I discovered this when I went to pair the iPad 2 with an iCade system I had recently picked up after being heavily discounted.  Everything else on the iPad was fine: wireless, 3G, etc – just freak’n bluetooth.  I tried restarting the iPad the “nice way” using the swipe to shut down option.  That didn’t work.  I then tried a “hard” reset of the device by holding down the top button and power button until the device resets.  No dice.  I even went as far as doing a full blown restore via iTunes* (after backing everything up of course).  Still a no go. Damn, this sucks.  I have this nice shiny iCade to play with, not to mention $10 worth of apps I purchased to go along with it, and I can’t get the damn bluetooth to work on my iPad 2.  WTF?

Step 2 – console.

I write apps, so I have Xcode etc on my mac(s).  So, what I did next was to plug the iPad in, fire  up Xcode, open Organizer, select my iPad and view the console.  If you didn’t know, this is a super handy way viewing what is going on inside your iDevice.  Once hooked up, it didn’t take long to spot the problem:

Feb 14 10:29:24 unknown kernel[0] <Debug>: BTServer[64] Builtin profile: BlueTool (sandbox)
Feb 14 10:29:24 unknown com.apple.BTServer[64] <Notice>: bluetooth reset was pulsed 100 ms
Feb 14 10:29:24 unknown com.apple.BTServer[64] <Notice>: bluetooth wake is now ON
Feb 14 10:29:24 unknown com.apple.BTServer[64] <Notice>: Issued HCI Reset
Feb 14 10:29:24 unknown com.apple.BTServer[64] <Notice>: DeviceTree speed = 3000000
Feb 14 10:29:35 unknown com.apple.BTServer[64] <Notice>: Chipset.cpp:109 runBlueTool Default Error HANG: Waited 10 seconds for BlueTool to run boot
Feb 14 10:29:35 unknown com.apple.BTServer[64] <Notice>: PowerManager.cpp:168 powerInitEvent Core Critical Init failed, still in high power – BM3 STATUS 1
Feb 14 10:29:35 unknown com.apple.BTServer[64] <Notice>: Device not open yet, use ‘device’ to open it.
Feb 14 10:29:35 unknown com.apple.BTServer[64] <Notice>: Opening com.apple.uart.bluetooth @ 115200 baud.

Here is a link to a paste bin of the log if you need it.

So, from this log, you can easily see the device was failing to start the necessary components required to use the bluetooth radio, which sucks.  I further verified this by comparing this to a console log of another iPad that had a working bluetooth radio.  Given the results of this log, and the methods of repair attempted thus far, this likely indicates a hardware problem.  This was pretty much my guess after a full restore failed to fix it, but now it is confirmed.

Step 3 – Apple Support

Well, unfortunately it seemed to me that this was going to beyond my ability to repair since it seems to be a hardware issue.  Time to contact Apple Support.  If you have never called Apple support before, you should know that they seriously rock.  Apple really has the entire process down pat.  For this instance, I started on their web site and entered my iPad’s serial number (found on the back of the iPad among other places).  After clicking continue, Apple tells you the status of your support.  Since I had NOT purchased AppleCare, my iPad had already expired for phone support, but the device itself was still eligible for hardware support.  I continue through the process which is just a couple of clicks.  At the end, Apple will call you.  That is right.  You don’t even have to pick up the damn phone, they will call you so you don’t have to wait on hold.  Talk about epic.  You can pick from having them call immediately (which I did), or at a scheduled time.  It was about 20 seconds from the time I hit the button to call me now from the time the phone rang.  I was seriously impressed.

It only took a few minutes for the Apple rep to verify that the problem was indeed a hardware issue, and that they would send me a new iPad. This is awesome because the nearest Apple Store is about 3 hours away.  The rep informed me I would need to take the iPad to the nearest UPS store, and they would package it and mail it for me, pre-paid.  However, the rep went one step further.  He looked to find how close the nearest UPS store is.  This happens to be about 15 miles away.  The rep informed me of this, and said since it was “so far away” that he would just have a UPS box delivered to me along with a pre-paid label and I could just drop it off at any UPS drop off location.  That my friends is service.  As disappointed as I am that my iPad is having some issues, I was totally blown away at the level of customer service I received.

Most companies have a 90 day warrantee (if that) on consumer electronics.  Apple’s standard is one year.  Then, if you want to double that, you can purchase Apple Care.  With their level of customer service, it is well worth it.  I’ve waited on hold with numerous companies over the years, and have never had customer service as good as I have from Apple.

Conclusion

Apple is replacing my iPad for me, for free.  Apple support rocks.  Hard.

* After doing the restore, I set the iPad up as a “new” device instead of restoring from my backup to ensure it wasn’t something to do with my configuration / profile.

From your iPhone/iPod/iPad:

Step one: Open the app store app

Step 2: Tap featured on the bottom tab bar, and if it isn’t already selected, tap either “New” or “What’s Hot” on the top tool bar.  Then scroll to the bottom, and tap “Redeem”.

Step 3: Enter your promo code!

One you have submitted your code, the app will automatically download to your iOS device.  The app will usually install to the first available space you have on the device OTHER than the first page.  So, if you have an open spot on page 2, then it will be there, if page 2 is full, then it will be on 3, etc etc.

If you entered a code from an iTunes gift card instead of a promo code from a developer, then the sum of that giftcard will be applied to your iTunes account, which you can then use to buy some cool apps.

From iTunes

If you happen to be at your computer with promo code (or iTunes gift card) in hand, you can also enter it in iTunes.

Step 1: Open iTunes, and click “Store”

Step 2: Find the “Quick Links” section on the right hand side of the iTunes app, and click “Redeem”

Step 3: Enter you code, and click Redeem

This will start downloading the app if it was a promo code, or apply the cash value to your iTunes account if it was a gift card.  The only drawback about doing it this way for promo codes, is that you have to sync your device with iTunes before it will be installed on your device, which kinda sucks.  The easiest way by far for promo codes is to enter the code on your device.

After doing some searching and testing a number of apps, I ran across an app  (appropriately named “UDID Tool“) that met all my requirements:

• Straight and to the point, show’s me the UDID immediately, no having to tap another button to get it
• Can send an email with the UDID from the app OR copy to the clipboard
• Clean interface, not something I’d be hesitant or embarrassed to send to a client.
• Designed to run on the iPhone, iPod, and the iPad

While true, an iPhone app can run on the iPad, it sure is nice to have an app that is already designed for the iPad and not look like crap when blown up to 2x.  The other big thing for me was to have an app free of branding, spam, ads, etc that I could send to potential beta testers or clients, and this app fits the bill.  It’s clean, looks like a tool, and does exactly what it advertises, and is free.

If you are in need of a tool to send to beta testers, or are a beta tester that needs a quick way of finding your UDID to send to the developer, this is the tool for you.

You can download UDID Tool from Apple’s app store by clicking this link: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/udid-tool/id377602501?mt=8

I have run into this a couple of times now, and both times it was because I was using Google’s Chrome browser.  For whatever reason, Chrome can’t seem to play nicely with the iOS provisioning portal and screws up the upload.  If you switch over to Safari, you should have no problems submitting the certificate signing request.  If you are still getting an error, then the problem is some where else.

If you get this screen and are using Chrome:

Switch to Safari and you should get this:

Moral of the story:

*** Terminating app due to uncaught exception ‘NSUnknownKeyException’, reason: ‘[<SomeViewController 0x13e190> setValue:forUndefinedKey:]: this class is not key value coding-compliant for the key someObjectView.’

Nearly every time I’ve seen this so far, it has been because I had removed a view (UIButton, UILabel, etc) and had forgotten to remove the connection in Interface Builder.  So, if you are seeing this error and your code looks fine, remember to check IB!

It is a good idea to run this first, it will show you what will be deleted:

find . -type d -name .svn -depth

Then run this to delete the .svn directories

find . -type d -name .svn -depth -exec rm -rf {} “;”

Be sure to have the semi-colon at the end in quotes, otherwise terminal may “eat” it and the script won’t run.  At least that was the case on my system :p

Click here to view the list on Natalia’s website.

So, I go about my work the next day, everything is going fairly well.  I fire up foobar (my media player of choice) and the first problem pops up.  Foobar is trying to access my music located on my NAS via a map drive and is having issues.  So, I think maybe it is just a permissions deal, so I try to login to that device via explorer.  It fails too.  Now no Internet access either. WTF.  I fire up my Mac Book Pro, it can hit the NAS and the web just fine, so the problem isn’t the NAS and it isn’t the network.  I reboot the windows box (that’s the default fix for windows machines right?).  It comes right up, I’m back online.  I try to access my mapped drive.  Again, everything network related fails.  At this point, I am having thoughts of downgrading to Vista (or maybe even XP).  I mean, this is basic networking here, what gives.

After saying some choice words and doing a little exploring, I eventually made my way to Windows 7 Network and Sharing center, which shows the problem:

After clicking the little warning sign between This Computer and Network, windows starts its automated network diagnostic tool.  After it runs and does its thing, it turns out that the problem it fixed was: “The default gateway is not available”.

Well, this seemed to fix the problem, but only temporarily.  After either some random amount of time, or if I tried to access local area network devices, or just had a lot of web traffic in general, my network connection would go down, I’d go through the process of repairing the default gateway and be back on my way.  The problem is, this happened often, way to often - especially for a “modern” OS.  Using the network diagnostic tool to fix this was simply a patch, not a solution.

This madness led me to do some more digging, which is when I came across this link.  Basically, the problem is for motherboards that have that use the Nvidia nForce chip-set.  The problem is not the chip-set, but the default drivers that ship for it with Windows 7.  Yay Windows.  If you open the network controller properties (Right click on My Computer, then click Manage, then Device Manager, then Network adapters, then right click on the adapter you wish to view, then click properties, then click the Driver tab) you should see a screen like this:

Notice the Driver Provider section, it should say Microsoft.  The solution to this problem is to install the nForce drivers for Windows Vista (64 bit in my case).  Doing this is fairly simple.  You will need to go to Nvidia’s website and download the driver for your particular motherboard.  When you get to a page, you will see a screen like this:

Be sure to pick nForce as the product type.  Now the tricky part, you need to know the series and product.  I’ve had my machine for a while, and really didn’t remember which one it is.  So, I used a super handy tool called CPU-Z.  This tool inspects your hardware, and gives you very detailed info on it.  Using this I was able to determine that I have the 5 series 570 SLI chipset (yeah I know, I need to upgrade).  After you run it, click the Mainboard tab to get to the info you want for the download page.  Below is a screen shot of what you should expect to see when you run CPU-Z:

What you will end up downloading from Nvidia’s site will be an exe – 15.25_nforce_winvista64_international_whql.exe – in my case.  If you try to double click the exe and run the setup, it will NOT install what you want.  What you have to actually do is extract the files from the exe.  I used win rar for this task, but you can use what ever archive utility of your choosing.  With win rar it was as simple as right clicking the file and choosing Extract Files from the context menu.

After you have extracted the driver files, you will need to open the network controller properties (Right click on My Computer, then click Manage, then Device Manager, then Network adapters, then right click on the adapter you wish to view, then click properties, then click the Driver tab) and click the update driver button.  You will then need to choose Browse my computer for driver software, then Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer, then Have Disk, then navigate to the directory where you extracted the driver files and hit ok.  The screen should look like this:

You want to choose the one marked NVIDIA, then hit next and just follow through the dialog from there.  After the wizard is complete, your network adapter will be fixed and you won’t have the super annoying The default gateway is not available problem any longer.  If you check your network controller settings, they should now look like this:

Notice that the Driver Provider now says NVIDIA.  If your controller screen looks like this, then your inter-tube-webz are now fixed.

Enjoy.

I wasn’t doing to well (winning wise) at the time of the video, but ended up winning a little over $100 after hitting a 9 capture combination!  Unfortunately I didn’t get a video of that one.  Oh well, maybe next time.

The Dreaded Recovery Mode Screen

So, my saga started after trying to apply the latest patch from apple for my iPhone which was to guard against the “serious” SMS vulnerability that had come to light after the Black Hat conference in Vegas. More info on that can be found here.

Anyway, after downloading the 297 MB patch in iTunes, some error occurred half way through the patch process that left my iPhone in recovery mode.   None of the current “Hold power button & home button for 30 seconds while standing on your head and rubbing your stomach at the same time” type fixes would get the phone out of this dreaded recovery mode.  The solution from apple is to hit the restore button, and wait for 3 hours (exaggerated, I know but that’s what it feels like) for your phone to be restored – then try to reapply the patch.  Well, that pretty much just sucks, so I went about looking for a better solution.

As it turns out, a better solution is out there.  There is a program, for both Mac and Windows, called iRecovery.  It is a command line tool and will save you much time.  I learned of its existence from this link:  http://ipitg.net/how-to-kick-iphone-out-of-recovery-mode-mac/

I have copied their instructions below, just in case they should be removed from their site for whatever reason.

The Process:
Download iRecovery (for windows, go here & here).
Install iRecovery.
Open /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app
Run this command: “iRecovery -s”
Type: “printenv”
Look for this variable in the list: “auto-boot”. Most likely, yours will be set to false (hence your problem).
If “auto-boot” is set to “false” or isn’t present at all, follow the rest of this guide. If it’s set to true, try restarting your iPhone/iTouch by holding home and power for 10 seconds.
Type this: “setenv auto-boot true”.
Type: “saveenv”.
Type: “reboot”.
Your iPhone/iTouch should now reboot into normal mode.

This worked on my iPhone 3GS running the 3.0.1 OS.

Now go forth, and fix your iPhone.