Unlocking an iPhone

Oh dear, a sad dead iPhone after a day under water. Drying out by burying in rice etc has failed to revive it. So options are:

a) get a cheap basic phone and make do with that for 2 months til my contract runs out. Trying that, but I so miss my iPhone.
b) buy a new iPhone - but need to fill up piggy bank for that, better wait for contract end.
c) take it to an Appple store, the kiss of life from the geniuses may succeed. It didn't, but they offer a refurb replacement for £119. Probably the best option, as it can eventually be sold on for a good price.
d) buy a second hand iPhone on eBay.

Guess which option I chose ... yes, you're right, not the best: option d). So now I find myself getting to grips with 'unlocking' your phone.

A mobile is 'locked' when it's been bought as part of a contract with an operator, so it will only work on that network. You can get it 'unlocked' in one of those dodgy looking stalls and shops, or by the operator, often they charge about £20.

My nearly-new acquisition had been unlocked from Virgin, but caution:

I reset the contents (go round with something called "Mum's iphone"? No thanks!) and whoops, it revealed a lock on O2.

To get it unlocked I have to borrow or buy an O2 sim card and put that in it. Request O2 to unlock it and leave it in for about a day, voila, it should then be 'unlocked'. I hope.

Free if I can borrow an O2 sim, or I have to get a pay-as-you-go sim and put £15 worth of calls on it.

Mac - 2 useful applications

If you can remember way back on Macs, they used to show a little icon top R. on the screen to show what application you were in at the time. Well handy, doubtless why Apple abolished this useful feature a long time ago.



However, thanks to Eerko Vissering for developing the little application called Focus, which does the same thing. I've used it with Leopard / Snow Leopard for ages. Eerko has updated it to run on Lion / Mountain Lion. Thanks Eerko!

http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/11356/focus
http://eerko.nl/software/






Another application I use all the time is QuickApps. This puts a little icon in your menu bar - click on it to show a dropdown list of all your applications.

http://download.cnet.com/QuickApps/3000-2344_4-201757.html

Preview / Mountain Lion - print selected pages solved

Huh! after much whinging - Yes! one can print just selected pages in Preview. So simple:

• Open a pdf file, or several pdf files, in Preview
• Set it to display thumbnails of the pages in the Sidebar (under View)
• Select the thumbnails of the pages you'd like to print, in the usual ways. You can select pages in several different pdfs, or indeed all the pages in different pdfs. A way to combine images into one pdf file.
• Tell it to Print - either cmd-P or File > Print

There! in the print dialogue box, you'll see an option: Selected pages in sidebar.

Then you can either print just the pages you want, or save them as a new pdf.

If you're still in Snow Leopard (OS 10.6) then to print selected pages, select as above, and the command is in the File menu below Print.