Techno Thoughts!

Days after a great 1st race of the season where Jenson Button drove an excellent race and drove from a great pole position to win the race with a Brawn 1-2, the whole race is surrounded in controversy.

The problem is not with Jenson Button but with Lewis Hamilton. Lewis drove a really good race in a car which was way off the pace. He kept out of trouble, kept pushing and with the events of a late crash by 2nd placed Vettel and 3rd placed Kubica he ended up in 4th place. The odd thing at the time was that when the safety car came out, Lewis was showing in 3rd position (I had the live timing on) and then at the end of the race he was in 4th, even though overtaking is not allowed under the safety car.

It turned out what had happened was Trulli was in 3rd and had gone off the track and Lewis had obviously gone past, hence showing in 3rd. Trulli then took the place back, which is why he finished in 3rd and got the podium.

After the race however, Lewis said that his team had told him to let Trulli back through (and Trulli said that Hamilton had slowed down, allowing him to pass as he thought Hamilton had a problem) and later on after a stewards enquiry, Trulli was given a penalty for passing under the safety car and Lewis was promoted to 3rd – an excellent result when his car was so far off the pace.

The problem is, it didn’t finish there. On the Thursday after the race, the stewards summoned Hamilton and Trulli back in and after more investigation have disqualified Hamilton (and Mclaren) for misleading the stewards.

It turns out what had happened was that after the above happened, Hamilton and Mclaren both went into the stewards enquiry and told the stewards that they had not let Trulli past.

What doesn’t make sense is that Mclaren knew that the FIA listens to the radio transmissions and had been asking race control several times whether Hamilton had to let Trulli past but did not receive a response because race control were busy dealing with the accident. Why would they lie knowing this information was public? – it just doesn’t make sense to me.

Mclaren claim that they didn’t lie or purposely mislead the stewards but rather just assumed that because the FIA listen to the radio that they knew about the conversation but this seems the opposite to what the FIA are saying.

All very odd!

More information:

• The stewards decision
• Interview with Mclaren
• The Mclaren radio discussion
• FIA response

UPDATE: It doesn’t explain why they lied when they knew the truth was public, but at least this explains what happened: Q&A with Lewis Hamilton - credit to him for standing up and admitting he made a mistake.

There has been talk (and demo videos) for a long time about SlingPlayer on the iPhone (and iPod Touch). It was reported last week that it was finished and had been submitted to the app store for approval.

Now it’s reported that the SlingPlayer for the iPhone will only work on the newer Slingbox models.

What’s more is that apparently it did work in the beta versions and it’s not a hardware thing but a greedy move by Sling to get people to purchase new hardware.

I always did find it frustrating that after buying the device you had to pay for the mobile version of SlingPlayer - but I did buy it for Pocket PC and Symbian as it wasn’t too expensive.

However, I certainly wont be buying new hardware just to get it on the iPhone / iPod and I certainly wont be recommending Slingbox to anyone if they are going to do that

http://www.tuaw.com/2009/04/02/sling-rains-on-its-own-parade/

http://www.theiphoneblog.com/2009/04/02/slingplayer/

Well that’s something you never thought would happen - Microsoft are working on Office for the iPhone.

They are also apparently releasing a web based version which will work on both the iPhone and Linux.

Now that a lot of my software wishlist has been answered in the iPhone and iPod Touch 3.0 firmware, i’m now excited to hear what they are going to add to the next hardware version of the iPhone which will likely be announced at the WWDC in June and I am madly hoping will be out shortly after that.

My wishlist would be:

Relistic additions:

• Better camera
• Flash
• Video recording
• Faster processor
• More memory
• 3G optimisations for better signal and faster data

Ideals:

• Bigger, higher resolution screen
• Removable battery
• SD Card slot for extra memory

It’s good to see that the latest rumours are at least pointing to some of them becoming reality:

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/03/31/report_two_distinct_iphone_models_nearing_production.html

Finally! - Apple has increased the “9 pages of applications” limit (148 apps) on the latest iPhone / iPod Touch 3.0 beta to 11 pages (180 apps) - still not ideal but at least a little more ability to install new apps without removing old ones.

Apple have released a 2nd beta of the iPhone / iPod Touch 3.0 firmware to developers:

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/03/31/apple_releases_second_beta_of_iphone_3_0_software_to_developers.html

I’ve been running the 3.0 beta since just after it was released and while the new features are great (and i’m sure it will be fine when it’s released), it is definatly a beta and when they say it’s only for testing compatibility with applications and not for everyday use, that’s not a disclaimer!

Since upgrading, i’ve had intermittent problems connecting to wifi, applications regularly just disappear when you are in the middle of something (or sometimes quicker than you can even start!) and it’s just very slow - everything you click on seems to hang it for a second or two which is very frustrating when you are trying to check your email or something. Also you end up pressing too many times with impatience and then when it comes back it does a load of actions.

I posted a guide to downgrading the iPhone / iPod Touch in a previous posting.

Downgrading the firmware on the iPhone / iPod Touch is simple but only if you know how!

Firstly you need to download the 2.2.1 (or whatever version you wan to go to) firmware file. You can find the different versions here:

• iPod & iPhone Firmware Download
• Where to download iPhone firmware files from

While that’s downloading, you need to put your device into DFU Mode - see my earlier posting.

• When the firmware has finished downloading and the device is in DFU mode, hold shift down while clicking the restore button in iTunes.
• Select the file you downloaded
• It should re-install the new firmware

I did read that after it’s done all the restore etc that it’s possible to get an iTunes error but that didn’t happen to me though - it just worked fine. If you do get an error, then you just need to read my earlier post about getting the iphone / ipod touch out of restore mode and follow that - if it’s after it’s done all the restore then it should be ok. If not, i’d try again!

I’ve blogged before about getting the iphone / ipod touch into recovery mode. However, i’ve still had problems doing firmware downgrades - it just refuses to do, giving an unknown or unrecognised error each time (often error 1064).

Well, it turns out there is another recovery mode on the iPhone / iPod Touch called DFU mode (Download Firmware Upgrade or Device Firmware Upgrade). DFU mode is bypasses the current firmware and is what you need to use if you are getting iTunes errors while trying to restore in recovery mode.

How to get into DFU mode:

- Connect the iPhone / iPod Touch to the computer with iTunes open

- Turn off the iPhone / iPod Touch (hold down the power/sleep/wake button (on the top) until you see the red slider and slide the red slider across to the right).

- Hold down the power/sleep/wake button (on the top)  and the home button (on the front) for about 10 seconds

- Release the power/sleep/wake button but continue holding the home button

- iTunes should pop up and tell you it’s found a device in recovery mode

Some points to note:

- A clarification on the 10 seconds bit - I found it seems to be that you need to release the power button just before the Apple logo appears - so, if it doesn’t work the 1st time, start from the beginning and try again, anticipating when that logo will appear and let go just before it.

- If the device is in DFU mode, the screen will be black/blank. If you see the iTunes logo on the screen then you have gone into recovery mode rather than DFU mode - try again!