Possible Workarounds:

1. Download the combo installer from Apple support website.

2. Run the installer, restart into 10.7.3 and use Disk Utility. This will ensure that there are no broken permissions or other disk-related issues.

3. If you have an issue applying the combo installer, try booting your computer into Safe Mode (hold Shift during boot up until the desktop or login window appears).

4. If not resolved, you’ll need to find another Mac. Boot the problem system in Target Disk Mode (hold down the “T” key during startup). Connect to another Mac and run the combo installer on the other Mac against the problem machine’s boot drive by using Thunderbolt or FireWire.

Worst case scenarios, your Mac has been so badly affected by the update that the above will not work.

If you made a Time Machine backup before doing the update, restore it and apply the combo installer. That should fix it.

If All Fails…

1. Boot into the Recovery partition (hold down the Option key during boot).

2. Go ahead and Select “Disk Utility” from under Menu and mount the combo installer image file.

3. Choose “Terminal” under Menu and run the following:

“installer -pkg /Volumes/Mac\ OS\ X\ 10.7.3\ Update\ Combo/MacOSXUpdCombo10.7.3.pkg -target /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD”

Note: make sure to change the target to reflect the startup volume’s name.

4. Run “reboot”. If all goes well, these issues should be fixed by now!

Courtesy of 9to5Mac

Meanwhile, iPhone Dev Team member, MuscleNerd, posted a blog on their website about A5 Corona update.

This will be the first official jaibreak ever for the iPhone 4S, which was released a few months ago. It is by far the most challenging iDevice to jailbreak to-date.

With the formation of the “Dream Team”, they’ve made very significant progress especially with the exploits found by French security researcher and programmer pod2g. He was the one who made iOS 5.0.1 untethered jailbreak through Corona.

Potentially, this jailbreak will be supported on the following device and iOS firmware:

• iPhone4S: 5.0 (9A334), 5.0.1 (9A405) and the revised 5.0.1 (9A406)
• iPad2: 5.0.1 (9A405)

For unlockers though, so far there’s still no unlock available. MuscleNerd is advising iPhone 4 users to stay on iOS 5.0 to increase their chances to be able to unlock their phones.

This proves how much team work can benefit everyone. Let’s hope there will be continued effort like this for future jailbreaks and unlocks.

The video shows an iPhone 4S running on iOS 5 on baseband 1.00.11 unlocked by doing a few procedures on the iPhone.

The unlock is done by “tricking” the phone that the same AT&T SIM card was used, although a T-Mobile SIM card was already inserted into the phone. It also involves activating the phone multiple times.

This “flaw” may lead to hackers developing an unlock for this latest iPhone from Apple. When this happens, Apple will definitely work on a new patch and release an update – most likely iOS 5.0.1.

The user also claimed that this method will work on iPhone 4 and 3GS. Full written instructions can be found here.

Do you have an iPhone 4S lockted to AT&T? How about a T-Mobile SIM card? How about trying the steps above and share your experience.

There are 5 different baseband versions since the iPhone 4 was released more than a year ago. They are 1.59.00, 2.10.04, 3.10.01, 4.10.01 and the latest being 4.11.08. All baseband versions can be unlocked except the newest that comes with iOS 5. That’s why it’s important to preserve your baseband before updating to iOS 5.

Follow the step-by-step instructions below:

1. Download and install iTunes 10.5 from Apple’s website.

2. Be sure to backup all your data, contacts, photos etc.

3. Download custom iOS 5 firmware for iPhone 4. This is a ‘cooked’ firmware with the baseband update portion removed. There are 2 different types that you can choose:

• If you have the official carrier SIM card, download sn0wbreeze_iPhone 4_nojb-5.0.ipsw
• If you don’t have the official carrier SIM card, download sn0wbreeze_iPhone 4-5.0.ipsw this is a “hacktivated” and “jailbroken” firmware.

4. Download the latest redsn0w from the Dev Team’s website.

5. Start redsn0w, go to Extras > Pwned DFU. This allows your iPhone to accept custom firmware. If you don’t do this, you will get error 1604, 1600 etc.

6. Connect your iPhone to your computer.

7. Hold shift (or Option on Mac) and click Restore. Select the custom iOS 5 IPSW you just downloaded.

8. Once the restore is complete, you can then activate it with your official carrier SIM card.

9. If you installed sn0wbreeze_iPhone 4-5.0.ipsw, it will be activated automatically. Please note that the jailbreak is “tethered” which means you need your computer to reboot your phone to a jailbroken state. To do this, launch Redsn0w, go to Extras and Just Boot. Follow on screen instructions.

You will notice that your baseband version has not changed. This allows you to unlock your iPhone.

There were 9 beta versions tested by developers before the final version was finally released.

If you wish to upgrade to iOS 5, you will have to use this latest version of iTunes.

So what’s new in iTunes 10.5? Apple describes below:

• iTunes in the Cloud. iTunes now stores your music and TV purchases in iCloud and makes them available on your devices anywhere, any time, at no additional cost.
• Automatic Downloads. Purchase music from any device or computer and automatically download a copy to your PC and iOS devices.
• Download Previous Purchases. Download your past music, TV, app, and book purchases again, at no additional cost. Previous purchases may be unavailable if they are no longer on the iTunes Store.
• Sync with your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch with iOS 5.
• Wi-Fi Syncing. Automatically sync your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch with iTunes any time they’re both on the same Wi-Fi network.

Go ahead and download it directly from Apple’s website.

This is currently being featured on Facebook’s website and the following features are the highlights:

• Enjoy bigger, better photos: Your photos take on new life on the iPad. They’re big, high-res and easy to flip through—like a real photo album.
• Focus on what matters: With less on the screen, it’s easier to zoom in on your friends’ photos, updates and stories.
• Navigate anywhere, fast: Just tap, slide or pinch to get from one screen to another and back again in no time.
• Never lose your place: Use simplified navigation to send a message, see your notifications or browse your bookmarks without switching screens.
• Play games on the go: Play your favorite Facebook games wherever you are, and on a bigger screen.
• Tap to send messages: A simple dropdown menu makes it easy to scan and send messages without visiting your inbox.
• Games & Apps: Play games and access your favorite apps on the go
• Navigation: Send a message or see your notifications from any screen, and swipe to browse Facebook without losing your place in News Feed
• Bookmarks: Your groups, pages and apps are all in your left-hand menu, and the ones you use most are right on top
• Search: Search for anything on Facebook—people, apps, pages and more—without having to click around or switch views
• Security: We’ve added a few updates to make the app more secure

You can download version 4.0.1 from here.

Some users reported that the app crashes when launched, simply uninstall it and reinstall it again should fix the issue. Version 4.0.1 has addressed this issue, though.

Simply put, BlueStacks offers an easy and free way for end users to run Android apps on their Windows-powered computers.

BlueStacks knows the growing market for Android apps will have a place for virtualized apps to run on computers and future Windows tablets e.g. the upcoming Windows 8. Quoted from BlueStacks:

With 56-percent of smartphone consumers purchasing an Android device in the last three months[1], it’s apparent that Android is rapidly becoming a preferred operating system. The BlueStacks App Player now gives users one-click access to their favorite Android apps right on their Windows PC. Both Windows and Android users stand to benefit greatly from this capability.

Potentially, if you’re a developer, you’ll be killing two birds with one stone when you’re writing an app for Android which can be ported automatically to Windows-based operating systems via their player.

For application developers in the Android ecosystem, the BlueStacks App Player opens up a market of over a billion PC users. BlueStacks does not require any additional work on the part of developers and the apps run unmodified on the Windows PC.

Interested to test the Alpha version? Head to their website now!

As you probably already aware, Google’s brand new mobile operating system is known as the Ice Cream Sandwich – sort of a “combination” of two versions of mobile operating system which are Honeycomb and Gingerbread.

The leak which is available for download is the Android Market application. Based on the screen shot above, there aren’t many visual changes compared to the current version but there may be a lot of surprises under the hood.

Android fans who like to “test drive” leaked apps can download it here at their own risks, as unreleased apps can be unstable and may affect your device.

Just unlock your Android device press menu > Settings > Applications and check the Unknown Sources box so you can side-load apps.

If for some reason you have issues installing this, Droid-Life came up with the following (your device must be rooted already):

1. Download the file from above (Phonesky.apk) to your SD card.
2. In Root Explorer, find the file you just downloaded and copy it.
3. Move into /system/app and hit the R/W button to mount – then paste the file.
4. Find Vending.apk and rename it to something like Vending.apk1.
5. Long press on Phonesky.apk and rename it to Vending.apk.
6. Afterwards, long press on it again and choose “Permissions.”
7. Change the permissions to following, hit the OK button and reboot.

Good luck and have fun!

With the updated iOS 5 and a new Apple A5 dual-core processor, the updated iPhone won’t be needing a bigger RAM.

Perhaps Apple has a reason why not to upgrade the memory – it can be to save cost, or simply the new processor is really fast enough to handle high volume of data input/output. The new iOS 5 which will be released in the next few days may be more than capable to manage high amount of memory used by different apps simultaneously.

Whatever it is we’ll know as soon as Apple has started delivering pre-order iPhone 4S to its customers.

Kindle Fire

The Kindle Fire is an android-powered tablet which runs on a custom android OS. It is compatible with apps from android market. Main specifications:

• 7-inch Touch Screen
• Two-point multitouch screen
• Custom Android OS
• WiFi
• The Apps pre-installed on it include Amazon’s Android Appstore, Kindle store, Amazon MP3, Amazon Cloud Player, Amazon Cloud Drive, Kindle Cloud Reader, Prime Instant Video, Fox and NBC universal.

It doesn’t have a camera, microphone or 3G connectivity.

In addition to the above, Amazon also designed a “smart” browser for Kindle Fire which is called Amazon Silk. It reduces on load times by splitting the workload between the tablet and the Amazon Web Services Cloud.

Kindle Fire’s will be priced at $199 and comes with 30-days of Amazon Prime.

Kindle Touch

The Kindle Touch is a touchscreen e-reader like the traditional Kindle Reader. What you’ll notice right away is that it no longer has keyboards on it. The screen is segregated with three touch zones: the left portion to go to previous page, middle portion for menu and the right portion to go to next page.

The touch technology is based IR (infrared) touch. A new menu system called as EasyReach is built into the operating system.

The price? Kindle Touch Wifi version is priced at $99 while the 3G version will have a price tag of $149.

Kindle

.. And finally, the classic Kindle will be available for just $79. It’s 30% lighter than its predecessors, 18% smaller, and turns pages 10% faster.