metalbabble.com/technobabble

I’m an Apple fanboy, I’ll admit it. But in my wildest dreams I never thought I’d see the day where you had to wait in line just to get into an Apple store. It seems like Apple can do no wrong these days, but a lot of people don’t know or don’t remember what being an Apple fan in the 1990s was like. Well, let me share 5 stories from the days of Simpsons, Sienfield, and Gil Amelio.

20th Anniversary Macintosh

Speaking of Seinfeld, Jerry himself had one of these in his TV show apartment in the mid to late 90s. If he actually purchased one, which was approximately the price of a Hyundai Excel, it would have been delivered via limo and set up by a guy wearing a tux. At least, that was what we read in MacAddict.

To be fair, it was a “before it’s time” concept and sleek design. But the price tag was way out of reach – even for Apple products.

Apple Pippin

“Ahead of it’s time” is a running theme here. Long before Microsoft bought it’s way into the video game market with the x-box… Apple tried with a box of their own. They came out with a video game system called the Pippin, which like most things Apple tried to do in the 90s was expensive, cumbersome, and failed to gain traction.

Mac OS “Copland”

Back in the mid-90s Apple faced what Microsoft faces now – an aging and bloated operating system. Mac OS 7, or System 7 as it were – was to be succeeded with a newly rebuild and optimized Mac OS for version 8 called Copland, named after composer Aaron Copland.

Over the years, delay after delay piled up and we were simply teased with demo disks, magazine articles, and the occasional Batman movie cameo. In the meanwhile, Microsoft released Windows 95 which blew the aging System 7 away.

Apple scrapped Copland and released a Mac OS 8 based on updated System 7 code. A new Mac OS wasn’t released until the 2000s when Mac OS X came out. Copland would have been sweet music to many Mac user’s ears if it was ever allowed to play.

Apple eMate

Many people know the Apple Newton, a touch screen PDA which handwriting recognition. It was parodied for it’s iffy recognition – but it was arguably a solid idea. The Newton OS found itself on this nifty device called the eMate. At a lower price-point, it was sort of like a netbook before netbooks… but it never really caught on.

Taco Bell had a promotion where you could win one of these, but all I ever won from them was the free gas.

The Apple QuickTake

The QuickTake was an early digital camera Apple released around 1994. As you’d expect it was expensive and never really caught on. The QUICK part of the name referred to QuickTime which as you know is Apple multimedia technology that we still get to install and run updates for today.

Besides being a fore-runner in digital cameras in general it did do some neat tricks. For example, part of the QuickTime technology being released at the time included QuickTime VR which allowed for panoramic 360-degree photography.

Honorable Mention: HyperCard

HyperCard was a program on early Macs that allowed you to essentially drag-and-drop create programs by laying out objects on cards. The “stacks” where hyper-linked to each other. Hyper links then became popular elsewhere, such as on the slightly more popular world wide web. Yes the not-so-subtle implication there is that HyperCard helped popularize hypertext protocol and the web as we know it today. But hey, I’m just a fanboy.

Well, over the weekend I picked up a new Droid Bionic – which has been a great phone. The dual core processer is peppy, the 4G is amazing, and the memory is great for all those hungry android apps. Since it’s a new phone on the market I wasn’t sure what resources were available for tinkering around – and there’s actually a great website dedicated to the Bionic: www.droidbionicroot.com

I won’t take credit for the process of rooting it, it’s extremely simple and well documented on this website. I’ll summarize everything quickly though.

WHY ROOT?

You might be asking why would you want to to perform surgey on a brand new phone. Well, quite honestly – rooting a phone really makes it your own. There are risks, but the process has become extremely simple.

Some things you can do with rooted phones: remove the pre-loaded bloat software, enable free wifi tethering on your device (heck you already pay for data, right?), overclock, install custom roms, use advanced system configuration and backup software, install wireless security applications, and more.

The risk? Well, I have not seen it first hand – but supposedly it’s possible to render your phone unusable. More likely you would have to do a factory restore – but I have not even seen that occur with a rooting process. Normally it works or it doesn’t. I personally believe there is nothing wrong with it but I do not know if it specifically violates and warranty or terms of use with your provider – so before you proceed it’s probably worth doing the research for your specific service provider. Finally, it’s possible you may lose the ability to perform system updates. This is typical for droid rooting and iPhone jailbreaking.

HOW?

Rooting the bionic or droid 3 is very simple currently. It’s possible that in the weeks and months to come, updates will come to the android os that will disable this method – so be aware. Below is the droidbionicroot.com article on the process, I’ll summarize the steps below.

http://droidbionicroot.com/droid-bionic-root/how-to-root-droid-bionic/

• Turn on USB debugging in your application settings
• Plug in to your computer and set your phone to “charge only”
• Windows users will need the motorola drivers provided on the site
• The one-click rooting software is called Pete’s Motorolla Root tools – also available on the site
• Double click the root my phone to start the process. The phone will reboot a few times during the process.

NEXT STEPS

One of the first things I did after rooting the phone was installing anttech app manager which you can use to backup and remove the preloaded crap apps from your phone.

To get wifi tethering to work, there is another article on the site which goes through the steps: http://droidbionicroot.com/droid-bionic-tether/how-to-get-free-wifi-tether-mobile-hotspot-on-your-droid-bionic/ The process mentions you will need to purchase sqlite editor but this is unnecessary. Any sqlite client should work. I used a free app called “db browser”. In any case, the process involves opening com.motorola.android.providers.settings, exploring settings.db and locating the setting for entitlement_check… if it is set to zero it will allow the built-in wifi hotspot app to function. (phone will need to be restarted… possibly twice)

There are also resources on getting fm radio and other neat features working. Check the site out and good luck!

Yesterday, Microsoft opened Windows 8 up to the developer community. And seeing something new and shiny I had to grab a copy! Below are some thoughts and experiences with the vista… I mean vastly different version of Windows to come…

INSTALLATION

Since the software is pre-beta I’m not quite ready to have it as a primary OS on any of my computers – so I used a virtual machine. I started out using my favorite: VMWare… however both 32 and 64bit versions failed to start. However I did get to get a peak at the new BSOD which includes a big frowny To get set up, I ended up using Linux and VirtualBox. The installation process was pretty much standard fare…. not much different than Win Vista/7.

WINDOWS, TILES, CEILINGS, ETC

Once installed you are presented with the tiles interface. This is the mobile Windows Phone 7 style interface, for the two or three of you who know what that is. Microsoft has claimed this version of Windows is drastically different and you can see what they mean here. On one hand, it’s a very elegant touch based interface. On the other hand I’m using a laptop and it’s awkward to say the least. To be fair, both Apple and Microsoft seem to be heading in the direction of touch-over-desktop. It’s easy to see why, look at Apple who sells more iOS devices than Mac OS X devices. In any case it’s a bit of a gamble. This is a great interface for touch/mobile devices… but I didn’t find it intuitive on a regular computer. A lot of the elements are hidden which I think will confuse people. But for better or worse the desktop is still there as well….

DESKTOP

Behind the tiles is the regular Windows Vista/7 desktop we’ve been using for years. It really is still just Windows. The tiles interface strikes me like Windows Media Center running on top of the desktop. Classic, non-metro apps (more on this later) will still open in the desktop interface, complete with task bar. The old control panel and explorer are there as well. The explorer windows now have the ribbon interface, the windows are boxier, but otherwise it’s much of the same. The windows key and start menu will bring you back to the tiles interface.

METRO APPS

The new touch-based tiley apps are called Metro apps. They are basically along the lines of iPad apps, android apps, etc… which have a full-screen touch-based interface. Even Internet Explorer (IE 10) is Metro… see the screenshot later. The full screen mode is nice, and very reminiscent of a mobile browser.

THE VERDICT

Overall it’s probably too early to say. Playing around with it for a day it felt like a weird hybrid of Windows and a mobile OS. I like the design of the tiles and metro apps, but they seem to serve only touch devices and make no sense for traditional computers. The actual Windows behind the scenes hasn’t really changed and if anything suffers from losing the start menu. Plus, really simple things are fairly hard to find. Most of the time I found my self stumbling back to the classic control panels to do things like change screen resolution. So for a mobile OS, it’s cool. For a desktop, eh… maybe the verdict is still out.

Maybe there’s some truth the “post pc era” talk.

There are tools to change your login screen in Windows 7 and Vista, but why download and install something that you can easily do yourself! This is the trick manufacturers use to plaster their logo on the startup screen on your new pc. So why not customize it and pick something a little more fun?

The process is simple, but it involves changing a simple registry setting. Before freaking out, trust me it’s simple! However I will give you the standard warning of “be careful” because you CAN do damage in your registry if you’re not careful. Just follow along!

1. Prepare a picture to use. (The picture should be a .JPG under 245kb and the correct resolution of your screen… for best results)
2. Rename the picture to “backgroundDefault.jpg” and copy it into: C:\Windows\System32\oobe\Info\Backgrounds (If the backgrounds folder doesn’t already exist, create it. If you have a custom login screen already, with your manufacturer’s logo for instance, you can back up what’s there and replace it with your picture.)
3. To turn on/off the custom login screen you can use the registry. Go to your startmenu and type “regedit.exe”
4. Take a deep breath and navigate through the tree on the left to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\ CurrentVersion\Authentication\LogonUI\Background
5. On the right side you should now see “OEMBackground”, double click it. Under value data use 1 for on and 0 for off. This will turn the custom login screen on or off.

Presto chango! If you hit HOME+L (err, the windows key) you will lock your screen and you can see what your new login screen looks like. Remember to keep the file size low and try to match the resolution of your screen.

Happy hacking!

The Nook color is an elegant little eBook reader, but it’s also a powerful android tablet with the right software. The App store built in to the Nook along with the striped down OS suits ebook reading, but leaves much to be desired otherwise. The good news is it’s quick, easy, and free to install a REAL OS with a REAL app store on this device.

This method seems to be the easiest, plus it leaves your native OS and files intact. So you can go back to it’s normal eBook state. Even better, you can share the device with someone else, keeping your OS confined to the SD card. You will need at least 4gigs free on a micro SD to get started.

Oh and of course, the usual disclaimer about “do this at your own risk” applies here. I’m not responsible if you brick a nook. (or break anything else for that matter)

First, download the honeycomb image. This copy is ready to go on the Nook color. This is a torrent and you will need an app like uTorrent to do the download. http://www.rbrune.de/nookhoney04.img.zip.torrent

After it’s finished downloading, you will need to write the image to a micro SD card (again, at least 4gigs required) There are multiple ways to do this. Windows users can use a program like WinImage to write the .img file. Mac and Linux users can use the dd command, which is a little more involved.

Using dd to write the image…

BE ABSOLUTELY SURE YOU ARE USING THE CORRECT DEVICE HERE, IF YOU ARE NOT CAREFUL YOU CAN DO SOME SERIOUS DAMAGE. There are several ways to determine which device the SD card is. Linux users can use the mount command, mac users can use the diskutil command. I used my MacBook to do the dirty work. The device on my computer was /dev/disk1 so the commands I used were…

diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk1

dd if=nookhoney04.img of=/dev/rdisk1 bs=1m

And this will write the image to the card. Be patient, it might take a few minutes. When this is done, eject the SD, power down the nook, insert the honeycomb SD and boot normally – it should boot right up into Honeycomb.

The next step is getting an app store on there, this will be covered in a future update – stay tuned & happy hacking!

SkyDrive is Microsoft’s cloud based storage solution. Basically, that’s a fancy way of saying an online place to store your files. The neat thing is you can access these files anywhere. But what would be even neater is if you could access these files right from “My Computer” in Windows explorer. And guess what, you can…

You accomplish this by using the “Map network location” toolbar item and connection via WebDAV. To determine what the WebDAV address is for your SkyDrive, check out this utility.

In the first screenshot I run the utility with my SkyDrive username and password. If you have hotmail or Windows Live mail you already have this login. (Otherwise, just create one!)

Next up, you’ll have to change around the URL slightly, see below for my example…

FROM: https://vu9x5m.docs.live.net/33d______c322/^.Documents

TO: \\vu9x5m.docs.live.net@SSL\33d______c322\^.Documents

Now, use the “Map a Network Drive” toolbar item in “My Computer” and enter this address. The username and password are just your Windows Live login again.

Presto! Your SkyDrive is right there in My Computer, making it easy to move files between computers!

Well, last time we covered jailbreaking an iPad it seems only fitting somehow to cover rooting an android phone as well. In my example, I’ll go over rooting a first gen Motorolla Droid with FroYo (Android 2.2.2) Gaining root access will give you lots of goodies like tethering, overclocking (speeding up), and allowing for custom ROMs to be installed. Read on!

The same cautions apply here as they did in the iPad article. Be careful, back up, do so at your own risk. I don’t take any responsibilities if things go horribly wrong. Also be sure you’re not breaking any of your service agreement with your cell provider. Not that you care about that, right?

Ok, here’s the deal. There are many ways to go about this. The way described below involves using a tool on your PC to send a pre-rooted update file to the phone. It is specific to a Motorolla Droid and a Windows PC. You will also need to open a RAR file, so grab WinRAR or 7-Zip. Ok, here we go! After backing up, here are the steps:

1 – Install Motorolla drivers on your PC

http://www.motorola.com/staticfiles/Support/Experiences/Global_Drivers/USB_Drivers_32_bit_4.6.5.zip

http://www.motorola.com/staticfiles/Support/Experiences/Global_Drivers/USB_Drivers_64_bit_4.6.5.zip

The first is for 32 bit Windows, the second for 64.

Also, install RSD Lite. The file can be found here: http://www.mediafire.com/?ufxs9lft9q2xwnu

2 – Download BOTH of these files you will flash to your phone. (Credit goes to MotoCache1)

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10154179/AndroidPackages/MC1_A855_1282081087_Recovery-Only_SPRecovery_0.99.3b.zip

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10154179/AndroidPackages/MotoCache1_Complete_Root_v1.1-update.zip

Be sure to extract the zip files.

3 – Rename

Rename the root update file to “update.zip” Make sure it’s a valid zip file.

4- Plug your phone in and copy update.zip

Mount the phone normally, and copy update.zip to the root (highest level) of the phone’s sd card.

5 – Start phone in bootloader mode & flash SBF

Power off your phone, and start it holding UP on the keypad. Load up RSD lite and flash the SBF file to your phone. Your phone will reboot during this process. When it does, hold UP again to go back into the bootloader. Eventually RSD lite should report “PASS”

6 – Boot phone into recover mode

Restart the phone holding X on the keyboard. You should now have a custom menu here which you can navigate using the volume buttons. Use the camera button for “OK” and the power button for “back” If you need to mount your sd card you can do so. But ultimately you will need to go apply the update (update.zip) Also, you may have to allow update.zip to be installed (which is a menu option) This is just because the update.zip is unsigned.

Phew! That’s it, restart and enjoy your rooted droid!

So now what?

• Check out barnacle wifi tether in the app store, it will allow you to make a wifi hot spot.
• You can overclock the CPU using a program called “set cpu” – this will make the phone faster overall.
• Check out network security tools, packet sniffers, custom roms, and more!

Happy hacking!

Ah, jailbreaking. You’ve probably heard about it – it’s the process of gaining root access to your iOS device (iPods, iPhones, iPads) and essentially removing the restrictions Apple has put in place which determine what you’re allowed to install on your device. Doesn’t that seem it a little strange though? It’s YOUR device, isn’t it? Shouldn’t you have the final say in how it’s used? Well, without diving too deep in the ethics involved, let’s take a look at one method of jailbreaking an iPad.

You probably have a few questions. One of which is “why”. Well, having control over your own hardware is one thing – but when you look at some of the cool apps you COULD be running on your device – you realize that you can get a lot more use out of the thing. Some examples are emulators, terminal programs, skins & customization, call spoofing (anonymous calling), and the ability to make wifi hotspots.

Another question you might have is “is it safe?” — well I don’t want to lie, there are risks. First off, it’s totally unsupported by Apple. For whatever reason Apple actively tries to prevent you from doing it. If you are under warranty, you run the risk of an Apple tech looking at you and blaming the hack. I’ve read that it doesn’t void warranty, but you never know. So there is a remote risk you could render your device unusable, but I have not heard of it happening – just that the risk exists. It would seem the worst case would be you’d lose all your data and have to do a factory restore… so be sure to back everything up!

Having said that, I want to reiterate that you’re doing this on your own risk. So I’m happy to share the information, but I’m not responsible if you ruin your device. So… be warned!

Ok, now that you’ve agreed not to hold me responsible if things go tragically wrong and you end up with an iPaperweight let’s proceed!

In my example I’m using an iPad – but the process is pretty much the same with other devices. The process I’m going to cover makes use of a program called “PwnageTool”. Give it a google, and download the latest version. You’ll also need to download the firmware you’re running – as the process essentially alters the firmware that gets installed to your device.

1. Back up / Sync
2. Check the version of the firmware you’re running. (eg 4.3.1)
3. Download the PwnageTool (again, google it)
4. Download a copy of the firmware you’re running (google this as well)
5. Connect the iPad, close iTunes
6. Start the PwnageTool up, check-off  ”Advanced Mode” and select “iPad” from the main screen.
7. Select the firmware you downloaded. (The bundle file itself)
8. Verify the options, make sure Cydia is checked off to get installed. (Should be by default)
9. Start the process and stand by. Be patient, it might take upwards of 5-10 minutes.
10. At some point, the tool will ask you to hold down some button combinations on the ipad, follow the instructions.
11. After the tool completes, iTunes may open up – and your iPad will be in restore mode.
12. Find the iPad in iTunes (the area on the left of iTunes)
13. (Mac) Hold option and click “Restore” – by holding option down you are specifying to use firmware from a file, and not via the internet.
14. Select the firmware bundle that the Pwnage Tool created NOT the original copy.
15. iTunes will do the rest, it will even go through the motions of verifing the firmware bundle with Apple, but don’t fret. If the Pwnage Tool process ran successfully it should be fine. The restore takes another 5-10 minutes
16. After doing the restore, let the iPad sync your content back onto your iPad (you might have to manually check off the Apps to install onto it) You’ll notice on the Apps tab in the preview there will be a new icon for Cydia
17. After all the syncing is complete, eject the iPad and turn it on. You should find a new icon “Cydia” which is an app store full of unsupported goodness.

Now that you have full pwnership of your iDevice.. here are some suggestions for next steps:

• Get a terminal program. There as a terminal app that Cydia recommends but I haven’t been able to get it to run on my iPad. What I do is ssh into my iPad using zaTelnet from the regular app store.
• To ssh into your iPad FROM your iPad use the loopback address 127.0.0.1 By default the username is “root” and password is “alpine” — read Cydia’s instructions on changing this password.
• Once your are able to ssh into your iPad you can move files much easier. Mac and linux have built-in capabilities to connect (even graphically) via ssh. Windows you can use PuTTY and WinSCP which are both freebies.
• Grab some fun stuff… like emulators! There are decent emulators that have good on-screen controls and even allow you to use WiiMotes as contollers! If hacking is your fancy… well you’re in luck there as well. Plenty of stuff Apple would never allow in their walled garden.
• Grab an App like iFile… which allows you to manage the file system on your device
• There’s a lot you can do now that you have a command line interface. Grab some packages with programs you’ll use… like vim, tcpdump, and so forth

So… with great power comes great responsibility

Well, this old website’s getting up there in age… pushing 10 years! It’s been through a half dozen or so iterations – each of which had pros and cons. We’ve gone through message boards, blogs, portals… for the most part my goal has been to stay current in terms of design and interaction. And I think today’s “version 5″ iteration, although reflective of the Web 2.0 world, is starting to get long in the tooth and it’s about time to start thinking about what’s next.

When I go through the motions of revamping metalbabble.com – I think about what it’s about, what works, what doesn’t, and what I’d like to do next. So that is the stage I am in right now. I really think the current version has a sharp design, and straightforward simple interface – which comes from current design trends. But going into this version I feel the sense of community suffered. Almost like it took a step back into the world of monolithic personal websites of the 90s. This was probably reactionary from coming from a phase of overly-social design including a message board that stole the spotlight and become unwieldy and political. I have to say though, it was a really interesting experiment.

So what IS this site all about anyways? Well essentially it is a modern version of those personal websites… you know before we were all socially networked. The site is really a means of sharing my hobby with anybody who’s interested. Making games, drawing pictures, tinkering around with computers, stuff like that. I love the feedback so I explore ways of trying to incorporate that into it as well. It’s also a mini company of sorts, whenever I do design work it is under the metalbabble.com flag. Maybe you’ve even seen a site that has “Powered by Metalbabble.com” or “Designed by Metalbabble.com”. (Or maybe not!)

Another factor is my life and interests. I’ve been through phases where animation was big, comics were big, video games were big, open-source software, cars, etc, etc. Right now, blogging and sharing geeky stories is big for me. Not only do I love sharing crazy schemes like running Windows on a cell phone… but blogging is a big way to get “discovered” and based on my server logs and Google analytics – I can see that it plays a big factor in getting users into the site. And my hope is when they’re here they’ll explore and discover all the fun things that can only be found here – like the games, art, music, etc.

So what’s next? If you’ll pardon the buzzword I want to take things into the cloud a bit. Instead of powering and hosting every facet of this site, I want to explore services that already exist to do these things. What I am talking about is, sharing photos, music, and indy games. The site itself I am envisioning on a blogging platform, with constantly changing content. Using a platform it will be much easier to open the doors for interaction, feedback, etc… without having to police and fish out spam like I have done, and am still doing… yes that’s why comments are disabled.

My hope is, having all these hooks out will help drive inbound visitors. A constantly rolling blog as a central point will help keep things fresh and encourage repeat visitors. It will also help improve my search engine rankings. All these hooks out there will encourage people to come to metalbabble.com and when here, hopefully they will discover the great content that has accumulated over the years. And oh yeah, that needs to be overhauled as well… my little content management system is really being over extended as of right now.

So everything you love and hate will still be around, but the approach will be a little different. The site will always serve as a hub for all of the things I do online. But hopefully this new approach will make things a little fresher and more modernized.

And no, I’m not putting ads up.

For years, boot camp has been an easy way to install windows on a Mac. But… sometimes it’s not all THAT easy. For those of you frustrated with the bootcamp process, read on. The experiment below is installing Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit on a 2008 MacBook.

To begin the process, make sure you have a legit copy of Windows and Mac OS Leopard or greater. Boot camp is in your utilities folder. Normally, the process goes something like this:

* Run boot camp utility

* Utility automatically downloads mac drivers for windows, and saves them to a USB drive or burns a CD

* Utility partitions hard drive

* Pop in Windows CD and reboot

* After installation, pop in mac drivers disk and PRESTO!

This was how it went last time I ran through this process with a Mac Mini and Windows XP. BUT, here’s some things I encountered along the way with my MacBook and Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit.

BOOT CAMP DOWNLOADS MAC DRIVERS, ERRORS BURNING TO CD

My CD burner has seen better days but I could not even get it to save to a FAT-formatted USB disk. This was a major WTF moment. After doing a little research it seems there’s a bug with boot camp that can cause this, and the remedy is to use your Mac OS discs. If you have your original disks or the Snow Leopard upgrade disk like I do, you already have what you need for mac drivers… you might just want to update them after the install.

MORE DRIVER ISSUES!

After the installation, I popped the Snow Leopard disk in and the installer came right up. However, I got various errors that my machine wasn’t supported. So, if you explore the disk in the drivers -> apple -> x64 folder, you can manually install the various drivers for your mac such as the graphics, multi-touch trackpad, iSight, etc.

NO SOUND?!

Next up, after everything installed happily, I was still left with no audio. And with some experimenting, I could not find anything on the install disk that seemed to work. Based on a little poking around online it turns out that some MacBooks require Realtek HD audio drivers, which are available on their website… it’s as easy as that.

Good luck!