Yesterday I posted about how your iPhone or 3G enabled iPad has been keeping track of everywhere you have been in a file on you iDevice for use in features like geotagging photos. If you don’t like having this information stored on your phone for a large amount of time, or you think that Apple is spying on you, you can now remove this history. But to do this you do need a jailbroken iPhone or iPad.

If you have a jailbroken device then open up Cydia and search for ‘untrackerd’ on the BigBoss repo. This small app (all 37kb of it) is made by the renowned jailbreak app developer Ryan Petrich. The app works by running in the background and continuously removes the stored locations that are saved in the location history file every 30 minutes.

Either way if you want to view where you have been with your iPhone then download iPhone Tracker by Pete Warden. This will scan your computer for the latest iPhone backup, open the file where the locations are stored and displays it on a map. At this moment the app only works on Mac, but I’m sure it will be coming for Windows soon.

Update: If you are worried about your safety then you can stop your iPhone from recording this information with ‘untrackerd’ read my latest post.

After a few days of hoping the dead pixel would work itself out and being disappointed in the lack of progress; I decided to make a Genius bar appointment to see what Apple would do. Prior to this I had read that it was policy not to replace any product unless it had at least 3 dead pixels, so I wasn’t optimistic on getting a replacement but hoped that Apple would at least fix it.

As I sat at the genius bar I was surprised when I heard them say, “sure we will give you a replacement”. So with my brand new iPad 2 I went home and set it up. After plugging it into iTunes and configuring it, I noticed right in the middle of the screen another dead pixel!

Not being impressed I immediately rang up the Apple store and explained my situation, they then set me up with another genius appointment in half an hours time. I drove to the Apple Store with my second defected iPad, they didn’t seem impressed seeing me there again that day but in fairness to them they did give me another replacement iPad.

So it looks like (well for me anyway) Apple have got rid of there more than 3 dead pixel rule for the iPad 2. Meaning that if you experience this problem, book a Genius appointment and get a replacement. Thankfully up to now my third iPad seems to be working fine (touchwood).

I joined the queue at approximately 2pm and was roughly 70 people away from the front of the queue, minutes after joining I was approached by the store manager, welcoming me to the product launch and enquired on which model I was wanting to purchase. A couple of minute passed and then another employee of the Apple Store started walking down the queue offering everyone free drinks, biscuits and sandwiches.

At 3pm they shut the store and started issuing tickets to each person in the queue for the iPad model that you wanted. This was done to make sure that the one you wanted was in stock (theoretically reserving it; if you had a ticket the iPad was yours). I got my ticket at half past 3. By this time the queue was already stretching another 150 meters behind me.

When 5pm / release time arrived, the shop eventually opened and the employees did the a lap of the queue. By this time the line had grown even bigger. It went down to where it was at three and then looped all the way back round to opposite where I was.

The whole time I was queuing the staff kept on going up and down the line offering refreshments which was a nice surprise to me as this was my first Apple product launch. By ten past six I was at the front of the queue waiting to get my iPad, the time came and I went I mad the long await purchase. Only five minutes later I was on my way home with my new iPad 2.

When I arrived back that was when my problems started, to find out about my problems please read this post.

The fact of the matter is that this is utter rubbish and Dropbox seems to work fine for me on Lion. So if you are wanting to run Dropbox on 10.7 all you need to do is follow the simple steps below:

1. Show package contents on ‘Dropbox.app’
2. Open ‘Info.plist’ with your favourite editing program.
3. Change the ‘Bundle Version’ from ’1.0.20′ to ’2.0′.

Now you should be able to run Dropbox on the Lion developer preview.

*Note that the Dropbox developers are working on an update to fix this problem.

10. MultiIconMover
Here is a tweak that allows you to move multiple apps on your home screen so you don’t have to do it painfully one by one. I think that apple should have incorporate this into iOS to start with as this app management is so intuitive.

9. Inifinifolders
Another flaw that apple has deployed into iOS is limiting the number of apps in a folder to 12. This helpful tweak allows you to put as many apps as you want into a folder and then to scroll through them like the folder was a page on your springbaord.

8. WiCarrier
This is a very simple app that displays the name of the wifi network you’re connected to in your status bar replacing your carrier. Additionally, if you tap on the name of the network it will display your local IP address.

7. PhotoAlbums+
This is the way viewing and organising photos on your iPhone should be. It allows you to quickly create and delete albums and move photos between them. Really handy if you like shooting lots of pictures with your iPhone.

6. LockInfo
LockInfo is a way of displaying all of you notifications at any one time on your lock screen. This can includes tasks due, events happening soon, text messages, missed calls and so on. This is a great upgrade from apple’s single notification box on the iOS platform.

5. Winterboard
A well known app in the jailbreak community, Winterboard is a way of adding themes to your iDevice and customising many aspects of the springboard, lock screen and generally the user interface. With hundreds of user made themes on Cydia, it is guaranteed you will find a theme you like.

4. MyWi
MyWi is an app that allows you to share your iPhones 3G signal and basically have your own personal WiFi hotspot. This allows your other technology to access the internet via your iPhone, without having to pay extortionate carrier fees.

3. SBSettings
Another well known app in the jailbreak community, SBSettings allows you to change settings on your iPhone quickly and easily from the springboard. For example: turning on/off WiFi, SSH, Bluetooth, changing the brightness and a lot more.

2. Wi-Fi Sync
Forget using a USB to sync your iPhone to your computer, you can no do it wirelessly with Wi-Fi Sync. All you need is the app on your iPhone, the client installed on your computer and be on the same wireless network.

1. BiteSMS
BiteSMS is a replacement to the default SMS client on the iPhone. It contains lots of useful features including quick composing/replying, signatures and a passcode lock for your inbox. Again the added functionality should be included by apple in iOS but it isn’t.

To display my computer information (computer name, os details, ram and processor) I use the code:

scutil --get ComputerName;
sw_vers | awk -F':\t' '{print $2}' | paste -d ' ' - - - ;
sysctl -n hw.memsize | awk '{print $0/1073741824"gb RAM"}';
sysctl -n machdep.cpu.brand_string;

For the numerical value of the day:

date +%d

For the name of  the month:

date +%B

For the time (hours:minutes):

date +%H:%M

For the day of the week:

date +%A

For the harddrive information (just replace disk0s1 with the drive number and partition you want to show) I used the following code:

df -hl | grep 'disk0s1' |
awk '{print $4 " free " "("$2")"}' |
sed s/Gi/gb/g

Also with icalBuddy you can have it display uncompleted tasks, upcoming events and much more on your desktop all form your iCal calendar. The script below is for tasks that need to be done:

/usr/local/bin/icalBuddy uncompletedTasks

This script is for upcoming events in your calendar in the next 31 days:

/usr/local/bin/icalBuddy eventsToday+31

To get any text label just create a script and insert the text you want between the speech marks.

echo " "