Train iPhone 5s Touch ID

Touch ID is the name for the fingerprint reader in the new iPhone 5s. When you configure it, you have the possibility to register a number of fingers (5) with which you can unlock your iPhone.

Settings -> General -> Touch ID & Passcode -> Touch ID

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For some reason this always failed after a couple of days on my phone. For some reason the fingers didn't 'register' properly, and I was forces to use the PIN.

The way to solve this (temporary) was to re-register the fingers, until I read about a way of training the device.
When you're in the menu where you normally register your fingerprints, you can register additional print data for each finger by just placing one og the already registered fingers on the home button. When the finger is recognized the registered finger entry on the iPhone turns grey for a second (as shown in the screenshot). Doing this for every finger a couple of times increases the registered data for those fingers. The more data that's registered the better the chance that the finger keeps getting recognized in the future.

UPDATE: With the iOS 7.1 update the Touch ID responds a lot better.

Updating to iOS 7.0.5 Turned Ugly

During the update of my iPhone it got stuck in the so-called recovery mode. This means that everything on the iPhone is lost, and that you need to restore everything from a backup. Thankfully, the last backup was made 10 minutes before the upgrade process began. So no worries there.

The panic started to kick in when the actual recovery process terminated with an unknown error (17).

An unknown error occurred (17)

No matter what I tried, the error kept re-occurring

Searching the Interwebs,  I founds several forums mentioning modifying the hosts file on your computer. Any entries referring to the apple.com domain should be removed.

Checking the hosts file out (located @ /etc/hosts on a Mac), I found a reference to a gs.apple.com with a specific IP address. At that point things started to dawn on me....

A couple of years ago I started to experiment with creating your own MobileMe thing (so I would have no need to purchase a MobileMe account back then). In that process you needed to fake some Apple web-servers. One of those servers was gs.apple.com.

After removing the entry from my hosts file and rebooting my iMac, the recovery process went flawlessly.

This 'experience' made me wonder; Did the 'crash' of the iPhone happen because of the hosts file entry? If so, this could be disastrous if someone made these servers unresponsive (e.g. DNS hack, or whatever), since the iPhone would become a brick. At least for as long as these servers are not accessible....

Autumn Is Coming

Empty Theater in Black and White

Taken when we went to see 'The Bourne Legacy' in our local theater.

For those who wonder; The movie wasn't bad. It was a good start for a new action series starring Jeremy.

Nikon Learn & Explore iPhone App (part deux)

It took them long enough, but they finally released the Nikon Learn & Explore app for the iPhone in the Dutch iTunes store. I'm still wondering why it took them a couple of months to do so.

Enough negativity for now. Initial impression is that it gives you something nice to read with excellent (example) photos. No matter if you're just starting or a more advanced photographer, there's always something to learn (and explore).

Dutch KPN Second iPhone carrier?

A page on the website of KPN (the biggest Dutch telecom provider, and former employer) suggests this.

At the moment, the iPhone is exclusively sold by T-Mobile, but for as long as the iPhone has been in the Netherlands, there have been rumors about other carriers.

A prank, a mistake, or somebodies wettest dream? I have no idea. All I know that the page is there (today), and that I saved it to make sure it stays 'there'.

A mirror of the 'analogue' pages can be found here.