Tips on how to get around a spoilt Home button

Hi guys, today's post is just some tips on how to get around a mulfunctioning iPhone's home button. You may have tried my tip on Home button calibration mentioned here but did not get any success. Well, if you do not want to make that trip to the repair store, what are you to do? Here are a couple of tips for both Jailbreakers and none Jailbreakers!

The first method is through using your Accessibility functions. Yes, that function that you have totally ignored in your phone since day 1. Head over to your Settings->General->Accessibility->AssistiveTouch and turn it on. What happens is you get a shiny little button that you can move around on your screen. By pressing it, you can simulate a home button press. Further more, you can even create shortcuts for it. Pretty much the non-Jailbreakers Activator.

 And what is Activator you may ask? Activator is 1 of those must get default tweaks to get once you Jailbreak. In fact, several of the tweaks that you download will auto download Activator for you. With Activator, you get to set shortcuts for practically anything, by doing practically anything on your phone. You can swipe left to right at the clock area, double tap on your status bar, swipe up, down or whatever hand action you can think of, and set it either open an app, activate a tweak, etc. Benefits are pretty limitless!

As for those of you who want a more dedicated option and are willing to spend that bit of cash ($4.99USD in fact), you can get Zephyr! Zephyr allows you to do several different shortcuts made specifically for app switching. It allows you to swipe left and right to switch between apps, or swipe up to see your multitasking switcher. Sounds familiar? Yes, it is precisely what your iPad does when you activate gestures! This however gives you the additional option of just closing your apps, depending on how you change the settings.

So there you have it, 3 different ways to go around a spoilt home button. Which one will be more suitable for you?
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In other news, WWDC is coming again soon! For those who don't know what WWDC is, it basically stands for Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Convention. It will be held on June 11th to 15th, with tickets for it going at $1,599USD and basically sold out within 2 hours of its announcement! (5,000 tickets * $1,599USD = OMGBBQ loads of cash)

So why is this news even exciting for anyone? Well, the WWDC is basically the place where Apple announced the previous iPhones (save for iPhone 4S), together with several other goodies like MacBooks. This year, I expect that iPhones will stay to the same course of being announced only in October (Makes sense for Apple to split up the timings of their 3 main products, namely iPhone, iPad and MacBook), though MacBooks are pretty much due to be updated. Some say MacBook Pros will be removed, with the new focus for Apple to be purely in MacBook Airs. While there are some others that say both will be combined together.

And of course there are those that says Apple will *finally* release their iTV or whatever they choose to call it. Well, whatever it is being announced, June looks to be another exciting time for Apple fans so keep a good lookout!

Cydia for your Mac

Im sure that if you are a Jailbreaker you would have heard of Cydia, where basically Cydia is the appstore for your iPhone or iPad which stores all the none Apple approved apps. A new kid is in town for your Mac, which is the Hack-Store!

You can head to their website to download their app. Basically what it does is gather together all the apps which are not available in the Mac's appstore and put it up for easy access by allowing to search for these apps. Some of these include allowing you to download Flutter, the Messages (beta) app released by Apple, iExplorer, all of which are pretty cool stuff which I am currently using myself. There are also a few other interesting apps which I intend to try out as well.

So if you ever thought that you would like a place where you can easily find these apps to try out, go to their website and try it out~

What is Jailbreaking?

Not much posts lately simply because nothing much has been going on. There have been a few rumors with regards to upcoming MacBooks (rumoured to be announced possibly in June's WWDC) and the next iPhone (rumored to be announced in October), but basically nothing confirmed. Will have more information up here once there is any confirmed information.

In the meantime, today's post will be talking about Jailbreaking! Here are some things which some of you may not know about Jailbreaking.

1. Jailbreaking is legal
2. Jailbreaking is NOT just about getting paid apps for free (Especially since that part is the illegal side of Jailbreaking and not supported by all of the Jailbreaking community)
3. Jailbreaking frees your iPhone from Apple's restrictions and allows many customizations to be done

The above is my home screen which basically shows some of the things that you can do with Jailbreaking, such as
1. Changing your carrier name
2. Adding extra icons to the dock (you can see my video app hiding at the corner)
3. Removing app names (I find that it clutters my screen too much)
4. Changing icon dicrections (Helps when I am using my phone while lying down)
5. Installing improved apps over the stock apps, such as biteSMS, mxTube, etc.
6. There are several other useful things that you can do which are not visible on my current home screen which I will introduce on this blog along the way

Futhermore, Jailbreaking is relatively safe, since it is very easy to do (Anyone can do it within 10-15 mins), and you can also restore it to its pre-jailbreak status by restoring the iPhone within that same amount of time. You can also continue to sync your iPhone to the computer even when you have Jailbroke your iPhone so that you can easily restore your iPhone anytime without losing any non-jailbreak related info.

Currently, you can jailbreak all iPhones and up to iPad 2, with the iPad (2012)'s jailbreak still in the works. I shall not attempt to explain the process since there are already several such pages which describes the process of jail breaking with several video tutorials and the files immediately available. One such page is iDownloadBlog's jailbreak info page so I recommend you go check it out~

Paper Monsters gives you Super Mario experience on iOS

Well, today's post is not about a new game on the iOS. Just something which you may have not noticed yet. Paper Monsters!

 Paper Monsters is a really nice little game with awesome graphics to say the least. It gives your Super Mario fan in you your coin collecting fix by letting you jump around picking up paper clips and buttons! Not exactly my best description about a game, but hey, that was pretty much the main aim for everyone in Super Mario anyway.

Along the way during the game, you will meet various monsters that obstruct your way, or even that you have to defeat to move on. (No not boss monsters, just the usual small fry which actually prove essential to kill because the path opens only after you kill them. No spoilers here!) So how do you kill them? In all true Mario fashion, jump on them!

Best part is the game even provides hidden areas within levels. Well not exactly hidden since they are pretty obvious. There they are in the background, where you can access them only by... Passing through a tunnel! LOL! Not to say that this game rips off the Super Mario totally but it shares a lot of the similar traits, which I believe are purposely kept the same to let people be reminded of Super Mario.

Even better? Typically the game costs only $0.99, but for today only, the game is going for free, so time to go download it!

• Paper Monsters (USA)
• Paper Monsters (Singapore)

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In other news, remember that iPhone friendly watch, Pebble I reported previously? Over the little then 1 week ago since I have made the post, there has been a crazy climb from 7,000 to 30,000 backers providing a total sum of 4.3 million dollars to the project and counting, which also makes it the most successful project on Kickstarter ever. That is leading them to provide various upgrades to the watch before it is even released, such as making it waterproof for swimming. So what are you waiting for?

Crackle for your movie watching needs + Keynote Freebies

Especially for all Singapore readers, ever wished you could stream movies onto your iPhone / iPad without requiring a Netflix/Hulu/etc account? Try out Crackle! Named as 1 of the best entertainment apps in the iPhone entertainment category, Crackle provides several good movies and tv shows for free.

Thats right, you heard right, for free! The movies and tv shows are all full length in size, with no hidden, pay to watch after 5 mins viewing or such nonsense. They regularly add about 20 new movies and tv episodes every month and it works nicely with airplay as well. Also aside from a few short video ads, there isn't really much other things here that may spoil your viewing experience. A small price to pay for getting free access in my opinion. 

The only catch? You need a USA iTunes account to download the app, and do remember not to give Crackle access to your location services, since the app only works in USA, Canada, UK and Australia.

• Crackle (USA)

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Also, do you have Keynote but ever thought that you would like to learn more about how to create clickable prototypes, sales videos, animated cartoons etc all for the fantastic price of free? Here over to Cult of Mac here where they are throwing out a freebie for you to learn how to do all over these in a series of video tutorials lasting over an hour. There are about 6 days left to go sign up for the freebie, after which you will get to watch them permanently for free, so what are you waiting for?

Pebble brings your phone to your watch

Hi guys, today's post is about a new Kickstarter project taking the tech world by storm, Pebble!

Pebble is a watch that links up to your iPhone by bluetooth and allows you to run apps from your iPhone. It then proceeds to do quite a lot of cool stuff like follows.
1. Letting you know when your phone rings and giving you caller ID info
2. Email notification and reading
3. Calendar alerts
4. Facebook/Twitter alerts for your social needs
5. Weather alerts
6. Silent vibrating alarm and timer
7. Music Control
8. GPS for speed, distance and pace data
9. Who knows? They are providing the SDK to developers who are interested to create apps for it

It comes with various watch faces that you can go download together with the sunlight friendly e-paper display you see on Kindles, making this outdoor friendly. My only gripe is it will not support SMSes for iPhones, only Android. Even though they claim that Apple does not release the info, Im sure Jailbreakers can find ways around this, such as auto forwarding SMSes to an email.

Of course, the watch by itself does not really add functionality to your iPhone per say, since all the above benefits I stated may be done directly on the phone. However it makes your phone that much more fun to use. I can especially see iPhone docks finally becoming popular since you can finally control it by remote, especially when it is a remote you wear all the time.

1 point to note though, is that despite their claims, it is not the first watch that lets you use your phone in such a manner where the first would be I'm Watch, which honestly provides loads more functionality. However once you look at I'm Watch's price tags and take in that deep breath, Im sure you would think Pebble is a lot more wallet friendly.

If you are interested head on down to the project page now and go back it! Over 7,000 backers have already placed $1,000,000 dollars in the project and within 28 hours so get to it. (Already at $1.8mil in less then 2 days)

iPhone home button callibration

Have you ever faced problems with your home button? By problems, I refer to how you may have to press your home button multiple times and not being able to go to the home screen. Well, before you declare that your iPhone is damaged and go to the repair store, you may try this simple 3 step recalibration method.

1. Go to one of the stock iPhone apps. (Stock refers to the apps your iPhone came with, such as Photos, Contacts, etc)
2. Press the power button until you see the slider to power off your iPhone.
3. Release your power button, and press the home button until you end up back in your home screen.

And you are done! Assuming your home button is not really damaged somehow, you should find that your home button's sensitivity has relatively improved, hopefully back to the state of how it was when you first got your iPhone. Hope this tip helps!

Top 100 apps for your apple products

Been abit busy so today's post will be quite short, sorry about that. Appstorm has come up with a list of top 100 apps for your Mac, iPhone and iPad. I have been through the list and noticed quite a few apps which I am already currently using while a few new apps that I didn't notice previously. Pretty good stuff here, so go check it out~

Top 100 iPhone apps
Top 100 iPad apps
Top 100 Mac apps

Dragon rearing makes for fun addiction

Dragonvale is a nice little freemium game which lets you build an entire city for rearing and breeding dragons. Then by having these cute little dragons on your magical floating islands, you get visitors who visit your island, allowing your dragons to generate income for you.

You can use your income to then buy more dragons, build more habitats or even give them treats to level them up. Once you have 2 dragons at least in the juvenile stage, you can breed them to get other types of dragons for yourself. There are several interesting combinations of dragons such as the firefly dragon, iceberg dragon and a lot of other cute looking dragons.

The game brings in a fun aspect by allowing you to build a colosseum where you can send in one of your dragons to join in an event, allowing you to even earn gems which are otherwise impossible to get without paying. This makes it a plus, since it essentially means you can actually get the full experience of the game without having to pay for anything (something that does not usually happen in freemiums) The colosseum also allows you to put your dragons to fight against against your friends as part of the social aspect. What's also cool is the game has been updated to the retina display, giving your new iPad more fun games that use that extra resolution.

Honestly, I have already played quite a few of these city building games and rearing cute dragons on them is not something I would expect myself to do. However, this game is really quite fun and you find yourself unable to stop worrying about how your dragons are doing. If you are interested, go to the links below to try them out.

• Dragonvale iPad (Singapore)
• Dragonvale iPhone (Singapore)
• Dragonvale iPad (USA)
• Dragonvale iPhone (USA)

Updates in iPad Singapore plans

Hi guys, this is an update post on iPad price plans on the telco websites, namely Starhub and M1. Following in Singtel's footsteps, they have both added a new line stating their typical download speed, naming their previous max speed now as being *Theoretical*. Here is the updated info below.

Telecom	Starhub	Singtel	M1
Monthly Subscription	$41.30	$40.00	$40.00
Data Bundle	10 GB	10 GB	10 GB
Theoretical Download Speed	Up to 21 Mbps	NA	Up to 21 Mbps
Typical Download Speed	0.6 ~ 6.6Mbps	*1.7 ~ 4.8 Mbps	Up 5.76 Mbps
Excess Data Charge Cap	$94.16	$94.16	$30.00
Upload Speed	Not mentioned	Not mentioned	Up to 5.76Mbps
16 GB iPad	$399	$399	$399
32 GB iPad	$499	$499	$499
64 GB iPad	$599	$599	$599
	*Only typical download speed, maximum not stated

I suspect that they may have gotten many calls from subscribers stating that their data speeds have not really changed from their iPhones which typically have 7.2/14.4Mbps right now. You would think having 50% at least more speed would make it that much faster right? 

Apparently not. The difference is indicated especially on M1's website which has gone around to test their network's speed. Hardly anywhere near even 1/3 of the theoretical maximum speed which makes it pretty sad, especially when you hear of people in USA enjoying crazy data speeds. If you don't want to check out the website, 

Take control of your Mac

Have you ever played with your Mac and accidentally opened an app named Terminal, which looks like some alien language to you? Terminal basically allows you to access your Mac just as how you would have used DOS to access your PC. Though not everyone may know much about DOS anymore. To get into Terminal, the easiest way is to just activate your search function by pressing command + spacebar, then typing in Terminal.

Terminal actually lets you control your Mac better by allowing you to tweak various functionalities of your Mac, assuming you know the commands, which most of us probably don't really know. However, here is a series of commands that have been put up by some power Mac users, which contain functionalities you may have wished you could do.

Useful stuff you can do includes

• Changing your battery indicator to show time left rather then battery left (Good for MacBooks)
• Disabling of the "Are you sure you want to open this application?" dialogue
• Disabling of Auto-correct

And theres still lots more in the list which you may want to consider trying out, so check out the commands in the page here. Do note though that you will have to restart your Mac to allow the functions to actually take effect. Enjoy tweaking your Macs!

Hands-Free Control for a magical Siri experience

Have you been using Siri often on your iPhone 4S (Or Spire on iPhone 4)? Have you gotten your jailbreak done for your 4S yet? If you have done both, you will definitely love Hands-Free Control.

*Like how I have my nickname as my carrier service? Thats for another post another day.

Hands-Free Control basically makes Siri even better. As what the name of the tweak suggests, it lets you activate Siri by voice. Furthermore, you can change the activation name to one of the following aside from Siri.

• Computer
• Hal
• Jarvis
• Phone
• Custom (Set anything you want)

This satisfies any Star Trek / Iron Man sci-fi fantasy you may have to get a responsive AI (artificial intelligence) to response purely to your voice and carry out your commands. Best use for this is to activate it in the car and get it to read your messages/text someone/play some music as you drive, all without touching your phone. Next best use for non drivers (my personal favorite), is to use it to set a timer or alarm to add last minute snoozes if you don't feel like waking up.

Just note that it is abit on the more sensitive side and it seems to either activate easily when I am saying something else, or have trouble trying to understand when I am specifically saying Siri. I recommend setting sensitivity to be looser, then only activate it when you think there is a chance of you using it (e.g. sleeping / driving) To download it, lay down $2.99 in Cydia. 

*For those interested in Jailbreaking, you can check out iDownloadBlog's guide here. 

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Loving your iPhone 4S Siri? Check out this parody showing the extent of some people's love for Siri.