Job’s dominance in the market stretched out well beyond that of Apple. He owned considerable shares in Disney after it’s acquisition of Pixar for which we can thank for making digital animation what it is today. With over 100 million people owning an iPhone and numerous other gadgets such as the iMac, iPod, AppleTV or the MacBook his legacy can be found world wide, piece by piece in everyone’s homes.

But what will become of what he has left behind? Will Apple continue to push forward with new technologies that continue to redefine the market? Will Tim Cook be able to develop the same cult like following in America’s youth? Or will Apple once again fade away into just a memory? Although I have never been the biggest fan of Apple, and can often quite vocal about my distaste for some of their practices, I hope that Cook does manage to do what Jobs has done, and hopefully even more. The more super powers we have in the tech industry the more competition there is, the more growth there is, and the more fun gadgets and services there are for all of us peons out there to play with.

Currently Apple’s site is quite displaying a picture of Jobs with the years 1955-2011 written next to it. After clicking the image one is presented with the following text:

These are the words of his successor, Tim Cook, who now holds the reins in his hands.

Unfortunately I could not find a higher resolution photo of this. So after clicking the image use Ctrl+ and Ctrl- to zoom in/out and get a better look at the differences.

1. Launch iTunes
2. On the left menu go to iTunes Store
3. Click Sign In on the top right and enter your account information
4. Again, click the Account button (your e-mail address appears as the button), re-enter your password
5. Click View Account
6. Click Deauthorize All

Now you can reauthorize your account and finally get around to transferring those purchases or downloading some podcats on your iPhone.

I wouldn’t mind it if they had made it an icon on the main screen, or required some unique gesture such as drawing an S on the screen with your finger. But they had to make it so easy to accidentally invoke it. Since I am not using a faster 3GS model my phone chokes every time I invoke it and instead of smoothly scrolling over to this screen it stutters and crawls across the screen. Then I have to scroll back to the main screen or hit home again, sure this takes only a few seconds each time but if you add up all those occurrences I’ve probably wasted a fair bit of time.

The first thing you can do is set the default action for double pressing the home button. Instead of taking you to the search screen you can direct it elsewhere. Go to Settings->General->Home and select which screen you’d like to be presented with. While you’re there you can also go into the Search Results menu and set what parts of the phone will be searched by Spotlight, I chose to disable everything but mail, as the only thing I could ever see myself searching was my email.

Another tweak you can do involves installing an app off Cydia. So if your phone isn’t Jail Broken then you’re out of luck. If it is, then fire up Cydia and search for “No Spotlight Icon.” This app will not disable Spotlight entirely but it will remove the magnifying glass icon on your springboard, clearing up some clutter on your screen.

Unfortunately, even after all this time there is still no solution for removing spotlight search in iOS 3 or iOS 4. Quite frankly, you’re stuck with it.

A quick reinstall of iTunes left me in the same boat. It turns out that you have to remove several Apple products in a specific order before reinstalling iTunes. So open up your Control Panel then uninstall these components in the following order:

• 
  

  iTunes

• QuickTime
• Apple Software Update
• Apple Mobile Device Support
• Bonjour
• Apple Application Support*

At this point you can now install the newest iTunes and you should be able to sync your iPhone without any issues.

*iTunes 9 or later

Despite this pent up angst I have for Apple I some how found myself an owner of the iPhone.  I’m really not sure what made me think that it might be a good idea to buy one, my ex did tech support for the iPhone right from the day of their release.  I knew all of their quirks, and there were a lot of them.  Mind you most of them had been fixed with the newer models but there were always new ones waiting to be discovered.

For years I refused to even get a cell phone, I didnt want to deal with the enormous bills or the BS of dealing with phone companies.  Eventually I got the most basic pay as you go flip-phone.  That served me well for about two years, but everytime I turned around a friend was showing me their new iPhone, insisting that I play with it.  Every time I ended up with one in my hand I found myself in some weird torn state of denial.  It was like discovering that I had a crush on Hitler’s daughter.  I knew it was wrong, but I just couldn’t help but like the thing.

So eventually I picked up a black 8gb iPhone 3G, and the nightmare began.  A friend had bought the new Black Berry and offered me his phone for such a low price I couldn’t pass it up.  Since I hate cell phone companies and refuse to go on a contract, I decided that instead of putting it on Rogers I would go with Fido since they did not require that you sign up for a contract.  From what I had been told, it would be a breeze to unlock it and use it on the Fido network.  That did not turn out to be true.

My friend had already installed Beta 2 of the OS 3.0.  I had no idea at that time how much of a royal pain in the butt that would become.  Since there was no Unlock for 3.0 I figured I’d downgrade to 2.2.1 .  Just fire up iTunes, do a shift+restore and give it the right file and I’d be good to go.  Or not.

I spent the entire weekend running restore after restore.  Digging through every website I could find trying to make sense of all the errors I was getting. Each restore attempt gave me a different error. 2, 4, 5, 6, 9, 13, 19, 1002, 1011, 1013, 1601, 1602, 1603, 1604, 1608, 1609, I saw them all.  Eventually I got it to boot up after installing an old version of the firmware, 2.0.2, and was able to activate and jailbreak it.  But alas I could not unlock it as the baseband had stayed at 4.30.02.

So I scoured the Internet for answers.  From the sounds of it I was stuck with that baseband until a newer one came out.  If I had the 5.8 boot loader I could’ve downgraded, but the 5.9 boot loader that I had would not allow me.  So I ordered a RebelSim card.  Everyone seemed to think that would fix the issue.  It did not. It would recognize my sim card, it would show the available carriers, but when I tried to connect it would tell me they were no longer available. After taking my sim card down to the local Fido kiosk and having them test it, it was apparent the phone was the issue.

Ultimately I grew tired of the frustrations getting the phone to work, and was forced to sell it on Kijiji for a low price. My flip phone will do for now, perhaps when Android rolls out I’ll try the smartphone thing again.

As it turns out, this screen is very misleading and not as threatening as it may appear. Selecting the option to set it up as a new phone does NOT revert your phone back to its starting point as the message may imply. The only change that is made is you will be prompted to rename the phone, after that your phone will sync and all of your settings and data will be preserved.

So how do you go about disabling this feature? Well it’s quite simple if you’re running OS 3.0, just go into Settings then scroll down to Messages and you’ll find an option to toggle Repeat Alert off in there. You can also disable the Show Preview, Subject Field and MMS messaging in this menu as well.

Windows 7 / Vista

Open your Start Menu
Type “autoplay” in the search box and hit enter
Scroll to the bottom until you see your iPhone/iPod’s name
Click the dropdown box and select Take no action
Click Save

Windows XP

Open your Start Menu
Select Control Panel
Open Printers and Other Hardware
Open Scanners and Cameras
Right click your iPhone or iPod Touch and choose Properties
Click the Events tab
From the dropdown next to Select an event choose Camera Connected
Select Take no action
Click OK

As it turns out any Vonage line can be used as a SIP line. All you have to do is find out the domain and your encrypted password. Doing so is actually quite the simple process. Enter the following into your browser, making sure to replace the parts in bold with your account information.

https://im-config.vonagenetworks.net/config?&login=USERNAME&password=PASSWORD&type=1003

Update 09/07/2009: Unfortunately our friends at Vonage have taken down the above link. As of now I know of no other way to obtain your encrypted password, I will try to find an alternate method and when I do I will put up a new post.

You’ll get a page with a bunch of information on it, the part you want to pay attention to is at the top:

[SIP 2.0]
ProxyUserName=username
ProxyUserPassword=FAB16g9XNa
ProxyDomain=a.vonim.com
ProxyPort=10000

This contains all the information you need to register your account on Fring or SIAX. In the past I used SIAX however they decided one day to make it so you had to purchase the software, which defeats the purpose of Jailbreaking your iPhone (in my opinion). So now I use Fring, which can be downloaded for free in the App Store. Configuring SIP in Fring was a little less than straight-forward for me, so here are the steps to set it up:

Create an account or login to your existing account
Go to More then Add-ons
Select SIP, then Other

Fill out the fields as follows:
User ID = ProxyUserName
Password = ProxyUserPassword
Proxy = ProxyDomain:ProxyPort

Now save those settings and try making a SIP call. If you don’t see the SIP option lit up on the Dialer pad then you may just need to wait a few seconds for it to connect to Vonage