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Well, I'm still kind of holding my breath, but I decided to upgrade to iTunes 8 and my first-gen iPhone to firmware 2.1 last night. I had previously used the Pwnage Tool from the iPhone Dev Team to upgrade to the 2.0 firmware. That went fairly smoothly except for the fact that it didn't want to enter DFU mode right away, but eventually it did and things went well.

I started the upgrade and held my breath. First iTunes was upgraded to version 8 (more about that here) which went smoothly (as expected). I had already downloaded the 2.1 firmware so I located the place in my Library where the firmware was kept and copied it there. (I just looked for it again, but I can't find it. You're best bet is to just let iTunes update it for you.)

The upgrade went fine, my iPhone restarted and (holding my breath) ... it started syncing, finished (still holding my breath) and that's it. No questions asked, no Pwnage tool, no QuickPwn, it just worked, like some others I've read about.

One thing, though, I'm missing cydia and installer which is not a big loss, since I didn't use them very much anyway. I think that may be the key to upgrading smoothly. If you haven't done it yet and you've got a lot of 3rd party (i.e., non-official) apps installed, go in and un-install them all (you'll lose them anyway during upgrade). I suspect many of the errors are due to conflicts with certain non-official apps.

Still, I will kind of miss the application that allowed me to stream live video to Qik. Even though I hadn't used it very much, I had great plans for it.

Mostly, the reason I like having my iPhone pwned is that I am living in The Netherlands, and although they sell the new 3G version of the iPhone, they don't offer official service for the original version. So, it's either cough up the money for a relatively expensive voice and data plan for two years, or use my original iPhone which I already had anyway.

Posted by The Donkey at 10:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

David Berlind over at ZDNet has posted an article on trackpads vs pointing sticks of the kind that you find on thinkpads.

One MacBook with a Thinkpad keyboard please (or OS X running on Windows, when hell freezes over) by ZDNet's David Berlind -- Just because almost everybody is doing it, does that mean it’s a good idea? Or does that mean that we’ve somehow been hoodwinked into thinking this makes sense. I’m talking about touchpads. Somehow, users have been convinced that these kissin-cousins to the digitizing tablets that graphics artists use (where the technology benefits productivity) make [...]

Is this guy on crack or something?  Sure, I agree with him about trackpads.  Who really uses the trackpad on their mac laptops anyway?  I'm a macfreak but I avoid using the trackpad on my powerbook as much as possible.  I'm also a productivity freak so I use keyboard shortcuts as much as possible.  But pointing sticks?  Please, that's so 90's.

My only brief experience with a  pointing stick was when I had to help a friend with his Toshiba back in the 90's.  My only hope was that I could get the job done as soon as possible so I wouldn't have to use that stupid, little pointing stick anymore.

Sure, it was fast.  Too fast.  Speed went up and accuracy plummeted.  The fact that it may be harder for manufacturers to make or maintain is not the real reason why it has never caught on.  People don't like them.

Want speed and accuracy?  Use a mouse.  Want productivity?  Keep your fingers on the keyboard as much as possible and use shortcuts.  That is unless you get paid by the hour, of course.  In that case, feel free to use whatever outdated, outmoded technology you wish to use.

Technorati Tags: productivity, trackpads, pointing-sticks

Posted by Rodney & Jolanda Blevins at 10:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)