4.0 to 3.1.3 and then to 3.0 and then to 2.2.1. Going from 3.0 to 2.2.1 also requires iTunes version 7.7, so if you’re on a Mac with the latest iTunes, you’re shit out of luck – get on an old PC or run windows through a VM. I had to run iTunes 7.7 on an old crappy XP machine to make it work right also, it didn’t vibe well with Windows 7 x64.. And YES, I really had to go from 3.1.3 to 3.0 and THEN to 2.2.1.

To get a hold of all the old firmware revisions for the iPhone visit this page and select the right one, remember, you have to do it in steps, so if you want to go from 4.0 to 2.2.1, first you got to hit 3.1.3.

You’re also going to be needing a tool called iRecovery to get the iPhone out of DFU mode. If you’re on a Mac, unpack the tool into some directory then navigate to that directory (for instance Downloads) and in terminal type:

./iRecovery -s

Yeah that’s right, I had to drop in an absolute path to make it fly. Oh and if you’re going to be using iRecovery on Windows, instead of in Mac, don’t forget to install this little bad boy (Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable Package), otherwise the executable won’t work!

Anyway, to downgrade, you can follow this guide for instance, but don’t forget about the extra stuff I told you above – this is the shit that took me time to figure out.

Lol

I just read a little something by Grant Skinner and what I don’t get is why not open source the player if it’s such a head ache for Adobe that some people make it seem? Because of course its profitable not to. See if it was open source there would be a LOT more “respect” throwed around than when you essentially lock your customers in and dont give them a choice. This is why I am frustrated with Adobe as with many other companies that has any form of monopoly, a history thereof or are part of an ogliopoly. This is why customers used to (and a lot still) dislike Microsoft, AT&T, Vattenfall, ComCast and even my own employer Telia.

This is why I dig companies such as MindTouch and others that have an open source core with Enterprise options/closed source built around it, and has a product that generates an output built in standards readable by all (in MindTouch case XML/XHTML).

To say that Adobe deserve respect and so on is true, all human beings deserve respect (plus Photoshop kicks ass…even though they are really bloating down their CS). To say that Adobe deserves CREDIT for being business savvy, buying up sweet IP, developing this IP and making good decions to get where they are now is equally true. But we are all doing them a HUGE favor by bitching and moaning. This all helps to give rise to popular opinion and in the end – options. For Adobe, just like with any other company that gets negative attention from its customers, it becomes crystal – it’s do or die time. And yes, everyone using a Flash Player IS a customer.

In the end I think Apple are actually doing the web as a tool for communication a favor by NOT including support for a closed prop. system that is A) WIDELY misused and B) a resource hog that for me in 90% of the time is making my browser blink, pop and crackle when I don’t want it too (ads). And I really couldn’t care less about Flash games.

To say that a user can uninstall Flash on their workstation/laptop if they don’t like it..well that’s kind of childish, that’s like me not getting any electricity from a company I dislike – see I can’t.. because I like hot showers .. just like to watch embedded web video. But believe me when those video sites go full frontal HTML5, my Flash player will go the same way Macromedia Shockwave player did a long time ago. Or maybe I won’t, maybe things will shape up and they will kick ass. Just look at what their doing with Flash 5 and converting AS to IPA.

Anyway. I don’t mind the “i-platform”, here I do get a choice because companies are FORCED to open up and build more effecient no-nonsense ways to deliver HQ video. And it doesn’t really matter if it’s Android or Iphone OS, you can bet your ass they will reuse those HQ streams in fast, efficient native apps for those platforms.

Kapow bitches! The Hulk is sick of puny homans whining!

1. “It’s just a big iPod Touch”
   Yeah? So? What were you expecting? Mac OS X + touch? So you’re telling me that if you could use your fingers on your laptop…that would be better than using the mouse? HAHA PUNY BRAIN!
2. “It’s got no camera”
   Hulk SAD about this too. Was expecting to cyber with She-Hulk….he he. But will probably be in next version. HULK IS HULK!
3. “No multitasking!”
   Puny! Hulk doesn’t care! Only time Hulk wants to multitask is to listen to music while bashing skulls. No biggie. NOT LIKE HULK!
4. “No really cool software”
   That’s why there is an App Store. HULK SMASH!
5. “No USB ports”
   PUNY! HULK IS NOT AFRAID…HULK IS STRONGEST ONE THERE IS!!! YOU WANT USB IN YOUR IPOD TOO? IT’S NOT A LAPTOP. USB YOUR FACE!

NOW Hulk says ENOUGH!

As usual I will wait for the Quicktime to be posted from Apples event tomorrow and stay away from online news sites, live blogs, email, chat, blahblah.

Safari 3 started up a whole lot faster than Safari 4 final and it’s been annoying me up until now. Disable some of the rather useless eyecandy for Safari 4 to restore the more speedier Safari:

Bring back old progress bar, this I don’t do for speed but because the old one actually showed PROGRESS which the new one does not

defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4IncludeToolbarRedesign -bool FALSE No go, doesn’t work :(

Disable bookmarks cover flow. Who uses bookmarks anyway?

defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4IncludeFlowViewInBookmarksView -bool FALSE

Get rid of Top Sites. Cool but useless feature.

defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4IncludeTopSites -bool FALSE

Just copy and paste the italic text into terminal and hit enter and reboot Safari 4. Voila, feel free to clock the difference, it is noticeable faster at least for me.

I’ve had a great weekend playing some computer games with my friends. After fucking around with Cider Ports and CrossWeaver for Games and Urban Terror I had enough and this morning I got up and installed Boot Camp. Both Martin and Jörgen did the same, Jörgen however ended up with some trouble and it took us basically the whole day of fiddeling around to get everything working. But this time we are ready for the next LAN.

Apple and Mac might be great for a lot of stuff but unfortunately it is still true that if you want a hassle free gaming experience you have to go Windows. Lucky for us that we had Boot Camp. I went up on Steam and bought Counter Strike Source (again I might add, I have lost one Steam account) and we tried it a bit before packing up. The next time though we are all set up (you reading Zek:) and ready to go.

Man I am ANNOYED. I just checked my battery health in Istat Pro and noticed I had a battery health of 58% and a 103 cycles. That is fucking ridiculous, I swapped to a new battery in june last year. Linda, who has never swapped her battery has a battery health of 100% (!?) and that battery is 2 years old this june. Linda only had a meager 154 cycles though so I’m thinking I will never ever turn my laptop off again since that doesn’t seem healthy for my battery.

If you find Windows Remote Desktop annoying with the constant logging in/out (and don’t care to much to patch it for concurrent connections) you’re most likely going to go with VNC for that Windows install of yours.

Here is a tip, if you are running a VNC install on your Windows machine, say TightVNC, you can then in Finder just go to the menu and select “Go” and “Connect to server” (or just do COMMAND+K). You can then type in vnc://your.ip.adress:port and voila…you don’t have to use a VNC client for your Mac but can use the built in.

Today I did the unspeakable act of installing Windows onto an Apple machine.
It made me feel like a dirty little girl is what it did..is what it did.

Anyway, the process wasn’t exactly painless since I after the first install got the “no disk error” which appearantly popped up because I was supposed to somehow figure out that I was supposed to re-format the partition that the boot camp guide pre-formated for me (uhm..). After I reformated (that is, deleting the partition that boot camp made and re-created it during win setup) I tried again and this time got another error message. Something about hal.dll and so on. Appearantly this could be solved by removing the extra 200mb partition that was there (that had some relation to the EFI..which is nice to have if you’re planning on Vista..which I’m not). Said and done, after I removed that everything went as smooth as silk and my Windows install is actually pretty god darn fast.

Why did I do it? To use a certain VPN client that was only available for Windows (and naw, it didn’t work well through VMWare of CrossOver). XBMC is a fantastic piece of software though…I installed it and noticed that it really doesn’t matter at all to me what OS I run on my “htpc” as long as I have XBMC!

On a side note, I need to get a cleaning cd for my Macbook Pro since it still refuses to burn DVDs (but burns CDs just fine weirdly enough).