Rick's World

Link: https://jailbreakme.com/1.1.2

Last night I 'jailbroke' my iPod Touch. What is jailbreaking? That's the term for when you take the iPod Touch (or iPhone), which is normally locked down tight to prevent any third party applications from being installed on it and you break into it and modify it to allow third party applications. In a sense you break it out of being locked up 'in jail' (hence the name).

Jailbreaking is certainly not authorized by Apple. In fact, they've put a lot of effort into stopping people from doing this. They have locked down the OS on these devices very tightly, and provided no documentation on how to access the OS or write applications for it. However, despite this, hackers have been able to not only break into the OS, but to figure out how to write applications for it. I am truly impressed by what they have been able to accomplish.

Now you may ask, why did I bother to jailbreak my iPod Touch when they are announcing an official SDK for it next month. The reason is, that I know that this little device is a VERY powerful computer, and I know you can do A LOT more with it, than what Apple provides. I wanted to see what will be possible starting next month, and I have to say that the possibilities of what can be done with this device are staggering. If they can accomplish all I've seen with NO documentation and no SDK, imagine what they can do with full documentation and an official SDK! I can't wait to see what happens.

Ok, this has to be the first time I've ever had a bug in my iPod caused by the case!

A while back, I ordered a silicone case for my iPod Touch from eBay. Last night it arrived and I put it on the iPod. Today, I turned on my iPod and started listening to it. I noticed an odd problem. As soon as the iPod comes on, the screen lights up, but then a second or so later, the screen dims, but it still visible. It was never doing this before. What the hell? Now my stupid screen isn't lighting up like it used to? This damn iPod is nothing but trouble! Grumble, grumble.

Turns out it wasn't a bug in the iPod. The iPod has built into it an ambient light sensor. In other words, it detects how dark the room is and depending on how dark it is, it dims the screen brightness. I think what is happening now is that since the entire iPod is in this case, it blocks the light sensor, so the iPod thinks it's dark outside and it dims the screen! It's still usable, but I'm wondering whether this problem will cause me to have to not use this case. I'm not sure where on the iPod this light sensor is located, so I don't know how I can fix the problem by cutting a hole in the case or something.

Weird.

Update: I found a solution. If you go to Settings and click on Brightness, there is an Auto-Brightness setting. If you turn this off, I think this turns off the light sensor, and the iPod works as before. Of course, now you'll have a really bright iPod all the time.

Why is it that on the iPod Touch, there is no way to search for a song, artist, or album by typing the first few letters of the name? The newest iPod Classics have this, and I think the new iPod Nanos do too. Why not the iPod Touch? Yes, it 'only' holds 16GB of music compared to the up to 160GB in the iPod Classic, but come on now! 16GB is still a lot of music and what with the onscreen keyboard, there's no excuse. Get with the program Apple!

I've been hearing rumors that a new software update is coming soon for the iPod Touch/iPhone as soon as Leopard ships. Hopefully this feature will be added.

Here's the first bug I've encountered on the iPod Touch.

Whenever you sync new podcasts onto the iPod Touch, it displays a small blue dot next to the name of each podcast to indicate that it has unplayed podcasts. Once you've listened to the podcast, this blue dot goes away to indicate that it's been listened to.

Sometimes, this blue dot reappears on podcasts I've already listened to. I'm not sure why this is happening. I suspect it may happen when I turn the iPod Touch fully off. Maybe it doesn't save the played state of all songs to the flash memory when you shut it down. If not it should.

Once I figure out exactly what's happening with this, I'll post an update...

Link: https://www.amazon.com

Yesterday, Amazon launched their new MP3 store. This is big news and I am very excited about the possibilities.

The interesting thing about the Amazon MP3 store is that all the tracks are stored in unprotected MP3 files! This means NO DRM! This is a VERY good thing. But what is even better is that their songs are cheaper than the iTunes DRM-free tracks. iTunes charges $1.29 for a DRM-free track, but Amazon charges $0.89-0.99 for their DRM-free tracks. Plus, Amazon has 2 million DRM-free tracks available. This means they have more DRM-free tracks available than iTunes does. The songs downloaded from the Amazon MP3 store are also automatically added to iTunes, so they can be easily added to your iPod. They also offer sales on certain CDs as prices much cheaper than iTunes.

While I generally like iTunes and the iTunes Plus section of the iTunes store, it's always good to see iTunes get some viable competition. You could make a very good argument that the iTunes Store is a monopoly in the purchasing of music online. The iPod is the only device that can play DRM protected songs, bought on iTunes. It also will NOT play DRM protected songs, bought on other online music stores. The only way to play songs on the iPod is to use a non-DRM file format. This means MP3, or in the case of iTunes Plus, this would mean unprotected AAC. In order for a company to sell songs that work on the iPod, they can't use DRM. This, no doubt is the only reason Amazon is selling unprotected MP3s and not highly protected WMA files, like everyone else has before. Amazon is at least smart enough to know that to complete with the iTunes Store, you need to work with the iPod. The only way to do this is to sell unprotected music.

This little bit of 'monopolistic' practices by Apple is actually forcing the industry in the right direction - away from DRM on music. People do not like that they don't own the song. With DRM, you could have the music you paid for taken away at any time. Without DRM, the song is yours and no company controls when or if you play it. This is a move in the consumers favor and I'm all for it.

I will definately be keeping an eye on how Amazon's MP3 store develops. I very much hope it is successful. If it is, it will likely force Apple to lower prices on the iTunes Store and also educate all the music labels that removing DRM from their songs is a good thing for everyone involved.