Apple’s next iPhone 5 will have everything we’ve already seen on Android

International Business Times has published an article with some features made available by iOS 6 that is likely iPhone 5 will offer:

Answering/Declining Calls – Users will now have the option to answer or decline calls. Users may send a text message from a choice of pre-programmed options if you wish not to be disturbed at the moment. Users will also be able to remind themselves to return the missed calls later.

Really? That’s a new feature? Having used these features constantly since, like, forever on Android, I’m actually very surprised that iOS didn’t have those up till now.

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Handling “Package file is invalid” problems on CyanogenMod 7

Update: The latest update for CyanogenMod for Milestone – version 7.1.0.3 solves this problem as well.

Lately I’ve been having problems updating software on my Motorola Milestone (1, as in A853) running CyanogenMod 7.1 (thanks to Nadalbak who maintains an unofficial and unsupported port of CyanogenMod for this old device). When I start the Android Market and do an update of an existing application, I get the error “Package file is invalid” for any application. Sometimes removing an application and reinstalling it will work, but often not.

There could be several problems that cause this, apparently a problem with the file permissions on the file systems is common, and if this is your problem then it can be fixed by opening the terminal emulator, executing “su” to gain super-user permissions and then running “fix_permissions” (it will take a while to complete).

If this doesn’t solve the problem for you, then likely the problem is that you ran out of space on your “data” partition or “cache” partition. This is very common if you have a large “apps partition” on your SD card and you are in the habit of installing tons of applications – I know I am 🙂 .

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Android, iOS – who stole from who?

The obvious answer is – who cares? But Apple fan-boys seem to like to gloat that any smartphone design (or at least any design moderately successful – nobody is looking at Symbian) is a “rip off” from the iPhone, while Android fan-boys1 point out may cases where iOS designers “shamelessly” “got inspired” by Android features such as the pull-down notifications, seamless multi-tasking, “share” functionality, personal Wi-Fi hotspot, untethered syncing (iCloud in Apple’s lingo) and more.

So everyone copies from everyone else – that’s how a market should behave: if one product comes up with a better idea, then it is only expected that other products can build on that idea – and sometimes do it better. And don’t get me started on the patent thing – patents allow an inventor to protect the technology and implementation of a specific idea, it does not give one a monopoly on ideas (even though many today try to use the patent system like that).

The question that, I think, is more interesting to ask is – who is more willing to play this game and who treats idea as their sole domain and exclusive property?

The answer, not coming as a surprise to anyone, can be found in Apple’s founder new biography: “Steve Jobs” by Walter Isaacson, as reported by AP review of the book set to be available tomorrow, here are some choice quotes (taken from AP’s review):

Jobs told Isaacson in an expletive-laced rant that Google’s actions amounted to “grand theft.”

“I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product.”

Jobs told Schmidt [Google’s CEO at the time] … ” I want you to stop using our ideas in Android”

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  1. of whom I am a card carrying member, I’ll admit []

Easiest Android Rooting In 3 Simple Steps

One of the neatest features of carrying a small Linux computer in your pocket, is that you have a machine to hack everywhere you go 😉

After getting a terminal application installed, you find that most stuff that you want to do require “root access” on your android phone – it appears that on Android they don’t really use “user permissions” but instead each app is its own user id with its own set of permissions (an ingenious way to handle different permissions per application).

To do most interesting things you need to make sure you can get root access. As a normal phone user you aren’t expected to need this so this feature is disabled on phones and to enable access to the root account you need to crack the phone’s security model. (more…)

I Hate Pod Catchers

[Updated: 29/7/2011]

One of the reasons to get a new mobile internet device, is to get a better pod catcher to use in order to feed my podcast listening habit :-). Its not that Escarpod for Symbian was bad – it was a very good application and any new podcatcher I’ll get will be measured against it – but my P1i was kind of dying and regardless all new development in Escarpod was happening in the S60 version and not for UIQ that the P1i was running.

Once I had an android device, the next order of business was to find the best podcatcher (for me). I’ve downloaded and tried all the podcatchers I could get my hand on, so here’s the summary of my trials and tribulations. If I missed any podcatcher that you know of (and want me to compare against those listed below), then drop me a note about it.

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Best dumb post. ever.

From a discussion about anti-virus for Android:

sorry, but your wrong. Linux can’t run executables. I am a Linux administrator.

Source

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