gdp's Comments

Just Another iPhone Blog : Icebird 1.2 for iPhone: iOS 4 multitasking and task completion, Read Later quick links

Sun, 11 Jul 2010 16:41:08 +0000

You keep teasing me with your screenshots showing the app as free. Mind listing the real app prices when doing your mini reviews? How do you even have it showing as free?

Just Another iPhone Blog : More iPhone 4 Problems – Proximity Sensor Causing Hangups & ‘Face Dialing’

Sat, 26 Jun 2010 22:00:11 +0000

Thanks Patrick. One thing I forgot to mention is it seems to be more of a problem the longer your call lasts. If you only make short calls, you may never see it. The longer I talk, the more often I see the screen start spazzing out.

Just Another iPhone Blog : iPhone 4 Has 512MB of RAM - Double the 3GS

Fri, 18 Jun 2010 01:28:04 +0000

Woot! Not gonna lie, I was a little nervous about this. 256 MB isn't terrible, but if you're jailbroken, it gets pushed fairly often. 512 MB is going to be very nice. Awesome pic for this post, too. :D

Just Another iPhone Blog : Quick Look: Trainyard for iPhone

Sat, 12 Jun 2010 16:23:22 +0000

Looks like a sweet new take on Pipe Dream. Thanks for the review. I think I'll be giving this one a try.

Just Another iPhone Blog : Want to Remove Ads from Cydia? There's an Easy Method

Tue, 4 May 2010 16:48:30 +0000

I did this same 'hack' awhile ago trying to speed things up. Not only does it take away the Purchase button, but it also takes away the 'more info', 'screenshot', etc. links. The extra speed was amazing, but it wasn't worth making Cydia near unusable to me.

Just Another iPhone Blog : Accessory Review: New Potato FLPR, turn your iPhone into a universal remote

Wed, 28 Apr 2010 20:33:57 +0000

Great review. Thanks! I won't be touching this product, though. Using the 30-pin connector is a big mistake. You can't sync, tether, or charge your phone while using the thing. Can't keep it on a dock. Worst of all, you have to hold your iPhone upside down. Meh. I'm sure it'll work great for some people. I think the RedEye mini has far more potential, though: http://thinkflood.com/products/redeye-mini/what-i...

Just Another iPhone Blog : New Limera1n Jailbreak Coming Soon, or Maybe Not So Soon

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 16:23:14 +0000

Personally, I hope all these guys hold all their jailbreaks until the new iPhone is released or at the very least 4.0 is released. Only reason I'll get the next iPhone is if I can still jailbreak it untethered. I know I'm a lucky one that still has my 3GS jailbroken untethered and there are a lot of people that have been waiting to be able to jailbreak theirs, but wouldn't they rather be certain they can jailbreak 4.0? Think of the amazing jailbreak apps that will be possible with the new features of 4.0. Would be silly to show their hand to Apple at this point. P.S. Intensedebate wouldn't let me log in again this morning. I know you've kinda given up getting it working properly, but just a heads up...

Just Another iPhone Blog : I Want Some of What Blackberry's CEO Is Smoking

Tue, 20 Apr 2010 19:47:58 +0000

hah. Thanks for the laugh. Gotta love people stuck in their bubbles.

Just Another iPhone Blog : Is this the logo for the next generation iPhone?

Thu, 8 Apr 2010 04:32:21 +0000

No way in heck is that a final design for the logo. Even if the phone happens to be called iPhone HD, just go tohttp://www.apple.com/iphone/. Compare the logos. Look at the thickness of the box around the S. Look at the thickness of the S itself. Look at the vertical alignment of the box. I'd be willing to bet this is not at all an official logo, "prototype" or not.

Just Another iPhone Blog : First and Last iPhone Apps

Mon, 5 Apr 2010 14:08:01 +0000

Just gotta post about how awesome the picture for this story is. Cute cat.

Just Another iPhone Blog : Our iPhone 4.0 expectations

Wed, 24 Mar 2010 18:57:03 +0000

Apple versions of the following are needed (many already suggested by others): - Notifier (Allowing you to pick and choose when sounds repeat is important here. The status bar icons are useful as well.) - LockInfo (Along with the new InfoShade feature of LockInfo, this is huge. It not only gives people an android-like notification system from anywhere, but lets people display information they want quick access to on the lock screen.) - SBSettings (We'll probably never get this, but quick toggles are still very important to many of us.) - Multi-tasking (I'd like to say limited multi-tasking would be enough, because it would. However, if I say that, Apple will take it to the extreme and limit it far too much.) - AddExchange (So, clearly the phone can handle multiple Exchange accounts. Why on earth do we need to jailbreak to have more than one configured?) - Better app management (I also prefer CategoriesSB, but I'm currently using a combination of CategoriesSB and Infiniboard. I'd also have a hard time without Five Icon Dock. With the number of apps we have today, Springboard fails. Apple must know this. It's time to replace it.) - iFile/Safari Download Manager/Attachment Saver (I know we'll never get these. I suppose for most users that's a good thing. I sure couldn't live without them, though.) - QuickReply APIs (Forget limiting this feature just to jailbroken SMS users. Give us an API that every app can use so we can QuickReply to SMS, Beejive, Twitter, or whatever we want wherever we want. - Snappy (Probably another that we'll never get, but I sure wish we could. I've managed to get pictures of many things I wouldn't possibly have had time to get had I not been able to open up Snappy instantly from the lock screen.) - Everything that's truly harmless that Apple keeps yanking from the App Store for no darn reason. (WiFi discovery apps, free memory apps, google voice apps, etc.) Gotta say, the new Android phones are looking better every day. I still love my iPhone, but I hope Apple realizes they actually have competition now.

Just Another iPhone Blog : QuickDo Has Become a Quick Don't for Me

Tue, 23 Mar 2010 19:11:47 +0000

I ditched mQuickDo when Activator and ProSwitcher came out. Activator can assign any app (and now system event) you want to any gesture you want. ProSwitcher gives me quick access to the dock. I suppose if I wanted to be able to launch apps from the lock screen I'd need something like Circuitous, but I don't. There's just no need for mQuickDo anymore. Intelliscreen and mQuickDo are the only apps I've bought that I now regret. mQuickDo was at least useful for awhile. Intelliscreen has always been crap.

Just Another iPhone Blog : Do You Trust Sites That Demand Payment for App Reviews?

Mon, 22 Mar 2010 00:30:57 +0000

As usual, I completely agree with you Patrick. Possibly my shortest comment ever: Asking or even accepting payment for app reviews is wrong. Period. End of story. Because of the reasons you gave and many more. I'm glad I don't use either of those sites mentioned. P.S. Comment system is a bit fubar again. It showed me as not logged in at all. I disabled adblock and it said I was logged in with facebook. Logged out of that and tried to login with intensedebate. Showed me as not logged in until I navigated to the main JAiB page, then came back here.

Just Another iPhone Blog : iAccounts = User Accounts on iPhone (jailbreak only)

Sun, 7 Mar 2010 20:35:28 +0000

In case anybody considers this an even remotely secure solution to keep things segregated between users, it is not. At all. Any 'security' gained by this is immediately bypassed if the user just reboots the phone into safe mode. This is useful only to keep people (kids or otherwise) from messing with things by accident. If somebody really wants to get into anything you've blocked them out of, they will have no problems doing so at all.

Just Another iPhone Blog : This Is Why People Shy Away from Jailbreaking the iPhone

Sun, 7 Mar 2010 20:08:55 +0000

Sadly, the comments to this post show why jailbreaking can't go 'mainstream' more than the post itself does. Users, in general, are not intelligent. Not only did a very large number of people somehow COMPLETELY miss the point of your post, but they then continued to go on and just personally bash you instead of post civilized and/or intelligent rebuttals. Then there are many more comments showing the side of the userbase that is completely unable to manage things on their own. This side is not at fault. I don't look down upon them. But it's a very large number of iPhone users. They have no technical knowledge. They have no understanding that running a large number of things at once is going to slow their device down. They have no desire or knowledge of how to dig through a few forums or other websites in order to find a very simple process to perform to recover their device if it begins having issues. They have no grasp of the concept that if they are seeing a continuous crash or performance issue, there is very likely ONE single app they installed which is causing it. They lump the entire experience into one single issue. They see the many misinformed posts on well known syndicated news sites that push the fear mongering attitude that jailbreaking is bad, so they assume it's the jailbreak itself that causes all their problems when, in fact, that is NEVER the case. @All: The point of this blog post was not that Patrick is scared of jailbreaking, has no experience doing so, or does not know the merits of having a jailbroken device. As he explained in this post and has shown in countless other posts, he has been jailbreaking for a very long time. The point, I believe, that he was trying to make is that the vast majority of iPhone users in the world are not technical people. They do not want to spend ANY time researching apps before trying them to find all the reviews that explain whether the app is stable or not. They do not want to spend ANY time trying to find a solution to problems they are having due to conflicting MobileSubstrate plugins. They want their device to just work. Always, and without any thought. Jailbreaking is not for everyone and never will be. It shouldn't be. Patricks point was these very issues do drive people away and give the scene bad press. These (rare or not) crashes and other user experience effecting issues do indeed drive users away and give cannon fodder to the press and other parties that are interested in showing how evil jailbreaking is. Those of us with a great deal of jailbreak experience know that if you are very careful in which jailbreak apps and extensions you install, you will have NO problems. Your phone will be just as stable as it was before being jailbroken. That is a simple fact that a very large number of people are not able to grasp. They see something on Cydia and they install it without a seconds thought on what performance impact it may have. Then when things start crashing, they just restore and start over instead of attempting to narrow down the one app or extension that was causing issues. Patrick is not saying jailbreaking is bad. He is saying he believes people in general are just not interested in putting any effort into keeping things smooth. I absolutely agree. These issues turn people away from jailbreaking, and that's a good thing. They are the type of people that should not be doing it in the first place. @ashikase: Your contributions to the community are well appreciated and your comments were spot on. There is no easy solution to the problem such as more testing or better control. The solution lies with the end user. If they just want everything to work without the possibility of any issues, they should not jailbreak. If they are willing to put in a little effort and put up with some conflicts and spend some time working through such conflicts, the jailbreak world is their playground. @Patrick: Think of an extension as anything to changes the way any other part of the phone or software works. If it slightly tweaks your address book or the way something else looks, it's an extension. If it does anything outside of its own self contained little sandbox, it's an extension. If it is completely self sustaining and doesn't touch anything else (Springboard, ringtones, contacts, lockscreen, ANYTHING), it's an application. @Bryan, John Steele, and metalheadreview: You do not EVER need to restore. If you spend a little time there are many many guides that explain to you how you can disable extensions that are causing issues to get your phone back to a working state.

Just Another iPhone Blog : This Is Why People Shy Away from Jailbreaking the iPhone

Sun, 7 Mar 2010 19:26:14 +0000

You don't see crappy apps in the app store? Really? There are an insane number of crappy apps in the app store. There are also apps in the app store that do cause crashes. I will not argue that Cydia isn't somewhat of the wild frontier and could use some better control and organization, but in my opinion this is far from a reason to support Apple's TERRIBLE review process.

Just Another iPhone Blog : Review: Visible Vote for the iPhone [iPhone App Reviews]

Mon, 1 Mar 2010 21:40:29 +0000

I think this is an incredibly good idea for an app and an excellent use of the platform. The gov't and others should really promote the use of such tools. I think it is incredibly valuable to give a large audience of people a VERY simple way of keeping track of what their elected officials are spending time doing and also providing them with a very easy way of providing feedback on their performance. So few people, including myself, are not at all involved with the government because it is so difficult and inconvenient to keep track of all the issues and it is near impossible to have your voice heard. I'm very impressed with this app and appreciate you bringing it to my attention. I plan to give it as much exposure as possible. Thanks.

Just Another iPhone Blog : Site Stuff: Problems with Pages Loading with Mobile Theme

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 20:43:41 +0000

I usually check the site from Firefox on my computer, so I haven't seen the issue where I can't turn off the mobile theme in Mobile Safari. However, I had intermittently seen the mobile version of the site while using Firefox on my computer. It would come and go and it was never often enough to be annoying that's why I never reported it until this morning. The blog post that was stuck in mobile mode this morning is properly working now. Your fix may have solved both issues. Will let you know if I see it happen again.

Just Another iPhone Blog : Eight takes on what to do with your last iPhone home screen

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 15:21:27 +0000

I used to do what most of you said and put all the 'settings' apps and unused iPhone apps on the last screen. Now I have all the settings apps in a Stack and I hide the unused apps. Now my last screen is usually games or other apps I've downloaded but haven't yet given a try. Seems to be full most the time these days with all the sites like FreeAppADay. P.S. Why does JAiPB randomly show me the mobile version of the site sometimes even when I'm on my computer? This article is the mobile version while the main page is 'normal'. I've seen the main page show up as mobile sometimes too.

Just Another iPhone Blog : Do You Want Multitasking or Just Clever App Switching on the iPhone?

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 15:07:54 +0000

What you're calling 'clever app switching' would be incredibly useful in a large number of situations. I would even dare to say it would be the solution to MOST things people want multi-tasking for. However, it is not enough. There are still quite a few situations where a user does want the app to actually keep running in the background actively performing tasks. Music apps -- Mike11 asked instead for an API that allows music streams to continue in the background. This is a possible solution, but since there are many other use-cases for true multi-tasking, this would probably be more trouble than it's worth to implement. Navigation apps -- One of the main uses I have for multi-tasking is to keep Navigon running (and actively updating) in the background while I'm doing other things. I just recently took a long road trip to Atlanta. I was talking on the phone when I came up to a turn I needed to make. Navigon politely announced that my turn was coming up while I was jabbering away on the phone. No interruption to the phone call or my driving. As I checked Google Maps for traffic conditions, replied to IMs in Beejive (while stuck in non-moving traffic. I'm a safe driver, I swear!), and performed other tasks, I was able to keep Navigon running and updating and never miss a beat. Games -- Although most games wouldn't need active multi-tasking ability and a clever app-switching / state-saving system would suffice, there are some that still benefit from true multi-tasking. Games that are in constant communication with a host server to send and receive updates on the players location and other factors would not be able to handle a flash-freeze of their current state then a total shutdown. If the server stops being able to communicate with the client, it will consider it gone. There are also other games where it may be another users turn. While waiting for the other user to make their move, you switch to check your email or Facebook. With full multi-tasking, you will still hear sounds from the app so if there is a sound that lets you know you need to be back in the game, you'll know immediately. I'm sure there are other use cases that can't be solved with push and/or clever app-switching. This is what I've come up with while still half asleep. The point is, multi-tasking in this day and age is something that is very important. Yes, there are better solutions in many cases. But I don't believe there are better solutions for all cases.