So I’ve had this minor issue with my iPhone for the past year and a half. I have never been able to sync music from my music server and everything else (photos, contacts, calendars, applications, etc.) from my laptop. I use a separate music server, partially for storage capacity and backup, partially to have my entire library on a fixed server for streaming music throughout my home and syncing to all portable (iPod/iPhone) devices. This is a minor issue because I have plenty of access to my music on iPods and throughout my office and home. Generally I prefer not to consume my iPhone’s valuable battery with music playing, but I don’t use most of the storage space so I’d like to have some music on there just in case.

Apple baked the functionality for this into iTunes pretty near the launch of the original iPhone. My problem seemed to be that I had synced music from my laptop, then unchecked the box to remove the music in hopes I could mate this function to the music server. Every time I’d tried to do it in the past, I was faced with this message:

The main reason that I was timid about a reset was the large number of Notes on the iPhone that I didn’t want to risk losing. Apple STILL doesn’t sync notes (or tasks for that matter), which is really odd since they now have notes and tasks as parts of Mail in Leopard. Luckily, with solutions like Evernote and Mark/Space Missing Sync for iPhone and Notebook there are easy work-arounds. I’ve used the latter for iPhone note syncing for months and am gradually switching over to the web-based note system that is Evernote.

Since I finally got around to getting an iPhone 3G (was holding out for something new at MacWorld and I’ve recently discovered the bluetooth on my iPhone is not working correctly–I’d always blamed my Prius–sorry Lola), I thought this would be a good time to give it another shot.

After some futzing and re-syncing I was getting the same warning message. Since everything seemed to sync to the new phone (even notes, though applications were in a different order on the phone), I decided just to try the Erase and Sync on the music server as I’d been advised that the music server should be synced first. Rather than erasing the phone, it synced only the music to the iPhone, leaving everything else alone.

So the message was a false alarm and taking the leap of faith paid off. Your mileage may vary and I’m still not exactly sure whey I was caught in this weird music syncing limbo to begin with, but now everything seems fine.

Bottom line, if you are getting this message even after you’ve un-syncing music to the iPhone from your main computer, it MAY work to just go ahead and Erase and Sync. There are so many variables here, though, that you may also end up erasing all the other info on your iPhone. In this case, just sync the music computer first, then check everything OTHER than music on the main computer and it should work fine.

If you are trying to sync music from two different computers to one iPhone (e.g., laptop and music server), you should check out this guide from Andrew Grant at Shiny Things. It involves some light hacking, which I don’t think would be difficult for most users. It’s not necessary for me, so I’ll skip it. The greatest worry here is that some future version of iTunes will make the hack stop working or worse yet corrupt some settings you changed.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Gadget, Technology

I’m not really sure how much of this is anyone’s business (including mine) but as an Apple fanatic and tech guru, people tend to ask me my opinion of these things so here goes. Regarding Steve Jobs’ recent announcement of a leave of absence from Apple, I have to say, isn’t this why we build companies?

He’s given a lot to the tech world and Apple won’t die without him, even if he does leave permanently. As a shareholder, I’m more concerned with his health than the stock price of the company, which I’m confident will go back up (is there a greater roller coaster stock than Apple?) Can we all just be a little human about this? Who’s worried about stock price in this economy anyway?

Apple owns the digital music world right now. I’m not sure the purchase versus renting model works as well for movies or television, but they have the hardware and software in place to win people over and adapt to their needs. With the iPhone Apple has created the most powerful, user-friendly, and developer-incentivized mobile application development platform that exists.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, Technology

My mother and friend each lost computer data recently, so I’ve been thankful for having a comprehensive backup and recovery set-up for the office. I outlined it for my friend after he asked, so thought I would share it here as well. It’s inexpensive, efficient, and covers me for incremental file versioning, immediate system recovery with no reinstallation downtime, and offsite backups for full contingency. This is based on our primarily Macintosh network, but the principles apply to any computer system.

For many years I’ve used Retrospect software, which is especially great for multiple machines on a network (Mac/PC). But even if you are just backing up the files on your local machine, it’s nice because you can script it very precisely (more efficient) and it’s incremental, so you can recover a version of a file from, say, 30 days ago.  Apple’s Time Machine is a slicker interface, but incremental backups work fine through Retrospect. And darn the timing, I just got an email from EMC that Retrospect 8 for the Mac is out. I’m still on 6.2, so I think they skipped a version, but it works fine with Leopard.

Retrospect:
http://www.emcinsignia.com/products/software/retroformac/

I have many layers of backup myself.  My main file server has RAID mirrored drives for sensitive company data (RAID means if one drive fails the machine will keep running until you replace the other drive. Both drives must fail to take down the machine).  This data is then backed up to Retrospect software running on a trusty 1st gen Mac Mini with 2TB of storage hanging off it that doubles as music server for the office.

Another layer of backup strategy addresses the issue of getting you back up and running quickly in the case of catastrophic failure.  Retrospect and Time Machine are great for incremental file backups, but there is an application called Super Duper that clones your entire hard drive.  In the case of drive failure, you can easily boot off that external USB drive and start with all your data and apps right where you left off, even from another computer.  After replacing the defective drive or fixing the computer, you can hit one button and it will dupe everything back to the new destination.  Never skip a beat.  We have this on everyone’s laptop to complement Retrospect’s incremental backup.

SuperDuper:
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html

Now this leads to the final layer of contingency, which is off-site backups.  We’d still be up a creek in the event of a fire, etc.  Extreme and rare, but it’s still a possibility.  I finally got MobileMe last year, mainly for photo sharing, but also for remote backup.  I’ve been less than thrilled with the backup performance, but it’s okay.  It almost seems like an afterthought, as you have to download a separate Backup application and configure it.  It’s also not very efficient as it zips up all your files into a single file which is uploaded every day, or whatever your schedule is, rather than uploading only the files you changed.  It works, just slowly. You can also set up backups to local drives and devices if off-site isn’t a priority for you.

For off-site backups, I would give this a serious look:

Mozy:
http://mozy.com/

Unlimited remote backups for $4.95/month.  Pretty insane deal, though you might consider using it for smaller files and do music/photos/videos locally.  I’m going to start using it to offsite all the Retrospect backups from the network, then I think I’ll finally be covered!  Unless, of course, aliens attack or Bush pushes the WWIII button on the way out of office.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, General, Technology, Web

Good news from the MacWorld Expo today. Apple has decided to drop the digital rights management (DRM) on its entire iTunes Store library of more than 10 million songs by March 2009. Until now songs have been sold for a standard $0.99 apiece but Apple will now go to a tied pricing structure of $0.69, $0.99, and $1.29. This new structure is clearly influenced by the music labels, but Apple has promised there will be more songs at $0.69 than $1.29.

I’ve always given Apple the benefit of the doubt when it comes to DRM, and this move isn’t revolutionary (Amazon does it and Apple has done it in a limited capacity). It’s not something they wanted, but the music studios mandated DRM in a tight-fisted form of allowance to launch the iTunes store at all. If this is what it took for Apple to drop DRM, so be it. I’m confident they did everything they could to keep the prices reasonable. Of course I realize that Apple is a large company beholden to profit and shareholders, but this is my gut.

As an avid music lover I have rarely downloaded music from iTunes. Mostly I get free sampler tracks here and there, especially for festivals. DRM has meant that you are limited to five computers on which your music is allowed to play. This is a big hang-up for a lot of people, myself included. Between losing DRM and offering lossless downloads (technically the MP3 format isn’t as good as the 30-year-old CD format) I may have to re-evaluate my love of used record stores. Still love those liner notes, though.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Fun, Technology

This is really quite odd. I just noticed that some photos I pulled off my iPhone last week (December 30, 2008) are showing up in iPhoto after more recently taken photos. A closer look reveals that it tagged the photos for December 30, 2009. I guess my iPhone was even more excited to reign in the new year than I was!

To fix this in iPhoto is simple. Just select “Batch Change…” under the Photos menu. Change the date to the correct one, and it will modify all the photos accordingly. I typically check the “Modify original files” box since I’m correcting something permanently.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Gadget, Technology

With more than 13 million iPhones in the world and the most comprehensive developer strategy ever for a mobile device, Apple has enabled many developers to quit their jobs and turn to iPhone app development full-time. In addition to an easy-to-use developer toolkit that makes it easy to make the apps, Apple extended the concept of the iTunes store to distribute the applications wirelessly to iPhone users. Since its so easy to get your app in your pocket, popular apps quickly sell into the millions. Prices for apps vary from free to somewhere around $20, but most are priced around $1 or $2, making even goofy apps a no brainer for users. Its not hard to justify the entertainment value of a fun app that costs less than a cup of coffee.

While some developers look to get funding to take their projects farther, many are content to write and distribute apps on their own. Pangea software has created Mac games for more than two decades. According to founder Brian Greenstone, “It’s crazy. It’s like lottery money. In the last four and a half months we’ve made as much money off the retail sales of iPhone apps as we’ve made with retail sales of all of the apps that we’ve made in the past 21 years — combined.”

There are useful apps and frivolous apps. The point is that Apple has created a mobile device and platform that are limited by little more than a developer’s imagination. Some of my favorites are Ocarina, Evernote, Twittelator, SnapTell, Shazam, BeatMaker, and CTA Tracker.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, Fun, Gadget, Marketing, Technology, Web

Do we really need an application that turns off our computer’s Internet connection until you reboot it? Freedom does just that, though you can also specify a time for it to “release” your Internet back to you. I guess since it’s my job to be online most of the time this seems impractical to me, but I appreciate the sentiment. Some of the best work I get done is on airplanes where I have no Internet AND no phone. However, I find it a bit sad that we have so little self-control that we need an application to do this for us. It’s easy enough just to turn off your wi-fi or unplug your network cable. But then again, it’s easy to plug it back in as well if you just HAVE to check your Facebook news feed.

This might be useful to me when they figure out how to block cell phone signals from you computer as well.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Gadget, General, Technology, Web

I was trying to share seven photos (22MB) with some family from a recent trip to Austin, TX. This is just slightly beyond the capacity of most email systems, so we need to look at other ways of sharing the photos. I didn’t really feel like posting them on a public photo sharing site like Flickr or even MobileMe. Since I know that the recipients are also Mac users, it seems like a perfect time to use the Public folder on my iDisk. Seems…

It took me several years to join .Mac (now MobileMe) as it was always one major feature short of being worth it. The photo gallery automation with iPhoto (part of Apple’s iLife suite) is fantastic. The automated backup is okay. The iDisk has been disappointing. It’s sluggish compared to FTP. And the ease-of-use that should accompany a solution built into the desktop is compromised by the non-responsiveness of the folder. To a user, it needs to behave nearly identically to other folders or you’d better make it look like something else so they don’t have unrealistic expectations.

One of the inherent issues with networked file servers is that of file permissions. This pertains to which users have access to the files at all. But it also relates to whether or not computers on the network think the file is in use. If another user is accessing the file, it won’t “release” it to another user. The problem is when a user is done with the file, or has logged of the network, or whose computer has crashed. Sometimes the file isn’t properly released for use.

Last night I was having a slew of issues uploading these seven photos. Access denied, copy aborted, etc. Eventually it just hung with a Finder status bar until it actually crashed the Finder altogether. I logged back in this morning, rebooted the machine a couple of times. Only on the second reboot was I able to delete the half-uploaded folders and finally upload the new complete folder without error. What a pain!

I’ve been experimenting with using MobileMe for offsite backups as well. So far, I’m not impressed with the inefficiency of zipping up all your files for upload every time a backup is scheduled rather than only uploading files that have changed since the last backup.

I’m on a MacBook Pro with the latest version of Leopard. 4GB of RAM. Shouldn’t be having these issues. Am I alone? I’m really hoping I just hit Apple at peak load time (makes sense right before Christmas).

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Andy Swindler Categories: Technology

Apple has given into pressure to enable HDCP copy protection on its new laptops, preventing some users from watching purchased movies on anything other than their small laptop screen. This is an ongoing issue designed to prevent people from copying copyrighted material. iTunes is especially tenuous since users download movies to their computers rather than streaming them live like NetFlix. I believe Apple wouldn’t use DRM (digital rights management) at all if given the choice, but their hands are really tied by the content providers here.

It’s up to the consumers to drive demand for unprotected movies and it’s up to everyone to cut back piracy to the point where the studios will trust letting up the heavy hand. I make a personal choice not to steal music or movies, and I don’t tell others what to do. But I do believe that studios will lighten up if we take the first step. It’s not like they don’t have a right to want compensation for production and distribution. They just need to be a bit fairer and more forward-thinking about it.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, Technology

Running through a KVM I used to use, the Apple mouse gives you only vertical scrolling, but requires you move your finger horizontally (on the 360-degree scroll ball). Living with this minor annoyance for awhile, I realized that it’s actually far more ergonomic to move your finger slightly left and right rather than typical scrolling which requires activating far more muscles in your arm.

On a side note, I find it amusing to have to clean my mouse ball after a decade without it.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Gadget, Technology