iPod

How To Fix a Broken iPhone Home Button – A Free & Easy Software Fix

by Michael Sheehan on March 13, 2013

in Apple, Cellular, Fix It, General, Hardware, How To, HTD Tech Tip, iOS, iPad, iPhone, iPod, Mobile

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Yesterday I received a panicked call from one of my daughters – “Daddy, my iPhone’s home button is broken!” Tears and wailing ensued. But, as with any broken gadget, I was up for the challenge, knowing that I could either replace the iPhone home button myself or figure out some other way to breath a few extra days or weeks of life into her iPhone 4 so that she could still use it. As it turned out, the “temporary” fix (which could be permanent), it quite easy to do and actually a pretty neat function that not too many people know about. And, it’s built into all iOS devices.

Broken iPhone Home button

Broken iPhone Home button

Normally, when hardware components fail on my iOS devices, I turn to the super-handy iFixIt.com guides. I have done anything from replacing batteries on iPhone 3GS & iPhone 4′s to replacing the power button on an iPhone 4 (let me tell you, THAT one is really hard!). So, I quickly scanned through the steps in the iFixIt guide and realized that even though the part itself was about $15 only, the level of effort to physically replace the button was HUGE. (Here’s the daunting fix-it guide.) So, I needed to find another solution.

Luckily, I remembered in the past reading about how you can reassign a button or create a gesture on a jailbroken phone so I knew there was a software solution out there. However, I didn’t want to jailbreak my daughter’s iPhone. There had to be another solution. And then I found it. What follows are the quick and easy steps on how to fix a broken iPhone home button.

How To Fix a Broken iPhone Home Button

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How To Change Your iOS Device’s Root & Mobile User Password After Jailbreak and OpenSSH Install

by Michael Sheehan on February 5, 2013

in Apple, Application, Consumer Electronics, Fix It, Gadgets, General, How To, HTD Tech Tip, iOS, iPad, iPhone, iPod, Mobile, Software

Post image for How To Change Your iOS Device’s Root & Mobile User Password After Jailbreak and OpenSSH Install

As many of you may know, the latest untethered jailbreak tool for iOS called Envisi0n was released to the general public yesterday (2/4/13). As a consequence, the Cydia installer which manages all of the repositories for 3rd party app that you can install on your jailbroken iOS device was pretty much hammered. Things are coming back to normal now (but you may experience some errors). Regardless, Cydia and the apps in the various repositories allow you to have more access and management of your iPhone or iPad. You can even remotely access your iOS device using SSH. Therein lies a potential problem though. If you enable SSH access to your iOS device, you potentially expose your device to remote access if you don’t change the default passwords for root and the mobile users.

HTD-cydia

Many of you may not want to even enable SSH on your iOS device so if you have no reason to do so, just don’t do it. However, if you do and you know what you are doing, below are the steps that you should take to change the default passwords on your iOS device.

First, you need to enable SSH access to your device. To do this, you should install the OpenSSH application from the Cydia/Telesphoreo repository (it’s free).

HTD-OpenSSH

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Apple Posts iOS 6.1 Release – Here’s What’s New & How to Update!

by Michael Sheehan on January 28, 2013

in Apple, Cellular, Consumer Electronics, Gadgets, General, How To, HTD Tech Tip, iPad, iPhone, iPod, Software, Tablet

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After releasing iOS 6.1 beta 5 to developers this past weekend, Apple released iOS 6.1 to the public today (Monday Jan 28, 2013). Updates can be obtained directly via your iOS update or via iTunes. You can also download the .ipsw directly from Apple. Details on these processes are below.

iOS-6.1-update

So what is new in this iOS release? Honestly, there aren’t that many visible features but there are plenty of behind the scenes fixes and updates. Specifically:

  • Support for more LTE carriers
  • The ability to purchase movie tickets using Fandango coupled with Siri (US only)
  • If you use iTunes Match, you can now download individual songs from iCloud
  • Reset the Advertising Identifier via System Preferences (General > About > Advertising)
    HTD-reset-ads
  • Security Updates
    • Fixed –> Authentication relying on certificate-based Apple ID authentication may be bypassed
    • Fixed –> Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to a cross-site scripting attack
    • Fixed –> A user-mode process may be able to access the first page of kernel memory
    • Fixed –> An attacker with a privileged network position may intercept user credentials or other sensitive information
    • Fixed –> JavaScript may be enabled in Mobile Safari without user interaction
    • Fixed –> Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution
    • Fixed –> Copying and pasting content on a malicious website may lead to a cross-site scripting attack
    • Fixed –> Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to a cross-site scripting attack
    • Fixed –> A remote attacker on the same WiFi network may be able to temporarily disable WiFi

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iOS Apps & Backups are Hogging Up Your Hard Drive – How To Easily Free Up Disk Space

by Michael Sheehan on January 9, 2013

in Apple, Application, Fix It, General, Hardware, How To, HTD Tech Tip, iPad, iPhone, iPod, Software

Post image for iOS Apps & Backups are Hogging Up Your Hard Drive – How To Easily Free Up Disk Space

I don’t know about you but I am always looking for ways to clear up my laptop’s precious free hard drive space. I have tools that clean caches, temporary files, language files, logs and files in my trash. But I never seem to get ahead of the game. I probably never will but a periodic cleaning is always an important thing to do.

One place that I have neglected is one that may seem incredibly obvious to many. It wasn’t to me until I spent some time doing some hard drive cleaning. And this is an area where most cleaning applications will NOT look – within iTunes.

Fat iTunes icon

I must admit, I’m not only an iOS device junkie, but also an iOS application addict. I install apps regularly, test them out and then delete them from my iPhone or iPad. That is great for my iOS device in terms of keeping it relatively clean (although I have several pages of folders filled with apps) – but it doesn’t help the “mother ship,” my laptop where I sync my iOS devices.

iTunes has made the process of getting and updating iOS apps (as well as managing your iOS device) pretty darn easy. The problem is, if you back up lots of devices and/or download lots of apps, you are consuming a massive amount of hard drive space, probably without even knowing it.

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HighTechDad’s Father’s Day 2012 Reviewed Gift Buying Guide

June 11, 2012
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Rev up those Father’s Day gift engines, it’s that time of year again! Yeah, I’m a bit late in getting together my list of products that you might want to consider for your dad for Father’s Day, but you will still have a few days to get those gifts (or write up a nice IOU [...]

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Take a Piano With You Wherever You Go With The Line6 Mobile Keys For PC, Mac & iOS

May 1, 2012
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When I was young, I played the piano. I was ok at it, did plenty of recitals and learned enough over 5 years to be able to still do some sight-reading even now. My middle daughter, who is 10 now, is quickly surpassing my skills, although for a while, I was able to sight-read some [...]

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A Theater in a Box – BenQ JoyBee GP2 Portable Projector for iPhones, iPods & other Devices

March 5, 2012
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I would hazard to say that most of us have big screen TVs in our home. Mine is pretty darn old actually, a 60″ DLP HDTV, that, while it has withstood lengthy hours of entertainment, could start to have issues any day. I have been considering when that day comes and what I will do. [...]

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How To Configure Location-Based Reminders on the iPhone with iOS5

November 29, 2011
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I kept hearing about how with iOS 5, you could set up Reminders that would trigger when you arrived or left a particular location. It’s a pretty neat concept. You can program in an address, like your work, and set up a series of to-dos that magically remind you when you are geographically near that [...]

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