Save Power, Underclock the iPhone (A Suggestion for Apple)

With each iPhone, the battery capacity increases, but the power needs also increase, keeping the lifespan largely unchanged.

Why not allow underclocking to save power? Something like this:

• you have a shiny new iPhone4S with a higher capacity battery
• you are going out for a long day and need the power to last. So you set your iPhone’s CPU to down-clock to the previous generations speed (similar to how you set airplane mode when you need that).
• all your apps still run fine, as they did on the iPhone4, just a little slower than you are used to now
• if you launch a game, the CPU can run at full tilt, despite this option (if the developer has flagged that the higher CPU is needed)

So full CPU normally, and underclocking to the previous iPhone’s speed when you need to save some juice.

Mobifone 3G Vietnam

Bought a SIM card for 50,000, seemed to have 50,005 credit. Not bad.

Internet setup details (use Chrome to translate easily)

What I did:

GPL Stupidity – MobileVLC removed from App Store

MobileVLC (VLC for iOS) is one of the best apps ever for iOS.

It’s not that it delivers on a new use-case (as say I hope does GPS Log) – it’s that it fills a massive hole in Apple’s platform in that it lets you play video files. All of them.

No more did we need to:

1. find a conversion tool.
2. convert the video file (which can take about half the length of the movie)
3. drag it into iTunes
4. Sync
5. Only to find out a few hours later on the plane that the conversion went bad, and all you have is an hour of green.

Instead you just drag the file into the VLC app on iTunes. Then watch it. Wow…

This is great on the iPhone, but for the iPad, it basically makes the device (I don’t believe playing a movie on an iPad should be any harder than a computer).

The best part was – Apple didn’t mind.

Yep – they approved the app, and left it there untouched.  I downloaded it quickly, assuming that Apple may reverse their decision as they do so many times. But they didn’t. Maybe they too realise just how awesome this makes iOS.

So why has VLC been removed from the App Store? Would you believe – due to a complaint by one of the contributors to the parent VLC project.  His name is Rémi Denis-Courmont, herein referred to as dimwit.

Apparnetly dimwit claims that the AppStore licence is not totally compatible with the GPLv2.

Here’s something: who the fuck cares?

This story is not about some evil company who takes GPL code and uses it in their proprietary products without caring about releasing the source.

No, this about some hard working blokes at Applidium who have ported VLC to iOS – and released the source code, as per the GPL.  Hell they didn’t even charge any money for you to download it via the App Store (something that is technically legal under the GPL – but something that I could understand contributing upstream developers may dislike).

Applidium took a GPL project. They ported it to a new platform, released it for free, and released the source. They did this with the permission of the maintainers of VLC.

Maybe – somehow –  this violates the letter of the GPL, but how the hell does it violate the spirit of it?

In the past I have been a huge supporter of the GPL and it’s defenders – but this is a case that goes too far, and to the detriment of users everywhere.  Perhaps some people in the GPL sphere dislike Apple’s “walled garden” approach to their platform, and their efforts to restrict user’s freedoms. This is a very valid criticism – but preventing people from distributing GPL software on the platform is ridiculous, and itself restricting the freedoms of users.

Well anyway – being GPL software, you can still download and compile MobileVLC yourself.  I have – and it works great. If you are a friend of mine, I can possibly provision you a copy.  To compile it yourself, you need to be a paid up iOS developer with Apple, and not be scared by compiler errors.

</rant>

Downloading the iOS (iPhone) SDK on Bad Connections

The iPhone SDK is now a whopping 3.5GB. As a developer you will be downloading these multiple times per year, especially if you want betas. It would be nice if Apple was so kind as to provide patches, or torrents (hell this option would be more reliable *and* save them bandwidth).

Anyone on a sub-4M or flaky connection will know the pain of trying to download this again and again, only to have it be corrupted and refuse to load, or stop half-way.

I have tried Safari, Firefox, Chrome, always clicked the download link (to restore the cookie) before resuming my downloads, but was still plagued by this issue.

Enter wget. A program who’s sole existence is to download stuff. Not only does it work really well, it also can resume iPhone SDK downloads! I even voluntarily stopped my last one, with no issues.

But before you can use wget, you must first click the download link from your browser (you can cancel immediately) and export your cookies to save the auth code. It’s very easy – just use Firefox and the Cookie Exporter plugin to save your cookies.txt file to the same directly you will be doing your download from.

Then, the line you need is this:

wget --server-response --continue --no-check-certificate --load-cookies=cookies.txt https://developer.apple.com/ios/download.action?path=/ios/ios_sdk_4.2__final/xcode_3.2.5_and_ios_sdk_4.2_final.dmg

That line does everything. It will continue the download if you have a partially downloaded file, it will load your ADC auth code from the cookie, and will ignore the self-signed certificate issue.

But you will need to update the link to whatever version you are trying to get. Just right-click copy from the ADC. wget will follow the redirect fine.

I will be downloading all my iOS SDK’s this way from now on…

iDOS / DOSpad

Seems like I missed quite a storm last night while I was sound asleep.

Somebody released iDOS – a DOS emulator (based on the open source dosbox) onto the App Store.  It lasted a few hours, people managed to run Warcraft 2 and even Windows, until it was pulled (no surprise there, Apple explicitly restrict executing additional code).  Just 0.99c too – would have been worth purchasing.

This is the full screenshot, that is the keyboard you get. It even makes an old clacky sound!

Good news however: if you jailbreak you can get it on Cydia (under DOSPAD apparently), or if you are a developer, you can just grab the code and run it – no jailbreak, no 0.99c.  It’s open source :)

Pretty cool...

In other iOS news, they released a Chinese Language App Store and Apple Store today, so I guess it’s time to sharpen up my zh-Hans sell text…

Ability to Downgrade iPhones

There are many legitimate reasons to downgrade iPhones. As a user, perhaps you just don’t like the new OS.

As a developer, I have a need to test my App on all OS versions my users may reasonably use. I even have a spare iPhone I use just for testing. Alas, Apple only allow the very latest OS to be installed, even if you are a developer.

Apple also don’t ship old OS versions on the iPhone Simulator anymore, so that can’t be used to verify that you’re not calling any new methods either.

For a recent release, this meant I actually could not test it properly. I did the best I could by using the iPad 3.2 * simulator* (a very poor man’s substitute), crossed my fingers, and released. It was a nail-biting day…

Not all users upgrade immediately. Upgrading requires iTunes, yet normal day to day usage of an iPhone does not (you can do everything, buy/upgrade apps, buy music, etc). Actually I believe this is a pretty common use-case, especially for a key audience of mine: travellers. In fact, with my App, at least 10% of my active users (ones using the export server) are not yet on iOS4! That also means 10% of my potential customers. No way am I going to ignore them.

A bug has been reported to Apple on this issue.

To summarise, there are many legitimate reasons why people are on old OS’s, and why (especially developers) have a need to downgrade to old OS’s.

Fortunately there is a solution. And it doesn’t require doing anything illicit to your iPhone either.

Download The Firmware Umbrella. Plug in your iPhone to USB, and press a button.

What the Firmware Umbrella does is cache the iTunes server OK response to your firmware installation request, allowing you to fake this response in the future (to allow the downgrade). Only catch: you can only cache responses for the latest firmware, so do it today!

Important TIP: tick “Advanced Options” and change the “Request From” option to “Apple” (Cydia is for jailbreaking). Optionally, you can do both.

Caching the response is easy. Using it a bit harder – but do yourself a favour, cache the response now, and if you need it in the future, you’ll thank yourself.

Why there won’t be a GPS Log HD

When you port your App to the iPad, one of the first choices you get is whether to create a separate product, or a fat (i.e. “universal”) binary.

It seems that many folks on the App store, including several apps in the GPS/travel space have gone done the separate-product route.

Perhaps I understand why they did this. After all, it is not trivial to port an App to the iPad (basically your UI needs a complete re-think). For some apps, they have gone so far as to offer a totally new UI, using real life metaphors like “pages” and “books”.

I still think it’s a bad idea. Why? For two main reasons:
1) customers don’t like paying for the same product twice
2) how many people will actually buy both versions anyway?

Yes the iPad version costs you money to make. BUT, it will hopefully get you more customers. New customers who buy it for their iPad.

Historically I know of several products that used to ship with multiple targets. Warcraft 3 is one, and Adobe’s suite is another, both supported both Mac and Windows. Many steam games now support Mac as well (and don’t require re-purchasing).

So my theory is most users won’t buy the App twice. Some will buy it for the iPhone, some will buy it for the iPad. If you have the one binary to support both, a few will run it on both, and find that useful. If you sell it separately, I doubt most people would buy the counterpart, simply because they would use one device more than the other. Furthermore, users that have already bought the iPhone version get that installed to their iPad anyway, which may be enough.

So rather than trying to milk your existing customers to pay for the port, think of it this way: You get new customers (those who have never used your app, and want to use your App on the iPad), you add value to your product (by allowing use of both devices) which may give you an edge. And you’re doing the right thing (ask yourself, do you like paying for the same thing twice?).

I think so few customers will buy the app TWICE, that you actually de-value your product. I suspect that the number of additional people who buy your App because it supports both, will outweigh the number of people who would have bought a second copy, and that both categories of users represent only a small percentage anyway.

And please, don’t try to claim “but the iPad version is different”. I don’t care if it has a fancy book UI, a re-arranged layout, or up-res’d textures. If it performs the same function, it’s the same App.

GPS Log for iPad. Coming soon. Free for existing users.

Will

MiFi

Gigamom is clueless on the actual problem, confusing cellular and WiFi. The issue isn’t Jobs asking people to turn off their abusive MiFis,or AT&T’s problematic network. It’s that devices like the MiFi are an incredibly stupid replacement for a one-foot USB cable, which is all these audience members were using it for. 802.11 does not support AP densities of more than three per 100′ radius under the best conditions. The WWDC had more like 50 per 100′.

If the clueless MiFiers (and other cellular personal hotspot users) simply USB-tethered their hotspots the problem would have never occurred. It’s scary that so-called “developers” couldn’t predict this problem and sensibly head it off.

“MiFi Jamming” is a usability killer in many Starbucks now, where a dozen or more thoughtless users smear the room with unnecessary interfering 802.11 radiation, jamming access for everyone trying to use Starbucks’ wireless. All for want of a one-foot cable that ships with the cellular modem! Idiots all.

The thing is, the 802.11 standards committee predicted this problem FIVE YEARS ago. MiFi is just the first wave a self-defeating wireless decablers, wielded by clueless users that ignore spectrum realities, potentially destroying WiFi as a useful technology.

Packetguy on http://gigaom.com/2010/06/07/steve-jobs-survives-gizmodo-but-not-mifi/

Using Wifi to network a single device does seem like overkill.

Why is there no iPhone to iPad tethering?

So I have an iPhone.  It’s always in my pocket.  It has a 3G connection.

I can share the 3G Connection to a laptop.

So why the hell can’t I share this connection to an iPad? Even a Jobs-derided “Net Book” can use the iPhone’s 3G connection.

What’s worse is that this is not only technically feasible, but it’s been done!  What a slap in the face.

So now we have to buy another data plan? Even if you’re willing to pay it’s not (currently) easy to find Micro-SIM 3G plans in all countries.

Thanks Apple, thanks AT&T :-/

A new App Store low

$1 apps are one thing. Now people are releasing 15 games in 1, for $1. Wow…

Seems like Apple needs to add some new pricing categories, especially for games. I suggest:

$0.19
$0.09
and, my personal preference:
$0.01

Just think about it – at 0.01, your audience could be HUGE!!!!!!!!%!!!!! Enjoy your instant noodle dinners!