I was preparing to write a preview of CyanogenMod 6 (CM6) before it became officially released. But alas, by the time I got around to it, CM6 is now officially released. The pre-release alphas, release candidates and nightly builds have been circulated around for quite some time now. I’ve been following the development and for the last several days, noted that activity, in terms of updates, had been slowing down. Seemed like things were winding down for the final release. Well, CM6 is now ready.

CM6 is build on Android 2.2 Froyo. Froyo itself became available in late May. It didn’t take too long before CyanogenMod picked up Froyo to work on. My Nexus One with CM5 has already been a great phone, but CM6 takes the Android experience to a new level. I can quite safely say that I’ve never been so pleased with what I’ve been able to do with my phone.

There are just so many new things with CM6 that it just doesn’t make sense for me to list them. But some of the chief features that matter to me are:

• The camera department is a big hit: touch-to-focus (so you can select the spot to focus on, much like how the iPhone lets you do that), 720p video recording, and significant improvements in the user interface so that settings are so much easier to change now.
• New home launcher using ADWLauncher 1.0.1. The smoothness of window effect transitions and expose effects are just lovely. I must admit that when ADWLauncher was first added (and after the kinks were ironed out), it was chiefly responsible for a drop in my phone’s battery life… because I kept messing around with the phone to experience the launcher’s smoothness!
• Using trackball to wake and unlock the phone, instead of using the not-so-accessible power button.
• Apps can now be installed/moved to SD. It’s not the Apps2SD of CM5 style, but just as useful nonetheless.
• Properly integrated customizable trackball colour notifications.
• Music player controls on lock screen.
• Torchlight application.
• Better Exchange integration (but alas, I decided for various reasons to stop syncing with Exchange…).

There are actually so many other nitty gritty details like the tons of customization settings, new Dalvik JIT, various types of hardware acceleration on ARMv7, etc… but I shan’t just go on and on about them. You can find them in the CM6 changelog yourself.

Oh yes, naturally not all of these are CM6-specific. They could be features that came as part of the stock Froyo.

One of the chief reasons why I came to Android is the same as why I started using Linux on PCs: Access to source and ability to build thing on my own. I’ve been building CM6 from the git repositories and I’m quite pleased with it. Particularly when I can make changes to changes from others that I don’t want. That’s the beauty of open source.

If  you’re still using the stock ROM on your Nexus One, HTC Magic, or any one of the many phones now supported by CM6, I’d encourage you to flash CM6. Your phone is probably already great as it is, but you can still go so much further!

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It’s a tussle between individuals and the wishes of business organizations wanting to protect their data. The “problem”, is that phones nowadays are so powerful, so ubiquitous, and used so much for personal and work needs. The “problem” is that individuals want to own the phone, because it’s personal; At the same time, work organizations want to own the phone because it contains work secrets.

This “problem” used to be limited to enterprise-type phones like Blackberries. But now, I’m faced with the same issue on Android.

I cannot understand why an Open Source platform like Android would subscribe to the idea of such a misfeature: To allow Microsoft Exchange server to remotely wipe all data on my phone. The misfeature was recently backported into the source of CyanogenMod 6 ROM. I’ve setup my phone to sync with Exchange, so that I can finally be compliant with my company’s corporate direction to use Microsoft-based collaborative mechanisms. Email, contacts and calendar, working very nicely on my phone. It’s really cool, since now both my phone and MacBook Pro can collaborate on Exchange.

Except that, now, my phone is asking me to grant the Email app the privilege to wipe all data on my phone. Huh? But… it’s my phone! Ok, if you say the company data belongs to the company, fine… then wipe the Exchange related data. Exchange email, Exchange contacts and Exchange calendar. But surely, not wipe all data from my phone?

Thank goodness for source code being available. I was annoyed enough to figure out what was changed, reverted the change, and rebuild the ROM. That’s the beauty of open source.

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Apple’s just-released Magic Trackpad and Multi-Touch Update 1.0 finally brings inertia scrolling to recent models of MacBook and MacBook Pro notebooks. Inertia scrolling, if you don’t know about it, is the feature where a scrolling action on the mouse (or the trackpad in this case) can continue even after your fingers have left the surface. It’s sort of like trying to spin a wheel… the wheel continues turning even if you stop exerting force.

It’s something that I’ve come to like a lot, ever since inheriting a mouse with a defective scroll wheel from a friend. It’s a very old mouse. It does not support inertia scrolling. But the wheel was loose. So if I spin it hard enough, the scroll action continues even after my finger is off the wheel. Very handy to zip around long documents.

The update also brings additional gesture support: three-finger swipes. I can almost abandon MagicPrefs… except that I still want support for a centre button click that MagicPrefs makes possible. It’s also something indispensable, since I’ve gotten so used to it on the Mighty Mouse. Maybe I’ll have to wait for yet another Apple update.

In other news, Apple has also launched the Magic Trackpad (a standalone one), as well as battery charger (comes with 6 rechargeable batteries). Neither seems particularly interesting.

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Sometimes, I think we’re doomed. Our IT, our cyberspace, they all belong to hackers. Hackers of the bad sort. The world is at their mercy. It’s one thing for the layman to be lost and give up in defeat. But it’s quite another thing for an IT professional to think of computer viruses as part and parcel of IT.

Okay, I know, computer viruses are indeed rampant and everywhere. But if it is on your own computer, you don’t just give up and surrender, do you? I’m talking about IT professionals here.

Some time ago I was stunned by the remarks of the keynote speaker of a security conference, who apparently was resigned to sharing her notebook with a virus. It is just so bizarre that an IT security professional would say such a thing, and more so in an IT security conference.

So what happened? Well, to safeguard the anonymity of the person, system and circumstances involved (it’s a security system too, after all), let’s just say: System administrator didn’t actually consider the virus infection to be a significant event that had to be dealt with urgently. In fact, the said system administrator was, like the above keynote speaker, resigned to living with the virus.

I think we have a serious problem. Not that I don’t know already.

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I’ve been struggling to build CyanogenMod ROM from source for my Nexus One. It’s actually not very difficult once you’ve figured out how to do it. That’s the biggest hurdle: figuring out how to do it, because it is not easy when the various guides on the Internet are often incomplete, inaccurate, or just simply out-dated. So, I’ve decided to put together what I’ve learnt into a how-to guide for the benefit of other like-minded users. Of course, given that Android is evolving so rapidly, as are the various mods, I shan’t be surprised that some day I might also run out of steam keeping my guide up-to-date.

You can find my guide here: Building CyanogenMod 6 from Source

Why would you want to build your own ROM? Well, the reasons are not very different from why people want to build their own Linux kernel, or build an entire distro from scratch (e.g. LFS). Or, so that you could simply sync in the latest source changes and be forever on the bleeding edge of the latest Android ROM.

By the way, if you want the latest CyanogenMod but you’re not skillful enough to build your own ROM, you could just download the automatic nightly builds. But remember, when you are on the nightly builds… they represent work-in-progress, so expect some things will break. There could be bugs that the developers already know and don’t care for them to be reported over and over again.

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So say crisis communication experts, Professor Matthew Seeger and Chris Lehane, quoted by mainstream Consumer Reports. The widespread complaints about the iPhone 4 antenna problems were confirmed in a lab experiment by Consumer Report, leading to their recommendation against the iPhone 4.

The lab experiment, which involved connecting several iPhone 4 to simulated cell towers in a radio frequency isolation chamber, showed that signal levels fell as much as 20dB when the lower left corner of the phone was covered.

We’ve read and heard so many reports about various tests and experiments to “confirm” the antenna problem. But this is by far the most scientific test (at least it looks like) to date. Furthermore, for a mainstream media to boldly not recommend the iPhone 4, that’s something pretty startling. (I mean, after all, Consumer Report risks incurring the divine wrath of Apple Inc…)

Consumer Report found that taping the antenna gap in the lower left corner with “thick, non-conductive material” helped alleviate the problem. A duct tape would work, although it would certainly make the iPhone 4 pretty ugly. Or, you could put the phone in a protective casing, which Apple recommends. Or just hold the phone differently, as Steve Jobs recommends.

Practically every product that Apple has launched has faced some sort of “big problem” that fuels bigger problems like class action suits. This seems like one of the biggest challenge yet. It seems like a pretty fatal mistake if the signal problems are truly due to a design issue. I can’t wait to see how Apple responds to this, and of course, whether there would be an iPhone 4 recall.

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There are 10 screws on the underside of the MacBook Pro. These screws hold the bottom cover that upon removal, reveals the battery and hard disk. For some time now, there is this little screw in the corner that has been causing me some discomfort. It pokes out slightly, and because the edge of the screw head is quite sharp, it scratches my skin when I slide my hand/finger over it. It’s not bad enough to cause injury, of course, but you’d expect Apple products to have a nice smooth finish and this protruding screw just seems wrong.

Actually, Apple products look nice and smooth, but their manufacturing isn’t all that fantastic. I’ve heard many people complain about many different types of physical defect. I, too, was unfortunate enough to have received a MacBook with a warped trackpad. I was wondering if this protruding screw is yet another of their manufacturing problems.

I finally got down to locating a suitably tiny philips screwdriver. I removed and re-tightened the offending screw. Doesn’t work. Then, I thought I would just remove the entire bottom cover, reseat it and put it back. Ok… 10 screws to remove. Wow, a small little discovery.

The 10 screws look the same on the bottom cover. But when they have been removed, it turns out that there are 3 different types of screws. All have the same head. There are two types of lengths: a long one and a short one. The short screws have two different tread depth. Total of three distinct types. The funny thing is that the different types of screws are not uniformly placed either.

Hmm, I wondered if perhaps someone assembled the screws back wrong? Okay… let’s try swapping the offending protruding screw with another one somewhere else. Bingo… I got all the screws back in nicely so that nothing protrudes.

So… someone assembled my MacBook Pro wrongly?

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No, it’s not the dessert. Well, actually it is, but it isn’t the real thing. So there’s nothing to worry about. I suppose only Android users will understand what I’m talking about.

Yes, that means I’ve caught up with the bleeding edge again. Android 2.2, in the form of CyanogenMod’s 6.0.0 pre-alpha2, is finally in my phone. Oh, I’ve been trying various builds previously for like just 10 minutes or so before I revert. But now it’s working quite well, so it’s staying.

Android 2.2, codenamed Froyo (short for Frozen Yogurt), is Google’s latest version of its mobile operating system for phones (and perhaps tablets and other such devices in future). The SDK was released in May 2010, and shortly after ROMs became available over-the-air to some devices. There are a bunch of new features, not the least including OS speed, memory, and performance optimizations we would have come to expect. But the performance improvements for applications are going to be significant because of a new JIT implementation and JavaScript engine in the browser.

I consider myself a late adopter of Android. I was resistant initially because I’ve many complaints about its “openness”, and also the lack of decent hardware then. But it’s funny how I now find myself building ROMs, tweaking kernels, while many of the earlier adopters I know are happy to just use the phone as a phone. Even the people more experienced than me dabbing with non-PC hardware are highly averse to hacking their Nexus One… (or maybe they don’t trust my baking skills…)

Building Android hasn’t been very plain sailing. Of course, once you’ve figured out all the problems, it’s pretty straight-forward albeit time consuming. But before that, there are many stumbling blocks due to the lack of clear and correct documentation. There are bits and pieces of information here and there, but sometimes they are out-dated and have become incorrect.

Take for example the requirement for JDK 1.5, where official instructions have (as of right now still the case) clearly saying JDK 1.6 won’t work. But it turns out you really need JDK 1.6, and that JDK 1.5 won’t work. Yeah, that was a hurdle I crossed some time ago.

Then, moving from CM5 (Android 2.1) to CM6 (Android 2.2) has presented new “problems”, which again, once I’ve figured them out, it’s really quite simple. I plan to write a how-to some time just to help like-minded people who want to build from source, but I don’t know when. (Actually I’ve been planning to do that a long time ago… it’s still not happening.)

Tinkering with a phone OS seems like fun for now. It’s like how I was tinkering with Linux back in the 1990s. (Since the era of Yggdrasil, I might add… I bet most people never heard of it before.) I imagine, though, eventually I will want a phone that just works. It’s like how I went from Linux to Mac OS X. I still use Linux of course, but on a desktop or notebook that I sit in front of and use daily. Android has matured much faster than Linux distros though, so perhaps it will work as an OS that just works. For now, there are little things broken here and there that I have to work around.

Things like, for example, the lack of Bluetooth DUN. Yeah, it seems the Android people prefer WiFi AP or USB tethering. But I want Bluetooth DUN. USB is silly, you have to plug in a cable. WiFi is half as bad, because you still have to reach for the phone to turn on WiFi tethering. Bluetooth DUN is so elegant. Leave the phone where it is. Just activate tethering from the notebook. Okay, perhaps one day when leaving WiFi AP on permanently like we might do with Bluetooth doesn’t use any more battery than Bluetooth does… it might be as useful as Bluetooth DUN. There are other things too, like for example, the inability to send a contact’s business card via SMS. At least not without add-on apps. I consider this a core functionality.

Luckily Android isn’t as horrid as how the iPhone started out. No cut-and-paste. My goodness. In 2007, no cut-and-paste.

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I finally got to lay my hands on an Apple iPad. It looks nice, and it feels light. I couldn’t feel the bare metal though, because the owner refused to take off the protective cover. But I’m sure there would be no surprises, seeing how much the iPad has already been described in tremendous details all over the media. I still remain unmoved, however. What in the world would I use an iPad for? It’s not going to replace a MacBook Pro, and it’s not something compact enough to bring around outside of work when I don’t have a bag to stuff it in.

I did see how the iPad was very useful for farming though. Yes, those Farm Wars kind of farming. Farming on a phone is too difficult given how tiny the screen is. Farming on a notebook or desktop isn’t as fun because it is not touch-enabled.

I don’t suppose people buy iPad to do farming or farming-like applications. (Or perhaps they do?)

But regardless what I think, the iPads are selling very well. The iPhone 4 is doing even better. I’m afraid one day, “phone” == “iPhone”. It’s not a phone if it isn’t an iPhone. Then it gets very problematic, not least because Steve Jobs decides what a phone is and what a phone can do. Or not do. Like it won’t run flash. Like multitasking revolves around 7 crippled services.

I can’t help but think that the i-things are not actually keeping pace technologically.

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The new iPhone 4 has been announced at WWDC 2010. Right on cue, as everyone expected. It also looks exactly like what we expected, since we got a preview thanks to a leaked prototype got into the hands of Gizmodo earlier. As I skimmed through the keynote, the renaming of the “iPhone OS” to “iOS” briefly caught my attention. I wonder if Cisco will take issue with Apple over that name. After all, “IOS” has been the Cisco software since forever. I was beginning to wonder if the iPhone 4 would be anything exciting at all.

Well, I think the iPhone 4 has finally come of age. I still take issue with what Apple calls “multitasking in all applications”, but suffice to say, there are now ways for applications to operate in the background. Alright, we already knew multitasking was coming with iOS 4.

In terms of hardware, apart from the physical form that we can see from the prototypes, there are some new exciting changes. Apple is using their own A4 processor in the new iPhone 4. The main camera on the back is now 5 megapixels, with LED flash, and there is also a front camera. Videoconferencing is now supported in what Apple calls “FaceTime”. Battery life is said to last 40% longer. The screen resolution is doubled to 960×640, making for pixel density so high they cannot be seen by the naked eye.

The design of the iPhone 4 has a more industrial look to it. I thought it looked more clunky. The old design was smooth and curvy, not something I like either. I think the industrial look is fine, just that there are too many intrusive (extrusive?) details in the frame.

Do I like the iPhone 4? Well, I used to be very critical of Android. Not just about physical hardware, but also about the software, ecosystem, etc. Things started to turn around with the Motorola Milestone, and then with the Nexus One. I think, things are starting to turn around with the iPhone 4.

The trouble I have with the iPhone is its software and ecosystem. I don’t think Apple plans to change any of that in the foreseeable future. Apple’s tagline for this iPhone 4 announcement “This changes everything. Again.”… Not quite so.

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