The poor music industry… I suppose we should feel sorry for them. Sheesh!
via: cnet.com
Monthly Archives: March 2012
Geek & Sundry coming soon…
There some new video content for all you Cord Cutters out there. Woohoo!
Felicia Day, of Buffy, Dollhouse, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-along Blog, Eureka, The Guild, and on and on, is launching a YouTube channel called “Geek & Sundry“!
There will be a bunch of shows airing on this channel starting April 2nd. The line-up is something like this:
Monday: The Flog
Tuesday: The Guild (Season 5 starts April 10th)
Wed: Dark Horse Motion Comics/Written by a Kid (July 16th)
Thursday: Guild extras (New Bonus Content!)
Friday: Tabletop/Sword and Laser (With alternating bonus material!)
Check out Felicia’s trailer for the channel:
This is going to be EPIC!
Solved iPad freezing issue
UPDATE (5/8/2012): Apple has finally fixed this bug in the latest version of iOS (5.1.1). If you are seeing any of these symptoms, you may want to either follow the steps below or do a restore before installing the latest iOS update. Just to make sure that your device is clean.
Earlier I reported that I was having some serious issues with my iPad as well as my iPhone freezing for a short period of time after being woken up (power button or pressing Home button).
It appears that a solution has been found. Or at least a “fix”.
Doing a search for “Unable to Purchase” in Google, I was able to find a thread in Apple’s support forums that talked about this issue. Actually, the thread never mentioned any freezing issues, but it did mention grey icons as well as this “Unable to Purchase” dialog box popping up.
The full symptoms to this problem are:
- Device freezes soon after being awoken
- Some app icons would grey (with space for progress bar and title changed to “Waiting”), then the icon image would appear followed by the icons being fully restored one by one in quick succession (screen shot #1)
- After installing a Universal app from a different device or iTunes, I would be prompted for my AppleID password (screen shot #2)
Screen shot #1
Screen Shot #2
These symptoms started up around January of 2012.
The solution or fix seems to be to remove a file “downloads.28.sqlitedb” from a folder on the device. There is an app called iExplorer (formally iPhone Explorer) that allows you to see your devices folder structure without having to Jailbreak the device.
Locate the folder “Media”, open it and locate the folder “Downloads” and open it. Inside the folder “Downloads” you will see several folders with what appears to be random numbers (I had well over 50) as well as a file called “downloads.28.sqlitedb”.
If you Jailbroke your device like I have for my iPhone. I found a package called iFile ($4.00) that allowed me to dig into my iPhone’s folders.
iFile package found in Cydia (Jailbreaking)
The above screen shot from “iFile” shows the “…/Media/Downloads” folder after deleting the many “numbered” folders as well as the downloads.28.sqlitedb” file. The sqlitedb file was recreated and is now much smaller than the nearly 780KB file it was.
I deleted all the folders in the “Downloads” folder along with the “downloads.28.sqlitedb” file. I turned off my device, then restarted it.
It’s been over 12 hours now since I deleted the sqlitedb file and I haven’t seen any freezing when waking my iPhone or iPad. I also have not seen any icons greying out.
I installed a couple of Universal apps and was not asked for my AppleID password and the apps appears on both devices.
So it appears that this sqlitedb file must have been corrupted. Folks in the forum feel that this corruption occurred when attempting to install an app and something happens to stop the download from successfully downloading. At that point, they feel that they started seeing the “Unable to Purchase” dialog.
Unable to Purchase pop up
I don’t know what caused this corruption, but I have had times when an App Store purchase started downloading but didn’t finish or I had to reboot the device due to the download freezing. (or at least appearing to freeze)
If you are having any of the above symptoms, check out the forum and see if your symptoms match what they were seeing. Then try the iExplorer solution/fix. I think you will find that it works for you too.
Why do Tech Pundits want an Apple Television?
What is this fascination with Tech Pundits over an Apple Television? Why do they want one so much?
More importantly, what could Apple bring to the Television market that it hasn’t already brought to the Television Set-top box market?
Do these tech pundits really think that normal consumers, not the pundits themselves, but normal average Joe’s, are going to run out and purchase a $2,000 46″ Apple Television just because it has the guts of an AppleTV built-in?
↬Some pundits think that this new television is going to cost $599. Really? $599 for a full size television that sits in a persons family room?
OK, the average lifespan of a good LCD Television is about 10 years. (60,000-100,000 hours) Apple loves to release new versions of it’s products every year. Is Apple expecting consumers to purchase new televisions every year? More importantly, are these pundits thinking this?
It’s way more likely that the average consumer would upgrade their AppleTV Set-top box when Apple updates it. It’s just $99 and gives them all the power a $2,000 or even $599 full blown television would.
So why would Apple attempt to get into the television business when it is doing so well in the cell phone/tablet/personal media player/computer/music sales business?
Please, can anyone offer a reasonable explanation why Apple would benefit from getting into the television business?
iPad freezing after waking
I’m calling out to the folks that read this blog or find it by searching for these problems.
Recently, Apple updated iOS (5.0) to allow users who purchase a song, book or app to have those items downloaded to all their devices (that have the option set). This is great because it saves me having to manually sync and updated my devices if I want those things on them.
This worked great for a while. However, another update (iOS 5.01) and something strange started happening. At first I didn’t know what was going on, but I was forced to enter my AppleID password when I woke up either my iPhone or my iPad. Later I realized that the password was to allow those new apps to be installed. OK, fine. No problem.
However, I also noticed (not at the same time) that when I woke up my iPhone or iPad, that the device would freeze up for about 10-15 seconds about 5 seconds after being woke up. It also happens when I unplug the device from a charger.
If I watch the icons on the home screens, I notice that they go from normal, to what appears to be updating (even though the device is not updating) back to normal during the time window that the device freezes. Here is a screenshot of that freeze time:
The boxed icons are not being updated or installed (at least not via normal means), but something is happening when woken up or unplugged.
If I happen to be running an app when this happens, usually after unplugging from a charger, the app will crash after freezing for a short period of time.
I have a 32GB iPad (1st gen) with 8.5GB’s free. I have 409 apps installed currently.
This happens after a cold boot, after it’s been running for weeks, with no apps running in background (multitasking bar is empty) or has apps in the multitasking bar. I’ve free’d up memory using an app that I still have that allows me to “free” up memory in the way that Apple insists we should not have the ability to do.
To be fair, I haven’t looked at Apple’s forums for this answer because I expect to find many people asking the question and few reasonable answers. If I do find a reasonable answer, I’ll post it here.
Please, if anyone has an idea of what is going on, please post a comment!
Thanks.
Goodreads
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