Lazy Robot

It's often said that a backup strategy is only as good as the corresponding recovery strategy. Your backup is useless, after all, if you can't restore from it. Unfortunately I have recently had to test the backup strategies I have been using for my two most frequently used computing devices; my iPhone and my Macbook. The sad demise, and subsequent revival, of my iPhone has already been documented in a previous post. Thanks to the joy that is iTunes, my phone was automatically backed up the day before the incident, minimising the amount of lost data. The worst thing I lost was my Rally Master 3D save-game, so no big deal. I have used several mobile phone sync/backup tools before, and suffice it to say that they suck. Often flaky or having badly integrated 3rd party components, I have yet to find one that really syncs properly. Even the venerable Palm handhelds (yes, I know they're not phones, or at least, didn't used to be) became a nightmare to sync once they starte...

So good news, everybody! Apple's lovely, lovely iPhone is available on Orange now. My carrier is officially supported! I shall be upgrading to a shiny new 3GS in about 4 weeks, which is the earliest my contract allows. In the meantime, I'm still using the iPhone 2G, suitably unlocked to accept my Orange SIM. Unfortunately, it all nearly went terribly wrong. I did a routine reboot yesterday and when it came back on, it was deactivated. This means that it was prompting me to plug it into iTunes to allow Apple to reactivate. Bugger. So, what the hell, I tried it. Sure enough "Your SIM is not supported." Arse. It's been working fine for 6 months on official firmware, but no longer it seems. As soon as I put an official Apple firmware on there, it immediately locks me out. Fortunately I am in the habit of backing up regularly so all (well, most) of my data is safe. I just need a way to activate the thing. A quick Google indicates that redsn0w is the way to go. Su...

I just got a new little update for my iPhone. Yay, thinks I, and so it is installed. What does it do? It bloody well hides my APN settings and sets them to O2. My iPhone is on Orange. Now my data doesn't work unless I use Data Roaming. After digging around for a few moments, it became abundantly clear that the settings page for APN has completely disappeared. I can't actually change the settings on the device itself. This is a pain. Enter unlockit.co.nz, a very handy little website for doing exactly what I need. So use it, go to http://www.unlockit.co.nz/ from Safari on your iPhone. Follow the on-screen prompts, enter the proper APN data, and voila, a little settings bundle appears. Install it, and you're good to go. It took just a few seconds to change it on mine, and after disabling Data Roaming, I still get access to the web. Marvellous. Edit : It does do something else ... now the text that says Orange in the corner is slightly larger and a bit fuzzier. Well wort...