Stephen Radford

Battle of the Boxes: Apple TV, Fire TV, Android TV, Chromecast

18 December 2017 by Stephen Radford

A few years ago I "cut the cord", cancelled my TV License and cable subscription. Back then I used a 3rd generation Apple TV with subscriptions to Netflix and Now TV alongside my vast number of YouTube subscriptions. I've since tried what feels like every box or stick that displays web content on your TV. All have their own interfaces, experiences, content options, and trade offs. Which box works for you will depend on your requirements. My Requirements While your requirements will undoubtedly differ I think it's important to understand what requirements I'm testing these boxes and sticks…

Install High Sierra Emoji on Older Versions

29 November 2017 by Stephen Radford

I'm being extremely stubborn and refusing to update to High Sierra at the moment for good reason. The only thing that's really been annoying me is the fact I can't see emoji sent from iOS 11 or macOS 10.13 on Sierra but there's an easy fix. Emoji is just a font that renders the unicode characters. On a Mac this is called Apple Color Emoji.ttc and is located in /System/Library/Fonts. Because of this it's very easily overriden by placing a newer version in /Library/Fonts. Note the directory to place the new font in is /Library/…

Installing Fetch with Cydia Impactor

27 November 2017 by Stephen Radford

Fetch has been open source since it was removed by Apple from the App Store but the overhead of installing has always been large since it required not only a Mac but also knowledge of Xcode. I recently discovered Cydia Impactor which allows for easy install of IPAs on devices by resigning them using the user's Apple ID. Anyone can use it and there's even releases for Windows and Linux. Installation This is just going to be a super quick guide on how to install Fetch (or another IPA) on your device using Cydia Impactor. Download Impactor from cydiaimpactor.com…

Downgrading iOS 9.3.5 to iOS 6

04 October 2017 by Stephen Radford

Contents Introduction Jailbreak with Phoenix OpenSSH Downgrade to iOS 6 Introduction I may be one of the only people left still rocking an iPad 2. The only purpose it has in my life is to consume video through YouTube, Netflix, and Put.io and for that it mostly works fine but at times it is painfully slow on the latest version of iOS it will run — 9.3.5. It wasn't always slow though. I remember when I first got it and was amazed at how fast it was. Around iOS 7 when transparency, blurring, and all that crud was…

Removing the White Bars in Safari on iPhone X

14 September 2017 by Stephen Radford

The new iPhone X features a beautiful edge-to-edge display. Well, almost. There is the small issue of a notch at the top of the browser which doesn't cause an issue when viewing websites in portrait but by default does cause some issues in landscape. To accommodate the notch iOS 11 constrains websites within a "safe area" on the screen. On most websites this results in letterboxing on the left and the right. Thankfully there are two simple fixes that can be made to solve this letterboxing. background-color If your website uses a single solid colour for its background…