iPhoto No Longer Recognizing iPhone?

If you moved to iOS 5 on your iPhone and downloaded the latest version of iPhoto (that allows for Photo Stream using iCloud), you may have noticed that your iPhone is no longer recognized by iPhoto when you physically plug it into a Mac running Lion. iOS 5 brought all sorts of new features, including WiFi sync and automatic download of your phone's new photos over the last 30 days using Photo Stream (part of iCloud). But with that power comes the inevitable hiccups.

These new features and conveniences can create a problem if you had old photos hanging around on your iPhone that hadn't been transferred to iPhoto.

You might think, "Big deal, I'll just use the wang-bang new iCloud to transfer my old photos." Nope. Only new ones. What I did to fix this was to follow some of the information in the troubleshooting link below. The primary fix for me was unplugging and replugging the docking station from my Mac Pro. That seemed to fix it and now my iPhone is recognized by iPhoto, even with Photo Stream and WiFi syncing enabled. Time will tell, but always open up Image Capture to see if your computer is recognizing your iPhone's physical connection (via USB).

Try using the photo-management software built in to your computer's operating system:

Mac OS X: Open Image Capture (located in the Applications folder).

[From iOS: Unable to import photos or device not recognized as a camera]

OS X Lion: Syncing Contacts with iPhone

I guess you're thinking that this will be another commentary on OS X Lion's really ugly, new Address Book interface (along the lines of Lion's equally ugly, new iCal interface). No, it won't be that, although I am among those who don't like the change to the faux leather look (a GUI design idea that went stale about 10 years ago).

I'm talking about the Address Book's internal changes that costed me HOURS of work to get things functioning normally again…specifically, syncing information to my iPhone.

Here's the story: I thought I would be smart about my Lion upgrade. First, I waited until version 10.7.1 to go for it. Then, I ordered a brand new 1TB hard drive to install in my Mac Pro. I used Onyx to really clean up my Snow Leopard install, and then I proceeded to use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone my SL drive to the new 1 TB drive. Now I was ready to upgrade that new drive to Lion, keeping my original SL drive as a backup. Smart, huh? But Apple would get the last laugh.

I upgraded as described and everything seemed great! I love Lion's new zippiness and several of the features (though Launchpad is fairly useless for me). Then, I plugged my iPhone 3GS into the dock and synced normally with iTunes. A first glance and everything seemed fine. Wrong! I received a text message from my wife and noticed that it had her number listed instead of her name. What was this? I looked through my Contacts on the iPhone and noticed that NO CONTACTS HAD PHONE NUMBERS!!! All the other information was there: addresses, emails, notes. Just not the most important bit needed in a phone--the damn phone numbers!!!! A glance through the Address Book on the Mac showed that all the phone numbers were still there. They just wouldn't sync.

I tried all the usual troubleshooting stuff, to no avail. Realizing that my issue had something to do with syncing, I followed Apple's own guidance for advanced syncing issues. All of these steps did not help, initially, because they failed to take into account the iPhone itself. I also tried iTunes and replacing all the contacts on the iPhone, which also did not fix the issue…still no numbers. I even posted on Apple's community web site for help and got no takers. So, I went back to Apple's advanced syncing troubleshooting article and went about it from a different angle. As I touched on earlier, they never really brought the phone into the discussion much, other than saying sync normally after the troubleshooting steps.

Thinking I had an epiphany, I toyed with Address Book preferences--specifically the phone number format (which is a bit buggy at the moment); that was also ineffective. So, I decided to backup my Address Book into an archive, copy a vCard for all my contacts and groups, and then delete everything to do with Address Book from my Mac except the application--just as the article describes (remove caches, Application Support folder, and preferences). The difference is that--after doing all those steps--I also synced the phone and made sure that all my contacts were deleted from the Contacts app. I now had a virgin Address Book and a virgin Contacts app on the iPhone. From here, I reimported my contacts using the vCard into Address Book. Apple's instructions for recreating groups did NOT work; maybe it worked before Lion, but not now (this was really frustrating…trying to easily recreate groups as they described resulted in a huge amount of wasted effort, with groups that appeared reconstituted but with contacts that disappeared after restarting Address Book). So, I had to manually recreate my groups, which took HOURS (as I said). I used Quick Look to help me do this; highlighting a vCard in the Finder and pressing spacebar gives you a look at all the contacts inside each group. Then it's just a matter of searching for them in Address Book and then adding them to the recreated group. A huge waste of time!

I also need to add that I used my Address Book with Dropbox, but moving my Application Support folder back to the Library did not fix the issue either. Dropbox was not the culprit.

I imagine it's related to the coming iCloud and the changes required for syncing to that medium, but who knows. Ironic that the most important bit of information on a phone--the numbers--were omitted from the syncing process, leaving me with an essentially useless phone.

iTunes Refuses to Store Your Password?

Does your iTunes program keep 'forgetting' your password. If so, this fix may work for you. Basically, go into your iTunes account via the program (yes, you'll have to put in your password) and click "Reset Warnings" down at the bottom. You can also try Deauthorizing and then Reauthorizing your computer via iTunes, but this didn't work for me.

What seems to have worked for me (in addition to resetting warnings) is to delete the SC Info folder as detailed below.

After iTunes 9.0.1 was released, a number of users were annoyed that the check mark button for saving their password no longer worked. As a result, each purchase or app-upgrade triggers iTunes to prompt for a password.

[From Fix for iTunes 9.0.1 refusing to save your store password | iPhone Atlas - CNET Reviews]

Quit iTunes and any other open applications until only Finder is open.

Choose Go > Go to Folder.

Type /Users/Shared/SC Info and click Go.

If Finder is not already set to column view, set it by choosing View > as Columns.

Select the SC Info folder and move it to the Trash by choosing File > Move to Trash.

Restart the computer and open iTunes.

Authorize your computer to play your purchases. Note: If you have multiple accounts you will need to authorize your computer for each account. For more information on how to authorize your computer, see this article.

[From iTunes repeatedly prompts to authorize computer to play iTunes Store purchases]

iPhone Updating Same Songs Fix - UPDATED

The bottom contains the original post that I THOUGHT had fixed the problem; turns out that it didn't fix a thing. However, my frustration was apparently the frustration of many others, and the solution was forthcoming.

It turns out the culprit is jacked up ID3 tags. The solution is right in iTunes. Right-click on the offending files and select "Convert ID3 tags..." In the dialog, select the latest version of tags and then resync. Problem solved!

I updated the ID3 tags of my continuously re-synced 24 songs to the latest version 2.4 (you can do this in iTunes by right-clicking on the songs). It worked in 23 cases (1 song could not be updated as it is in .aac format because I had bought it in iTunes).

I must admit I didn't figure this out myself, this guy actually did it: http://www.kgarner.com/blog/archives/2009/07/15/itunes-keeps-syncing-the-same-44-songs-over-and-over-solved/

[From Apple - Support - Discussions - iTunes keeps syncing the same 4 songs ...]

::ORIGNAL POST:: (ignore this...it doesn't work)

This hasn't worked for everyone with this problem, but it did the trick for me. Once I reset Sync History, I stopped updating the same 20 songs from iTunes with each sync, which had been adding to the sync time and had ticked me off. All better now!

Thanks to Lynn at Apple Support

Basicall I had to reset the sync history. To do this:

Open iSync in applications
Menu item iSync / Preferences
Select Reset Sync History

The next time I sync'd my iphone it worked flawlessly (and didn't reload all my content, which I thought it might do).

[From why is my iphone "updating files"? - Mac Forums]

Apple goes 'nickle-and-dime'ing'

I do find this a bit troubling. Guess I'll wait for a pissed off developer out there to write code that will remove the DRM from my iTMS purchases for free. I would have to pay Apple a lot of money to remove the DRM from what I've bought, and since I've given them a lot of money this year already for new hardware and software, I'm in no mood. }:-( There are other convoluted solutions, of course, but many don't retain the original file's quality.

Apple has dropped DRM from iTunes — and is offering to remove their DRM from music you already bought for the low, low fee of $0.30 per song.

[From Apple: Give Us Money And We'll Remove DRM From Your Music]

iT8: Convert any file to an "audiobook"

Neat little tip...thanks!

ITunes: iTunes 8 Makes It Easy to Convert Any File to an Audiobook:

The simple trick? Just right-click a track and select Get Info, head to the Options tab, and then select Audiobook from the Media Kind drop-down menu. The file will instantly leave your Music library and head straight for your Audiobook library. To mark multiple files at once, just select them all and go through the same process. The only remaining step is to tick the Remember Position checkbox if you haven't already, and your tracks should now have easily found their way to your Audiobooks section, and even better, they should work like an audiobook.

The Joys of Moving an iTunes Library Around

One strength of Apple's approach to "tech" is to hide the details from us mere mortals. That works fine for the average user, but power users can become frustrated by Apple's deviation from the obvious. Let's consider things like iPhoto and iTunes Libraries--those rather large places on your hard drive that don't move very easily (especially iTunes Libraries).

If you're like me, you've screwed this one up more than once. Why do I not learn my lesson? Because Apple computers are so well designed and built, I typically own them for years at a time. My old AGP Power Mac G4 (I bought it as a 400 MHz single processor machine in 2000 running OS 9) just did start giving my problems, after 8 years of faithful service and more upgrades than I care to mention!

So I replaced my old G4 with a shiny, new Mac Pro. This change (and the upgrade to iTunes 8) made me feel it was time to MOVE my iTunes library back to its rightful place in my home directory from another hard disk (silly me). The last time I moved it was YEARS ago, and though something in my gut told me to beware, I went ahead and stupidly dragged the folder to my home directory anyway...like a dufus. Ingrained tech erudition would lead most nerds like myself to believe that this act simply represents Computer File Management 101, but remember, Apple doesn't design their products for nerds.

The problem, of course, is that information about one's song collection is stored in the iTunes Library file, and I left mine in the ~/Music directory as is the convention. The space-munching audio files, however, are usually stored in ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music. Mine were on another hard drive (moved there years back to save space on my startup drive). If you simply drag the folder back to its rightful place and believe you can select the new location in iTunes Preferences (as convention would have you believe), you're sadly mistaken. For whatever reason, this does not work, and all the links to your music are broken. Sure, you can select the location for each song, one-at-a-time, but who wants to do something like that? That's what computers are for!

To properly move your iTunes music files around, select the new location in Preferences FIRST, and then use the Consolidate Library function to copy your files back where they go. However, I couldn't retrace my steps, because I had already reformatted that old drive. I even tried renaming the stupid drive back to its old name, but that wouldn't work either. So, I just dragged the contents of ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music back to the Library>Music icon in the iTunes Sidebar. It dutifully loaded all my music files again, and I was able to delete the broken links in the Library file. However, doing this means I lost all my Playlists and Ratings! Arggghh!!

The solution I found is linked below. I used Time Machine to recover my old iTunes Library file and exported my Library as an XML file (which you can also do for individual playlists). To keep the Ratings, I followed the steps below. Now, my iTunes Library is back from the dead. But I sure had to put in a lot of work to get it back. Don't do what I did...but if you (and you probably will), follow the advice in this post.

Apple - Discussions - Importing Ratings From Old ITunes:

One mod for anyone else who has this problem - if you export as a Smart List it imports it the same way and recalculates the rating. So you need to export a standard playlist for each rating. I did this by:

=> making sure the Rating column is visible in iTunes
=> right click or command-click to sort by ratings
=> select all the 5*s then say File > New Playlist from Selection
=> then select that playlist and File > Export .... and save as XML, say "My 5s"
=>then select the 4s and repeat as below

When iTunes Won't Quit

I ran into this problem today (iTunes 8). Watch out for iWow!

» Tip: If iTunes won’t quit The MacTrack - Items of Mac Interest:

… The latest version of iWow (2.0.2.255) has a process called “genredetection.” If iTunes 7.5 (in Leopard) quits unexpectedly, the genredetection process doesn’t quit and forces iTunes to automatically relaunch and spawns a second genredetection process.

***

You now have to go into the Activity Monitor application and force quit all the “genredetection” processes that have spawned and only then can you actually quit iTunes…

Ringtones in iTunes--no longer free?

So, it looks like a new cat-and-mouse game has erupted between Apple (trying to gouge folks for another dollar) and savvy users who want to load their iPhone with ringtone music they already own. This is quite similar to the DRM wars, where users have continued trying to remove the protections from AAC files they have purchased from iTunes.

How to sync ringtones for free under iTunes 7.4.1 – iPhone Atlas:

Apple’s release of iTunes 7.4.1 put an end to the free transfer of current AAC tracks as ringtones to the iPhone — for a day or so at least.

Of course, other tricks continue to work for adding ringtones to cellphones using Bluetooth, like the Motorola RAZR v3, especially using music from your CD collection or other mp3s.

"File type not supported" iPod syncing errors

Apple - Support - Discussions - File type not supported

A bizarre problem recently popped up after I had updated to iTunes 7.2. Suddenly, certain songs would no longer sync with the iPod, even though I had ripped them from my own CDs. These weren't iTMS purchases. And there were only 4 mp3s out of a library of nearly 4K songs that wouldn't sync over anymore.

The solution was simple (but stupid on Apple's part):

In iTunes, drag the songs to the desktop.
Then delete them from iTunes.
Re-add the files back in to iTunes.

No clue why this happened.

Is Vista a bomb or a hit???

Depending on which media outlet you believe, Vista is either doing poorly or doing so well that it's hurting OS X sales:

MacNN | Vista awareness doing little for sales:

"Vista promised better performance, reliability, security, and a revolutionary user interface - but it appears consumers looking to upgrade are not ready to buy into the promise," said Harris VP Milton Ellis.

Macworld: News: Vista taking a nibble out of Apple in OS wars?:

Windows Vista more than doubled its market share in March from the prior month, while the share of computers running Mac OS X fell for the first time in nine months, according to statistics released Thursday by market research firm Net Applications. [original source: Computerworld]

I think that CW is primarily a PC-related outlet, so maybe they have an axe to grind against Apple. No matter what, MS is still following Apple's lead in every way. So for a company that's falling further behind MS, Apple sure is dictating how the market goes:

Microsoft changes tune on selling DRM-free songs - Yahoo! News:

Following digital music pioneer Apple's lead yet again, Microsoft said this week it will soon sell digital music online without DRM (digital rights management) protection.

Microshaft = Xerxes (The REAL battle of 300!)

The rantings of Clinton Forbes:

Today a former Microsoft employee, a very disgruntled former employee, revealed to Wired Magazine why the company encountered such a large number of problems delivering their latest operating-system release - Apple Computer was to blame.

And later on, the disgruntled MS employee stated:

Gates employed an 'industry research' firm, a company specializing in corporate espionage, to steal the source code of Apple's work-in-progress, OS X version 10.2. He planned to beat Apple to market with Apple's own new features. It was a very strange plan considering that Microsoft already owned over 90% of the desktop market.

How ironic! MS stealing ideas (even code) from Apple?? No way! Not MS! But wait, there's more!

Macworld: News: Ballmer questions business strategy of Google:

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer criticized rival Google, saying it is devoted primarily to ad-supported search while Microsoft has reinvented itself many times over.

So here we have that dolt Ballmer publicly putting down other companies, like Apple and Google, that are kicking his company's butt at certain aspects within the tech industry. No surprise there. But, just as Ballmer does this (as one might expect), he's conspiring to destroy the competition through bribery. I guess MS hasn't learned that its Mafioso tactics aren't very sublte:

Microsoft promises rewards for search engine use - Yahoo! News:

In a move intended to wrest users from rival search engines such as market-dominating Google, Microsoft will give business customers service or training credits based on how much employees use Live Search.

Well, dumpy ol' Ballmer and Gates have a reason to worry. They will NOT wrestle control away from Google (nor Apple), because they're only capable of copying and stealing the technology invented by others. Here's an example of how they're losing the battle:

US university dumps Windows to go all Mac - Mac - Macworld UK:

Wilkes University announced on Wednesday that it has pulled the plug on PCs in favour of Macs, saying the move - which actually began last year - will save the Pennsylvania liberal arts college more than $150,000 while letting students and faculty continue to run Windows applications.

So, I think companies like Apple and Google are playing the part of the Spartans and King Leonidas to Microsoft's Xerxes of Persia. The 300 Spartans stood up to Xerxes at Thermopylae and eventually lost, after taking a lot of Persians with them. But in the long run, they kicked Xerxes' butt. His butt was too big for his own breeches! Sounds like Ballmer...I mean Microsoft...I mean Xerxes!

iPhone: iPod going bye-bye?

Once the storage comes up a bit on the new iPhone, why would anyone pay basically the same for an iPod when they can have all that’s in the iPhone and still retain iPod functionality? Apple was very smart to do this. Everyone is hooked on iPods, and folks will now see this as the next step towards being rid of separate PDAs, phones, mp3 players, etc.

I think you’re going to see other phone service providers (i.e., Alltel, Sprint, etc.) start tap dancing soon for a piece of this, or I think their business will be hurt if they don’t.

The first lawsuit has already been filed!

We'll see what happens with the new AppleTV product; I've been saying this would happen for years (i.e., the amalgamation of all "tele-" products in one unit). Soon, the TV, receiver, computer, phone, video, etc. will all be part of one unit, or at least networked and interoperable in the home. Visits to the video store (or even renting through Netflix) will be a thing of the past; video purchases and rentals will all be done "on-line" much the same way music is now bought. This is really already happening on a small scale.

The dichotomy of iTune's success

Clearly, Apple has garnered many enemies over the last several years. At one time (around 1996 or 97), Apple was written off as a company soon to perish. However, Steve Jobs regained control of the company he founded and turned it around. Out were the old beige systems and in came the colorful iMacs--a great-selling hit. Then came the innovative OS X, grounded in the UNIX-based NeXT OS that Jobs once touted as the NeXT CEO. Daring, new systems and laptops appeared--some bombed and some took off. Then came the iPod, which together with iTunes (and its eventual sidekick, iTMS) revolutionized the way consumers bought music, regardless of the bitterness expressed by the old-guard, clueless record corporations.

Microsoft and others were left reeling; no longer could the competition continue to merely copy Apple, because the innovations were coming as fast as lightening-quick sucker punches. Vista is already being described as a bomb; and surprise, its graphics borrow heavily from the GUI of OS X, which has been around since 2000. Microsoft is truly an example of a giant that went to sleep after it made good business decisions; it has never made good technology decisions.

A few weeks ago, several news articles appeared that described "plummeting" sales on iTMS. The press has long had this obsession with harming Apple (link: Apple Death Knell Counter), for some reason:

Apple iTunes Sales Take a Nose Dive

Apple iTunes sales plummet 65%

Apple ITunes Sales Slid in First Half, Forrester Says

Apple responded immediately:

Apple Dismisses 'iTunes Slump' as Silly Claims

Now (as I can personally attest to the Christmas day sluggishness), we see this story:

Holiday demand overwhelms iTunes' ability to download

So which is it, media? The press has its enemies, and its tech enemy is Apple for some bizarre reason.

Sharing iTunes and iPhoto on One Machine

This must be one of the biggest pains in the world. I don’t know why Apple doesn’t address this better.

Sharing a single iTunes (or iPhoto) Library is very tough, because of separate user accounts and permissions issues. If you do a search on Google, there are about 8-gajillion methods for achieving this; most of them are too hard and many of them don’t work. The one I had previously used under Panther required setting up a new group with NetInfo Manager.

Even Apple’s current support document on the issue isn’t 100% right. However, (as usual) digging through the discussion board (where Apple plays no official part) I was able to find a key omission in Apple’s version. The original can be found here, but I’ve summarized it below:

Holding down the command key & select the iTunes Music folder and drag it to a shared folder along with a copy of the iTunes Library file from your iTunes folder... leave the original Library file where it is... set your iTunes pref. > advanced tab Location is Shared folder.

Set correct permissions on the Shared folder ...

To set preferences using BatChmod is very easy... This compact GUI will perform the same tasks as a 'command line in Terminal ' drag the complete Shared folder with libraries and iTunes Music folder inside to the BatChmod Icon and drop.... check path is correct.... tick if not already.... Owner=R W , Group=R W, Others=R W, then tick 'Apply ownership and priviledges'... 'Unlock' & click Apply... provide password... all done very quick...

The next time you login to the other A/C replace the iTunes Library file in the iTunes folder with the copy in the Shared folder and check the name is iTunes Library without 'copy' added.... start iTunes and set the pref. the same as above.... if you make major changes to library you can swap the library file to the other user A/C the same way.

This didn’t work for my situation, because I want to share our ENTIRE library among users, including playlists and so on. So I eventually pieced together advice from various different sources such as these:

Symbolic links Sharing iTunes and iPhoto Libraries with entire family Using ACL under Tiger (I did not go this route)

A probable avenue for doing this pain free was seen here, but the developer has no demo version available (this software was once donationware). Sounds nice but I won’t pay even $5 for something if I don’t know it will work. And there’s a shareware app called Sandbox that might work as well for doing ACL, but I didn’t try it.

Here’s what I did (basically):

1. Moved /User/Music/iTunes/ directory to /Users/Shared/
2. Changed permissions to allow RWE for all users in that folder
3. Made a symbolic link to the library in each user’s /Music/ folder pointing to the shared folder; note: Path Finder makes doing the above tasks easier
4. Repeated steps 1-3 for iPhoto library as well

It’s working as of now, but we’ll see if I run into any ‘gotchas’. I created a test playlist from one user’s account and then deleted it from another account, so it seems to be working. I can play music from either account. iPhoto is working as well.

iTunes 6.0.2. goes clandestinely adware with MiniStore

Okay, there’s a lot of hoopla out there about iTunes 6.0.2 software having the new “MiniStore feature,” which, if open, will send info to Apple about what songs you click or listen to in your library and then present songs in the MiniStore pane similar to those songs clicked or listened to in your library.

First of all, you can disable this feature easily by clicking the button below the Mini-Store pane or select Edit > Show MiniStore (↑-⌘-M) to turn it off. No data are sent out once it’s disabled. Remind others who use your computer and have their own accounts to also disable this feature, because it will open for them as well; I’m sure Apple is counting on someone in the household not knowing how to turn the crap off.

The problem with this mess is that Apple doesn’t explicitly state anywhere they’re going to monitor your habits; they’re not forthcoming with information on turning it off; and they have it set to activate automatically when you first open iTunes after upgrading, which means until you figure out what the hell is happening you’re being watched. Regardless of whether you’re staunchly defending Apple (like many of the zealots over at the Apple Discussion boards), Apple has been less than honest by sneaking in this “new feature.”

I’m really not too concerned if Apple knows what I’m listening to (as I’m a faithful customer who has bought many tunes on iTMS--and I own 3 Macs, an Airport Express, and an iPod), but they’re also sending data to some 3rd party company called Omniture, Inc. Apple unofficially has claimed to dispose of data instantly (info used to target the advertisements to you in iTunes), but what does Omniture have to do with it? Why are they also getting the data? Are they also instantly disposing of the data? Something in me says NO!

Others on the net have found that your Apple ID is also sent with this data if you’re logged in, and though Apple may not store any data sent, there are some cookies and other info stored on YOUR computer. So in this regard, it is arguably spyware and at the very least adware. So users be-WARE!

Other reads on the subject:

http://since1968.com/article/154/itunes-update-update

http://www.boingboing.net/2006/01/11/itunes_update_spies_.html

http://www.plasticbag.org/archives/2006/01/cynicism_and_stupidity

http://www.rc3.org/2006/01/spytunes.php