Recovery mode is indicated by appearance of iTunes and USB icons on the screen of the iOS device. By whatever cause, and there can be a few, the device is unable to access its operating system. So, it displays these icons to prompt the user to recover the operating system. Usually this is no big deal.

Whichever machine you use for syncing the device to iTunes, make sure its version of iTunes is the most current. Ensure that all iTunes updates are installed. If you are in doubt, launch the Apple Software Update manager. Once it checks with Apple’s servers and is certain that iTunes does not need an update, you should be ready to get started.

This image indicates the user has an update pending and it should be installed before restoring the iOS device.)

Completely power-down the iOS device. This is done by holding the home button (front, center-bottom, in default portrait mode) AND the sleep button (corner, top edge opposite the home button) at the same time until the power-off slider appears. Use the slider to completely shutdown the device.

Before connecting the iOS device to the computer, hold the home button in place. This lets the firmware know you are about to do more than the usual sync. Once iTunes recognizes the device, which can take one-to-several seconds, depending on the speed of your computer, it will prompt you to restore the device. If you have a backup from your last sync of the device, you will be given an option to use this during the syncing process. This is most likely the option you will want. iTunes should prompt you to select which backup you want to use as your source. Make your choice and the restore may take between five and ten minutes to complete from that point.

If you happen to have the sudden urge for a clean configuration, set up as a new iOS device. iTunes will return your device to factory-default setup. Even iOS can get relatively cluttered – apps, notes, photos, music, etc. While generally organized very well according to the native management scheme of the system itself, sometimes a device can seem less pleasant to operate after heavy use. Starting fresh from factory defaults not only allows you to clear up some of the unnecessary stuff your system accumulates, but lets you to start out with the level of understanding you now possess, with your current usage patterns, and to re-encounter the system with a different set of eyes than you had when you first started using it. Experience is a great thing. Experience combined with a lean setup is even better than that.

Note: In iOS 5 or later, restoring the device wirelessly is an option with or without a cable connection to a computer, provided the device is functioning properly prior to starting the restore process. There are a lot of improvements in iOS 5 that allow for updates, restores and other functions to be managed without requiring use of another computer with iTunes. This guide is intended for circumstances when the iOS device has locked into recovery mode and cannot access a wireless connection or the device itself is running an earlier version of iOS.

iOS was designed to be one of the least fussy, most responsive operating systems around. It was also designed to be stable and secure. A lot of people dislike the absence of a visible file system on the largest of that family of devices, the iPad. This is a simplification over other navigation models and it is beneficial in that it prevents the user from accidentally doing something to the file system which might result in device instability. While it shouldn’t be necessary to be an expert to use most devices, it is a good idea to learn some of the little tricks available to you. Although many people still find technology to be intimidating, the more you learn, the more fun tech can be for you.

Apple’s anti-piracy technology is based on a simple but ingenious idea. In movie theaters, they distribute special infrared waves for hearing aid devices. Apple’s new technology will enable the iPhone to detect those infrared signals and the iPhone will sense that you are in a movie theater. Now if you will try to record a scene from Kung Fu Panda 2 with your iPhone this weekend, it will automatically sense that you are in a movie theater trying to record, and will shut off the camera automatically. Another possibility with the same technology can be that the movie/snap you capture will be watermarked with the name of the movie.

The same will be true with music concerts, if you try to take a picture of Lady Gaga, the whole picture could be watermarked with LadyGaga, but for that concert the management will have to bombard infrared waves on the audience.

This technology may have other implications as well, such as in museums and historical places. Here the authorities can set up infrared signals for each place, so that when you point your iPhone towards that, it will catch those signals and then show the detailed info about that on your iPhone screen, replacing the human guide or tour guide headphones.

It may take some time to completely implement this technology, and it may take even longer for us to see the practical implications of this technology. But none the less, even though this technology is simple and ingenious, it will have far reaching effects. Whether people like it or not, the millions of artists worldwide will love it since they lose money from piracy on a daily basis.
At the end of the day, anti-piracy laws will more than likely be something that we become accustomed to with time. However, these new laws will no doubt make big waves at first as people begin to think that their personal freedoms are being limited when they can no longer do what they want to do with the hardware that they have purchased. Fortunately or unfortunately, companies are in the business of making money, and taking the hard line with piracy will benefit their bottom line.

Martin’s Take: This patent is about remote controlling functionality on Apple devices. Turning off features on the phone while the guy with his Android phone can still take a picture of his loved one on the concert, may be seen positively by the industry, but certainly not by consumers.

I have not found any limitations to that feature online. Can the technology turn off the complete phone? What if the phone is turned off then and someone needs to call in an emergency?

This new technology is one step closer to 1984 in my opinion, with company’s being able to control what you can do with your electronic devices, and what you cannot.

GizmoRip is a program specifically designed for Apple devices such as iPods, iPads or iPhones, offering options to transfer music and video back to iTunes or another location on the hard drive. The freeware will identify connected all supported Apple devices automatically, and display their contents in the program interface. It generates a general file listing of all multimedia contents and displays playlists stored on the device as well.

The software will recognize multiple devices, offering to switch between them easily from a pulldown menu in the main interface. It will also display the type of Apple device, and the free and used space on it. A click on the Recover Music button, or a selection of the same option under the File menu initiates the transfer of the playlists and multimedia files selected back to iTunes. This works on any computer system running iTunes, even if iTunes was just installed on it.

It is possible to restore just one playlist for instance, or everything that is on the iPod or iPhone. GizmoRip ignores existing files automatically, with an option to change that behavior in the program settings.

Here it is also possible to disable the import of the music and video contents to iTunes, and to specify an alternative export directory, in case iTunes is not installed on the target computer system.

GizmoRip is a nice to have software program for Windows. It can be useful in multiple ways, including restoring music after a hard drive crash, but also transferring music and videos to a computer that does not have iTunes installed. The program is compatible with all versions of the Windows operating system from Windows 2000 to Windows 7.

The biggest question on most peoples mind is what the major differences are. First of all it should be pointed out that the latest update to the hardware is under the hood. The only difference in terms of visual design between the iPhone 3G and the 3GS is the name on the back of the device. But under the hood is where the real work has been done. Instead of reinventing the most popular smartphone on the market, Apple has decided to do the subtle thing and improve it. These improvements come in the form of a better processor (up from 412MHz to a rumored 600MHz). The camera has been bumped up a megapixel to 3.0 and comes with video recording and auto focus, although there still is no flash option. A hardware compass has also been included.

On the software front, OS 3.0 now comes with push notification, better MMS, tethering, the long awaited cut and paste as well as a proper GPS navigation solution. Spotlight has finally made its way to the iPhone which promises to allow users to do system wide searches. Rounding up the major features for OS 3.0 is Voice Control and stereo Bluetooth options.

So now that you get an idea of the major updates to not only the software but the phone its time to answer a few FAQ’s.

Q: Is there a big performance difference between the 3G and 3GS?

A: While the performance is noticeable, it is not one that is huge. Unless you’re running games such as Resident Evil etc. you will notice load times of one to two seconds faster but that is about it. On the other hand if gaming is a requirement for your iPhone then you definitely want to look into the 3GS as the gaming performance (including frame rate) are mark improvements over the 3G.
In terms of internet speed etc. this remains the same as the 3GS has the same wireless chip as its predecessor and AT&T is not rolling out 4G until another year or two.

Q: How useful is cut and paste?

A: There is no doubt that cut and paste is a standard feature of any smartphone, but one question everyone has on their lips is if cut and paste on the iPhone is comparable to that on other devices such as the Blackberry and Palm Pre.

First of all, Apple has decided to go with a predictive selection technology that tries and figures out how much of the text you want selected to cut, copy or paste. It’s pretty accurate and if it fails to give you what you want, you can always use the little nubs at the begging and end of the selection to increase or decrease your selection, something that is lacking in all other smartphones I’ve tested. Was it worth the wait, probably not, but at least it brings something new to the game.

Q: Is the Compass and Voice Control useful?

A: A compass in a cell phone wasn’t something most industry analysts were expecting. But Apple decided to shock us with a full working hardware compass in the 3GS iPhone. As to whether it is useful or not is yet to be determined. I will say that if you are planning to upgrade to the new 3GS, the compass should not be on your list of reasons. While it works perfectly, it’s yet to be proven how it is more useful then the built in GPS with Google maps. Had the phone been lacking GPS options then maybe, but honestly I am yet to see a real use for the compass except for hikers lost in Wyoming. It still is nice to play around with though.

Voice control is another new feature that I’m not quite getting. Yes it’s awesome to be able to tell your phone what to do instead of making it do it. But I just wish the voice control features were a little easier to operate. For one it requires you to hold down the home button for every use, and since multi tasking still hasn’t made it to the iPhone, once the Voice Control app is exited, you have to do the process all over again. However it is nice if you want to keep your eyes on the road instead of on your phone.

Q: What’s up with Tethering and MMS?

A: If you live in the U.S, I’m sad to say that AT&T sees no reason in bringing tethering (or MMS) to the iPhone3GS at launch (June 19th). While they have said that MMS will be available later on this summer, there is no word on when the tethering option will be available.

That said for those in other countries that will offer the tethering option, you should find it to work just fine. Unfortunately since I’m based in the U.S the option to try out both the MMS and tethering features were unavailable. Hacking could have gotten the job done though, but that would be too much trouble and more importantly would not make sense for this review.

Q: Should I upgrade/switch carries for the 3GS?

A: This is the biggest question on everyone’s lips. The question has so many factors so unfortunately the answer will depend on a few things. If you still have the original iPhone (not the 3G), the answer is obvious. You were due for an upgrade like yesterday, and I’m almost sure that most people who have the original iPhone have finished their contracts or about to finish them. So the answer is a no brainer, upgrade!

On the other hand, ff you are a 3G owner you should consider your options before upgrading. If you are still stuck in a contract it might be in your best bet to just get the software upgrade and live happily ever after. The only major difference in the 3G and the 3GS is the speed and unless you are a heavy iPhone gamer, you probably won’t notice the one to two second difference in app load time. However I understand that AT&T is allowing existing customers to get a 3GS at the subsidized price, based on credit, contract length and a few other factors. This is individually based so your best bet would be to contact AT&T. As for other countries such as England (Vodofone), I have no idea.

If you are with another carrier this is even a tougher decision. If you happen to have Sprint and due for an upgrade in the near future, I would advise that you check out the Pre before jumping ship. It rivals the iPhone in many areas and beats it in some (namely multitasking). On the other hand if you are tied to T-Mobile, Verizon etc, and your contract is either expired or about to expire, you cannot go wrong with the new 3GS.

It should be noted that the 3G will still be available for purchase ($99 on contract). I would not advise trying to save an extra Benjamin in this area though as the performance boost and other hardware upgrades are well worth the extra $100.

Conclusion:

So there you have it. The major questions about the iPhone answered. For those with the iPhone 3G you can download OS 3.0 right now. If you’re holding off for the 3GS however, that one is set to release this Friday (June 19, 2009).

The software will run on any PC with Windows 2000, Windows XP or Windows Vista installed. The only other requirement is an installation of Apple’s iTunes software. Pod To PC can copy music, videos and playlists from a supported device to the computer. Music and videos can be previewed and filtered on the iPod or iPhone prior to transferring them.

One interesting option is to automatically transfer all music and video files to the computer that are not already available in the local installation of iTunes. This makes it ideal to sync music and video collections. Could also be handy if you had to reinstall the operating system or iTunes on a computer after a crash to transfer all the music and videos back to the computer from the iPod or iPhone.

Duplicate tracks will not be copied. It is furthermore possible to copy full or partial playlists. All the related meta information such as ratings will also be transferred and preserved.

Pod To PC is an interesting software program for Windows users looking for a software to transfer data from an iPod or iPhone to the PC.

Flutter, a free application for the iPhone, adds MMS functionality to the iPhone. The application is available at the Apple iPhone store from where it can be downloaded and installed.

There are a few fundamental differences between the usual MMS service that cell phone providers offer and Flutter. On the positive side Flutter users can use the geotagging features of the iPhone and include those information in their message. That can be nice for sending holiday pictures where the recipient can look the location up on a map to know where the sender is currently located.

Unlike usual MMS services though the picture is not transferred directly. The recipient receives a link to the picture and the location on his iPhone which he has to open to view the information. That’s not a huge problem but an option to display the picture instantly would have been nice.

Still, Flutter offers a free service. Everyone with an iPhone can use it to send as many picture messages as he wants to his contacts. That alone and the fact that there are no alternatives makes it an interesting application for the iPhone.

The screenshots get deleted after the application is closed and most users would think that this is the end of the story but there is a twist according to security researcher Jonathan Zdziarski who was able to recover deleted screenshots that would show him exactly what a user was doing at a given time.

This however is not the only privacy risk. Everything that gets at least temporarily stored on the could be recoverable including keyboard and Safari cache, deleted emails and pictures.

Someone does need physical access to the device to be able to recover data but it is possible. Will probably be only a matter of time before someone creates or edits a disk eraser so that it can wipe the unused space of the iPhone regularly.

Many users prefer a keyboard anytime over the way the iPhone handles text input because that is what they are used to. The software iPhoneModem utilizes the iPhone as a modem for a computer so that the computer can go online.

There are several scenarios besides having to type more than a few paragraphs like running a software that is not available on the iPhone itself. iPhoneModem works with all jail broken iPhones 2G and 3G over EDGE and UMTS and Mac OS X 10.5.0 or higher with Mac OS X 10.5.4 recommended.

Installing iPhone Modem on a Mac:

• Download iPhoneModem and copy it to your application folder
• Make sure that the network environment automatic exists
• Start iPhoneModem.app and iPhoneModem Setup.

Setup the iPhone for iPhoneModem:

• Install with Cydia OpenSSH
• Install Insomnia with Cydia
• Install BossPrefs for starting and stopping the SSH server
• Change pass word for the SSH server

Using iPhoneModem:

1. Click on Start Connection

2. Activate the iPhone’s WLan as soon as the message Connect with iPhone WLan..
appears.

3. Start the SSH Server on the iPhone if it is not running already.

4. A message should appear telling you that your iPhone is now connected. Start Insomnia on the Iphone. Happy surfing!

Please note that this are screenshots from the German version but it seems that en English language version is available as well. It the application turns out to be popular it could very well be ported to Windows. No Windows version as of now.

How is that working? Apple is managing a page with blacklisted applications. Researcher Jonathan Zdziarski has a theory that the iPhone is calling home once in a while to check the installed applications against the Apple maintained blacklist.

This could mean that Apple could deauthorize commercial applications that the user paid for. This could ensure the security and safety of their users but it is more a question of how strict they will use the blacklist. Putting a safe application on that list could have serious consequences for the users and Apple.

The time has come apparently because the iPhone game Aurora Feint has been pulled from the Apple store due to privacy and security reasons. Here is why..

The developers of the game thought that it would be a cool feature to transfer his complete contact list to the game server to find out if any of his friends are playing the game itself. The contact list was transferred unencrypted (of course) and anyone with a little bit of knowledge could have gained those information easily.

The developers responded to that by claiming that they never stored the contact list on their servers and that they stopped saving (and erased) personal information that was recorded previously on July, 18th.

A real interesting aspect as the story unfolds is that the Apple SDK is apparently giving developers access to the user’s contact list. Apple should make sure that personal data never gets transferred unless the user authorizes the transfer before.

The WinPwn software is compatible with Windows XP and Windows Vista 32/64 bit and users have to make sure to uninstall any previous version of the software and that a compatible version of iTunes, that is iTunes 7.7, is installed on the system.

The Apple iPhone Apps website published a detailed walkthrough of the process that it takes to jailbreak the iPhone under Windows and it is probably a good idea to use it for guidance.

The iPhone has not ordinary keyboard. That’s the reason. There, I said it. It might be a fine solution for photo bloggers or bloggers who like to write a sentence or two but imagine someone typing a thousand words with the iPhone.

On the other hand some teens, especially female ones, got really good at typing in sentences with their mobile phone which also does not come with a full keyboard. Still, my point is that most bloggers would need a real keyboard to be productive with the iPhone.

It might be nice for editing a post, adding a comment or managing the comments but it’s definitely not nice to use the iPhone to type in whole articles. Feeling a bit lonely right now, anyone who actually uses the iPhone and WordPress who would like to comment on the usability and his experience ? Feel welcome

The User Agent of the iPhone browser is Mobile Safari 1.1.3 – iPhone. A user with Firefox or Opera could now easily change his User Agent to the one used by the iPhone to access the Internet without costs at every AT&T hotspot. One possible add-on that can be used for Firefox would be the User Agent Switcher.

User Agents are definitely not a secure way to protect a network or website from unauthorized access. The same can be said for referrer checks which are as insecure. It probably will only be a matter of time when AT&T decided to change the way the free access is granted to the iPhones only. Probably through a small application that is run on the iPhone instead.

If you ever wanted to know how your website looks like when opened from someone using an iPhone or mobile phone then this iPhone emulator will deliver that right in Firefox. No other emulator or experiments are needed to achieve this.

The display of my own website is definitely not optimal. I never gave much thought to it before but I think it is a good idea to search for solutions on how to provide users with these devices a better experience on my website.

Just install the extension as usual and start it from Tools > Launch Iphone Emulator.

While I’m not a heavy Last.fm user I tend to use it when I quickly want to listen to a new band I heard about or find out about similar artists of a band that I do like. Mobile Scrobbler sends data of the music that you are listening to to Last.fm which uses this information to suggest new artists and songs.

What I really like is that the developer is currently working on a function that streams Last.fm radio streams to the Iphone or iPod Touch. The announcement was made today and it could be that this feature will already be implemented in the coming days. The artists and track infos that are displayed will also be soon available in the software for the iPhone.

Usage Instructions for Mobile Scrobbler:

• Enter your Last.fm username and password
• Tap “Start Scrobbling”
• MobileScrobbler will login to the Last.fm site, and display a music note icon in the status bar letting you know the application is still running in the background.
• After logging in, press the Home button on your device and tap the iPod icon and listen to music. Any tracks you play should automatically show up on your Last.fm profile page after you’ve listened to more than half of the track.
• To stop submitting tracks, open MobileScrobbler from your home screen and tap “Stop Scrobbling”. The music note in the status bar will disappear and you will be logged out of Last.fm.
• To see how many tracks have been scrobbled or queued for this session, as well as the most recent status message from AudioScrobbler, click the “Session Statistics” button.

uTorrent application for iPhone:

The uTorrent webui software for the Apple iPhone makes it possible to start, stop and add torrents using the uTorrent web interface which has to be installed on the local computer that is running uTorrent. What I like is that you can access the web ui to get a quick overview of the current download and seeding status of your torrent files as well as a way to control any torrents through the iPhone.

This is in my opinion far better and secure than using a public computer to access the uTorrent web interface.

It looks more like a multimedia gadget with phone capabilities than the other way round which I personally do not like that much. I like slim, fast gadgets that are not that bloated than the iPhone. I would never for instance watch Youtube videos on such a Gadget, does not make sense to me.

I know that some users will like the feature and Apple does everything it can to tell everyone that the iPhone has Youtube support. So, maybe I’m the only person on the world but I do not want the iPhone. Nevertheless, here are some of the available commercials.