Don’t say you don’t think that too.

Yes folks, it’s finally gone live! Those that know the in’s and out’s of this one will know what I mean.

If you’re a fan of the ’80s A-Team then this is for you. It was created to raise awareness of the A-team TV episodes that are available on iTunes.

So download it NOW, IT’S FREE!!! Then get to work creating your backing sound effects, shaking your iPhone to make machine gun sounds and ‘lobbing it’ to make a grenade. There are a bunch of voice samples and the original ’80s intro sequence from the TV show as a bonus.

I love it when a plan comes together!

Just installed the iPhone OS 3.0 GM seed file onto my iPhone 3G from my iMac. I’m part of the iPhone Developers program so the ‘seed’ means ‘pre-release’, as the official update isn’t due until the 17th June or so. So slightly excited and nervous just in case something went wrong.

So, initially all went well. Process was something like this…

1. Download the .dmg disk image
2. Open it to view the .ipsw file
3. Fire up iTunes, select the iPhone
4. VERY IMPORTANT: **Backup the phone** You may need the backup data later!!!
5. Option-click (alt-click) the ‘restore’ button
6. In the dialogue box, locate the .ipsw file
7. Wait for it to do its thing and restart the phone
8. Restarted iTunes… PROBLEM!!

The iPhone had a ‘connect to iTunes’ diagram on it’s screen and wouldn’t go any further. Like so…

Restarted iTunes then it threw an error…

“We could not complete your iTunes Store request. An unknown error occurred (-9807).”

This can happen with the iTunes store and keychain errors, so I repaired my keychain. No change to the error though.

The iPhone was visible intermittently in iTunes but had no options or content listed under the icon, even right-clicking it just displayed ‘Eject’. Tried restarting both Mac and iPhone. No joy.

Finally tracked it down to a permissions thing. Luckily, I had a few user accounts set up on my iMac, so I logged out of mine and into another. If you don’t have them, then set one up from the System Preferences/Accounts panel. Fired up iTunes in the other account and the iPhone sprang to life! Yay!

Then I logged into the main user account again, fired up iTunes again and everything worked.

I then noticed my data hadn’t actually migrated back during the update (apps, prefs, photos etc.). Thank god for that backup I just did (see above). So I then restored to the backup. This restores the data, not the OS, so I still have OS 3.0 etc.

I then had to manually synced the Applications back (as I had them set to manually sync anyway) and it finally looks like it was supposed to!

Had a quick play and all my emails are there, text messages intact, contacts, ringtones, apps etc. Had to move my apps around the screen manually to tidy them up but apart from that all good.

Hopefully this won’t happen to the public release but hope this helps if you do need it.

:: STOP PRESS ::

Just found this entry that may help. If you’ve got Little Snitch running on your Mac, you may be seconds away from the answer!

The new iTunes 8 has been out for a few weeks and I finally got around to installing it. Interface is interesting. I think it’s better… maybe. I’ve yet to try the Genius ‘similar songs’ picker thing as it come with a pretty scary privacy warning. Here’s a taste…

The information sent to Apple includes details about the media in your iTunes library such as track names, play counts, and ratings. This information will be stored with an anonymous Genius ID and not linked to your iTunes Account. When using the iTunes Store or Genius sidebar, Apple will also use your purchase history to give you better recommendations.

Hmmm, not sure just yet.

However, I had a wow-moment when I saw the new Visualizer (the old one is still there if you like it btw). If you don’t know what it is, it’s a real-time ‘screensaver’ that reacts to your music. It’s under the iTunes ‘view’ menu or Apple-M on a mac fires it into life. The new version is simply awesome. It’s the ultimate proof that in the right hands, maths can be excruciatingly beautiful. If you have it running, press ‘M’ to go tough all of the various styles. My kids spent about an hour staring at it, that’s longer than they spent the entire weekend watching TV!

Incidentally, I’ve been playing with the Apple developers kit and the ‘Quartz’ compiler is amazing. Quartz is the environment used to create visual effects such as screensavers, iTunes visualizers, graphic filters and so on. Literally drag and drop coding and the results make the eyebrows of even the most hardened anti-Mac fan boy rise a few feet above their egg-shaped foreheads. Will post something soon.

STOP PRESS

Complete coincidence but the day after writing this post, I attended a presentation by the the creator of the new iTunes visualiser, Robert Hodgin at Flash On the Beach in Brighton. One of the brightest people you are ever going to meet. I dare you to watch his render of Magnetosphere and disagree. All built in Processing… if I had a cloning machine, my clever alter-ego would be learning Processing as we speak. Simply mind-blowing in the right hands!