CAMERA CADABRA

I decided to upgrade my iPhone to the new OS 3.0 because of all the amazing new features I have been going without and I got a few expected bonuses. The first being that my camera is back in action. Both me and Dylan suspected that my camera problems were software related. One reason was that, when activated, you could clearly see the video playing in the camera window. When an picture was taken, you heard the flash sound, saw the aperture close and saw the image drop into the bin. The only problem was that after that, all images in the bin were blank. Well, thanks to the miracle of modern operating systems, namely iPhone 3.0, it all works again.

Getting there was no small feat though. I originally used a supposedly popular app called Ziphone to unlock my iPhone back in 2008. You can read that story here if you don't remember. Now I knew that updating the OS to the latest version would likely forfeit said unlocking, but I didn't think getting it back would be such a pain. Anyway, I plugged my phone into the Mac, pictured above. This machine is actually a "Hackintosh" meaning that it is self built using the same Gigabyte motherboard and parts that the Mac Pro uses, but is not an official Mac Pro, thus the weird Transformers case. iTunes popped up and downloaded OS 3.0 and the install went smoothly. That part went as expected.


After the successful install of the OS, I decided to try switching back to my Philippines based SMART SIM card. That, of course, didn't work. That was not a surprise though. I figured I would just throw a new Ziphone unlock on there and be done with it. Sadly, it was not going to be that easy. The new version of Ziphone failed, unable to even find the damn phone connected to the computer!

Taking the error message which Ziphone gave me and putting into Google, I began searching for solutions. Most of these led to forum threads on the subject. The general conclusion from nearly all threads was avoid Ziphone like the plague. My roommate had been saying the same thing since we stated talking about the new OS, so that didn't surprise me. I just liked the one click ease of use involved with that tool. Most of the forum threads pointed to tools created by some unofficial iPhone Dev Team and sporting cool names like Pwnage, Red Snow and Ultra Snow. Red Snow looked like the tool I needed, but the list of steps to make it happen was long and included distasteful things like again downloading the nearly 250 MB OS 3.0 package, which on the slow internet here, means waiting for a very long time.

I tried everything I could think of to get out of going through these steps. I searched for other unlocking tools that might be one click like Ziphone. It was all for naught, though, and I eventually resigned myself to waiting for the download of an OS I already had from earlier this morning, and went to eat. Luckily, by the time I was done eating, including time spent caring for a wound after stabbing myself in the hand with huge freaking knife, the download was done. I went through the rest of the useless and unecessary steps, which put a bunch of stuff I don't care about and will never use, and finally had my unlock complete. Anyway, even though I started writing this on the desktop pictured above, I'm now in the mall about to die walking around trying to write this on my iPhone, so I'm calling it for this post. Back to the adventure!