Ian McShane » iPhone

iPhone sync taking a long time? Maybe a "manual" sync will help

Ian — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 11:12:31 +0000

My iPhone sync has been a real pain in the ass for MONTHS.

If I just quickly want to add a podcast i’ve just downloaded, or add a new playlist or single song, it would take at least 10 mins.
5 mins of Backing Up
5 mins of Copying Applications from iPhone
x mins of Actual Sync

The copying applications passed me by for a while, I misread it as copying TO iPhone.
It turns out there is somekind of problem whereby the applications i’ve bought OTA on the iPhone don’t always get sync’d back to iTunes. So iTunes, instead of just downloading the app from the appstore itself, tries to copy from the iPhone.
Note: I’ve not looked online for any confirmation of an official problem, this is just my experience. YMMV. I’ve also not reset/restored my iPhone at all which is what generally all ’solutions’ begin with..

Anyway. I decided today to download the applications that don’t show up in iTunes and make sure that what was in there was totally in sync with my iPhone.

Once this was done, the backing up portion of the sync took less than 15 seconds, and complete sync action took less than 2 mins.

Hurrah!

Fixed: Unable to sync iPhone with Calendar/Contacts

Ian — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 09:34:40 +0000

Sometime after upgrading to iTunes 8.0.1 and OS X 10.5.5 (not sure when it started TBH), everytime I connected up my iPhone iTunes error’d with:

“iTunes cannot sync information with the iPhone “Macca’s iPhone” because syncing has been disabled on this computer. Do you want to enable syncing? (y/n)”

Weird, I thought. I haven’t disabled anything. I wondered if this was a problem with Office 2008 as last time I sync’d successfully all of my Exchange based calendar items were triplicated.. but that’s another story.

Anyway. Clicking on Yes (to enable syncing) brought up another error:

“Syncing cannot be enabled on this computer”

So, lo and behold i’ve had out of date calendars and contacts for weeks. Music, photos and video sync’ing was absolutely fine though.

When it happened again this morning, I tried to open iSync this morning and yet another error:

SyncServices: Can’t connect to the sync server:
NSInvalidRecievePortException: connection went invalid while waiting for a reply ((null))

Looks like something funny going on with the local sync configuration.

Fortunately, the fix was easy. I renamed the Local sync folder to Local_bak. iSync then created a new one automatically. I can now sync without any problems at all.

cd ~/Library/Application\ Support/SyncServices/
mv Local Local_bak
Start iSync.

Wanted : Definitive iCal Entourage sync

Ian — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 18:27:07 +0000

Now that i’ve gotten hold of MS Office:Mac 2008 and an RSA Hardtoken (for VPN) I no longer need to use Windows at all for work or play. (I’ve also just ordered a new MBP through work, huzzah!)

Since i’ve got Entourage connected up to the Exchange server here at work, I want to be able to sync my work calendar with the calendars I have set up in iCal. Not only have I got a couple of standard calendars, i’ve also set up some dynamic ones based on RSS feeds – for example, i’m terrible for remembering when I’ve got gigs lined up so i’ve subscribed to my Last.fm events feed in iCal which in turn shows up on my iPhone, along with a couple of Google Calendars (for University schedules).

Having turned on Calendar Sync in the Office:Mac preferences, I can see my Entourage calendar in iCal and thus on my iPhone. You’d think that this would please me.

No.

I also want the sync to be reversed so that iCal events are added to my ‘work’ calendar…
This causes scheduling problems in that work colleagues who are trying to arrange meetings can’t see my ‘personal’ busy time.
I understand that there is some limitation with Entourage to do with iCal having multiple calendars and Entourage only having one but surely there is some way to merge all the calendar data from iCal into one, then populate E with that?
Taking it one step further, why not enlist the built in Categories feature of Entourage to label the events from different iCal feeds?

Is there something out there that can do this already or have I just spec’d out my next dev project?

More iPhone chatter…

Ian — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 14:30:10 +0000

I caught this post on the BBC News site, which pretty much echoes (almost exactly ) my comments a few weeks back.

Some of the comments make interesting reading, people are so quick to jump on the ‘hate it ‘cos it’s a brand’ bandwagon. I really wonder how long it will take before people are as hateful to Apple as they are to Microsoft….

iPhone launched in UK (in case you didn't know)

Quick iPhone wish list

Ian — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 02:46:00 +0000

With rumours of a pre-Christmas firmware update to 1.1.3, here’s my wish list. I’d probably forgo the Jailbreak for these – currently I only really use the MobileScrobbler app from the iPhone dev scene but i’m finding that it keeps logging me out and doesn’t cache track plays. Everything else seems to pretty much be fluff (i.e Pirate-photo-app, eBooks and Games) or unstable (Summerboard kept rebooting for me and broke access to photos).
I’m going to get my dev head on and see if I can come up with something useful, just as soon as I find the time – i’m currently pretty busy with work and university studies.

My top 11:

Calendar – Searching.
Calendar – Respect iCal colouring for different calendar items.
SMS – Ability to cancel a message in transmission.
SMS – Send message to many recipients.
SMS – Forward sent or received message to new recipient(s).
Copy & Paste between apps.
The new Google Maps.
Use a track from the iPod as an alarm sound.
Direct download of mp3 from Safari to iPod. Podcasts for example.
Save images from Safari to Photos.
MMS!!!

Reasons to Jailbreak #1

Ian — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 03:00:41 +0000

My foray into the world of jailbroken iPhones was due to one very simple app – MobileScrobbler.

It simply hooks into the iPod functionalit and submits the Artist, Track and Album information to my Last.FM profile. Having been an avid, subscribing scrobbler for nigh on three years now, I can’t bear to listen to anything that doesn’t get posted to my profile. I’m very OCD about it; no CDs in the car (my HU has a ‘Made for iPod’ interface), no radio, no net streaming (except for the last.fm client).
It’s therefore been a bit of a struggle moving away from my iPod to _just_ the iPhone.

The current last.fm client isn’t able to scrobble iPhone plays in the same conventional manner that it does for iTunes or iPod plays. Apparently the way an iPhone syncs is completely different to iPod classic.

Anyhow, MobileScrobbler not only does this for you, it also does it over Edge/GPRS so it’ll scrobble in real time, on the move. Network permitting of course. (If it can’t scrobble it keeps the tracks in a cache until it can).

Simply brilliant, I can’t wait to get time to see what other goodness is available through Installer.

[EDIT] I just checked out the dev guys blog, he’s almost got the whole Last.fm client functionality down including the streaming and last.fm wiki integration.

Here are the the first couple of tracks I put through MSc.

Uploaded with Skitch!

[tags]iphone, last.fm, scrobble, MobileScrobbler, music, Stereophonics, Paramore[/tags]

Jailbreaking a UK iPhone

Ian — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 02:17:01 +0000

This was compiled from the conceited software write up and also iphoneatlas’ write up (I had a nervy 15 minutes of nothing whilst it was stuck in restore mode – cue much Googling!!).

I thought i’d write this up as I couldn’t find anything specific to say that the o2 iPhone could / has been broken. So here is my quick guide. The jailbreak operation took about two hours, including downloading both 1.1.1 and 1.1.2 firmwares and the aforementioned 15 minutes of shakiness – mostly due to having to Google a lot, just for my own sanity! Fixing the Edge and VVM settings was another 30 minutes.

Usual disclaimers apply, if you brick it that’s your too bad. On with the show.

1. Download the 1.1.2 jailbreak (112JB) kit from concieted software.

2. Download the 1.1.1 firmware from appldnld.apple.com… (official Apple download site, direct link).

3. Connect iPhone to Mac, hold down Power and Home buttons until iTunes pops up with this prompt.

Uploaded with Skitch!

4. Press the ‘alt’ key (apparently AKA Option key) and hit restore, this should open up a dialogue for you to choose the 1.1.1 firmware you downloaded from Apple. Once that finishes you’ll get a 1015 error prompt from iTunes and another Recovery Mode prompt. Ignore that.

5. Run Jailbreak.jar from the kit and use Boot from Recovery. I sat about for 15, sphincter clinching, minutes. The progress bar didn’t complete and the phone wouldn’t reboot. I thought i’d bricked it. The solution was to close iTunes (it took a while to close) and THEN run Jailbreak.jar. Without iTunes it literally took a couple of seconds before it rebooted. You can quit the Jailbreak.jar instance now.

6. Open Safari on the iPhone, join a Wireless network and browse to www.jailbreakme.com and choose “Install AppSnapp” at the bottom of the page. This adds the Installer.app icon to the iPhone home. Open it up.

7. At the bottom of Installer there are 5 icons, choose Install / Tweaks 1.1.1 / Oktoprep and then hit Install.

8. You’ll now see a Notice “You are now ready to perform the “Update” to 1.1.2 and continue with the TouchFree process.”. Open iTunes.

9. Selecting iPhone in the menu, you can hit Continue to restore your settings and wait for the iPhone to reboot.

10. Now iTunes will display the usual iPhone screen (see below) and start to sync up your content. I stopped it as I have a lot of shit to sync and it’s 01:15. Hit the Update button to start downloading the 1.1.2 firmware. It’s 160MB..

Uploaded with Skitch!

11. Once the iPhone reboots again, iTunes will start to update to 1.1.2. Apparently if you have hit Restore instead of Update you will have to start from the very beginning again.

12. Now, once the 1.1.2 update has installed and the iPhone is rebooted again, activation will succeed and you’ll see the shiny “Activation has completed” notice on your iPhone. You’ll notice that Installer.app is no longer on your home page.

At this point, i’ve had my contacts, notes, recent calls and text messages restored. Brilliant! Although visual voicemail doesn’t appear to work.

13. Run Jailbreak.jar again, this time selecting ‘install ssh’ and setting a decent r00t password. (I wonder how many people left it set as Alpine?!) The Jailbreak app is a lot more verbose this time around, Installing the ssh components, Reading flash image and finally Writing flash image. I felt a lot more secure in it this time..

14. The first time it reboots (again) I got the same alert from iTunes about recovery mode (as above) and it just hung again, as before. Closing iTunes, quiting Jailbreak, restart Jailbreak and choose “Boot from recovery” sorted that. 2 more automatic reboots and my iPhone is up, with installer and ssh installed on the home page.

Inbound and outbound calls work, as do texts. Still no Visual Voicemail though, nor Edge. A 15 minute stint on Google, trying different Edge username/password credentials (none of them work) and I stumbled on the following. (I’ve lost the link now, will try and dig it out tomorrow)

I installed BSD Subsystem from the Installer.app and ssh’d in using the root credentials set in Jailbreak.
Moving the following files around sorted the problem.

rm /var/root/Library/Preferences/com.apple.carrier.plist

ln -s /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreTelephony.framework/Support/O2_UK.plist /var/root/Library/Preferences/com.apple.carrier.plist

rm -f /var/root/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/preferences.plist

One final reboot and Edge was back along with Visual Voicemail.

As a final note, I’ve also downloaded the 1.1.2 firmware from the Apple download site (Direct Link), i’m going to give my iPhone a restore tomorrow to make sure it goes back to the ‘official’ version. Just in case.

So, that’s it. A Jailbroken 1.1.2 UK 02 iPhone. Hopefully I’ve got some good keywords in here for search engines to index. As I mentioned earlier, information for UK specific jailbreaking is pretty thin on the ground.

[tags] iPhone, Jailbreak, 02, UK, Apple, Edge, Visual Voicemail[/tags]

A more objective look at iPhone (part 3: A few more words)

Ian — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 10:49:01 +0000

I think i’ve covered and detailed most of my gripes with the iPhone in parts one and two and as mentioned, Apple could potentially bring this device inline with other ‘latest gen’ phones (such as the Nokia N95) – at least from a usability and feature standpoint, very quickly with a software update.

Opening the platform up with proper SDKs, whether sandboxed or via 1337 root access, is sure to propel the platform forward exponentially. As it goes, I picked up a Macbook earlier in the week and have started exercising my brain with some Cocoa coding so that i’m up to speed by the time the SDK is released.

One final thing I thought i’d mention is battery life. I’ve left it for 3 days now without charging it up. Having used it as normal, including phone, SMS, WiFI, iTMS, iPOD, Safari (pretty much all of the functionality!) the battery indicator is currently at aprox. 50%.

Final Words

Granted, the camera is a weak point as is the EDGE network and they’re both items which can’t be addressed in a software update.

So, am I bothered by the lack of camera?
No, not really.

Whilst it’s a nice to have, i’ve just looked through the pictures on my previous phone. I’m not going to save any of them. All I used the camera for previously was for opportunistic clicks. I’ve generally got my ‘proper’ (not DSLR proper!) camera with me anyway.

Is the EDGE network a pain in the ass?
Sometimes, but it’s not as stupidly slow as some internet comments have portrayed.

I’ve been able to find WiFi access when I needed it and haven’t gotten annoyed or frustrated with EDGE at all.

Unfortunately, what with the hype around the iPhone, it seems that the device is suffering from over popularity. Its become an easy target for comparisons and complaints, a good example is my earlier post – written out of frustration that it wasn’t the all singing, all dancing cure for cancer that it had been hyped up to be.

Compared to my previous phone, it’s definately a step up and in the right direction. Yes there are shortfalls in comparison with established devices and platforms but in it’s own right, and IMO it’s a cool and useful device.
I’m just waiting for Last.FM to include iPhone scrobbling support!

[tags]Apple, Cocoa, iPhone Review, Macbook, N95, last.fm[/tags]

A more objective look at iPhone (part 2: Things the iPhone does well)

Ian — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 00:13:45 +0000

This is part two in the series, part one can be found here.

As I mentioned in the last post, I don’t want this to sound like a complete Apple bash of the iPhone. So here are some thoughts about the good side of the iPhone, going through by component.

First and foremost, it really does just work. I’m not sure if a user manual came with the iPhone (and I can’t be arsed to get up and look in the box :p) but I certainly haven’t needed one yet.
As you’d expect and have no doubt seen already, the Home page or main menu lets you access anything on the iPhone with little more than one touch.

Setup and Config – I had absolutely no problems with activation. Unboxed, connected, log in to iTMS, done. It literally took less than 10 minutes. None of this having to wait 24hrs before you can recieve calls, straight away.
WiFi config is simple too, if you are broadcasting your network name (or iPhone discovers a new network), it provides you a list clearly indicating the name and security status of the network. If no key is required you just press that network and it does it’s thing. If you have to specify a key, so be it. I haven’t found any problems with it at all.
iPod – Just to get this out of the way quickly, you get exactly what you expect. Its just an iPod. The use of Cover Flow is really cool and beats the scroll wheel hands down. There’s not much to say about it tbh, what were you expecting!
iTMS – Whilst this only works when you are connected to WiFi, it’s a cool addition. Easy to search, buy and download. It all sync’s up with iTunes when you connect to the Mac too. One thing I found however, if a track you buy is available as a DRM free (iTunes Plus) version, although it prompts you with “This will be downloaded in iTunes Plus format”, it won’t download to the phone. I had to repurchase it through iTunes. I’m not sure if it was a one off (Slaves To Gravity – Meantime) or not as I haven’t bought anything else in that format.
The Top Tens and Featured lists make for good reading when you are bored, standing in line in Starbucks. That actually reminds me, i’m yet to see anything of the rumoured free downloads from a Starbucks yet. Was that just a rumour or just Stateside?
Widgets – To me, Stocks doesn’t seem to fit with the UK market. Whilst i’ve got shares in a few companies here and there, I don’t invest enough to *need* to know the share price OTF. I can’t think of many people I know that do. Of course, I could be well off the mark but it seems to me to be a bit of a fluff addition to the iPhone. Weather and Clock are a lot more relevant and useful, even though a few main cities in the UK don’t appear in the list – Reading, PA is listed but not the one in Berkshire. I was nicely surprised to find Portsmouth in there though.
Notes – I had a whole bunch of notes on my old phone; addresses, grocery lists, films I want to rent… You know, the kind of thing you think about for a minute then promptly forget until the next day/week.. The lack of Cut & Paste is a really ball ache here. You can’t even highlight a number and dial it. That said, it’s still useful, I just wish it would sync up with the Mac.
iCal/Contacts – In much the same way as the iPod functions, these work just great.
Mail/Safari – Ignoring (again) the lack of Cut & Paste as well as the inability to save images to the iPhone, these work exactly as i’d expect. Cookies are used in Safari so you don’t have to continually enter your credentials to access sites. Also the number of mainstream sites with dedicated iPhone interfaces is increasing daily – Facebook, BBC News, BBC Podcasts (although I don’t seem to be able to download the actual Podcasts!!).
Photos – The screen quality is excellent, my pictures from iPhoto look really great on the iPhone. The accelerometer part is more than just a gimmick here, it really does give a nice kind of ‘this is how it should be’ feel. Much better than my old phone – open the menu, joystick down to picture, open it, wait 5, landscape, wait 5.
The screen is obviously of a wonderful size and ratio. Even pictures taken with the (subpar) onboard camera look good at this resolution.
Phone – Visual Voicemail, at first it seemed a bit gimmicky but it’s actually very useful. No more having to sit through crap to hear if there is anything worth listening to. Other than that, the sound quality is fine both ways. The nice sync between the phone and mac contacts is also well thought (but obvious also).
SMS – Whilst i’ve bashed quite a bit about the missing bits of SMS on the iPhone, the conversation/chat style of displaying is really quite good. No more wondering WTF the reply means, no more having to back out of a message to the sent items then back to the message.

So after all that, do I enjoy using the iPhone? Yes. Now i’m getting used to it and now i’m actually comparing its usage against my previous phone (SE k800i), there are a lot of plus points about it. In-fact there are a lot more plus points than negatives. Taking it a step further, the majority of the negatives *could* be resolved in a firmware update, or even by 3rd party applications (assuming the SDK isn’t sandboxed off too much). As I find more and more sites and applications that are tailored for the iPhone, the usefulness of the device increases and will continue to do so.

[tags]iPhone, Apple, Mac, iPhoto, iTunes, iTMS[/tags]

A more objective look at iPhone (part 1: Things the iPhone can't do)

Ian — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 13:09:45 +0000

Having had my iPhone for nearly two weeks, now I was planning on writing up a bit more about my experience with the iPhone a little later in the week but have been spurred on by a post at BittubeBlog.

Let’s break it down into; Things the iPhone can’t do, Things the iPhone does badly, Things the iPhone does well.
I’m not sure i’ll get the time to write the whole article today so i’ll split it into three posts.

Things the iPhone can’t do

Firstly, these issues can be split into two groups; Hardware limitation and Software limitation.
I think it’s important to call these out seperately as obviously the Hardware stuff can’t be changed whereas the Software limitations _can_ be changed. Infact, and I need to find the quote, I read earlier in the week that a spokesperson from either o2 or Apple had confirmed that there will be additions to the software to bring it further inline with existing handsets.

Hardware

The camera – let’s make no bones about it, 2mp these days is a poor show. It has no flash which is something that is fairly common these days. It has no zoom, digitial or otherwise. Again this is almost standard on recent camera phones.
Quality wise, it produces adequate images when you manage to get good lighting. I’d compare it to the camera in a Macbook iSight.
Will I use it? Probably not as often as i’ve used the camera on previous phones, especially as it is missing the MMS ability (see Software section).

Connectivity – The EDGE network is pretty much as I expected, fairly slow. However, in comparison to the 3G service I used previously on Vodafone, it takes roughly the same amount of time to load Gmail or Google docs into Safari as my previous phone took to load the ‘optimized’ versions. Using it for IMAP connection to Gmail via the built in mail.app clone, it is more than satisfactory. I find myself able to check my email far easier than with my previous phone, although that is mostly likely due to Google rolling out IMAP support to Gmail.
WiFi – This actually works very well and does well to subsidise the EDGE network. Infact, when out and about I find myself using WiFi networks more than EDGE. The number of open networks (whether intentional or not ) has been quite pleasing. A quick look on The Clouds website shows a number of free to use networks in most of the bars and shops that I frequent locally. Even the local Sainsburys had an open network the other day, most useful for checking my grocery list on Google Docs.

Software

These are items that i’m sure could be fixed/included in a later update – whether they do or not is a different matter.

Bluetooth – Unable to transmit or recieve data from other devices. This is something I miss from my previous phone, recieving contacts, images or videos from colleagues and friends. Also, you can’t use it as a modem device over bluetooth either, i’m not sure you’d want to using EDGE anyway! I’d like to be able to sync my calendars and contacts over bluetooth (or even better over WiFi) to my Macbook without having to sync with iTunes.
MMS – You aren’t able to receive native MMS messages, instead you are sent an SMS message from o2 containing a password to view the image online at www.02.co.uk. I don’t know how this works with video or audio.
Video Recording – What with the fairly low pixel count on the camera, i’m not sure you’d want to use this anyway.
SMS – Due to the way that SMS conversations are stored, There is no way to send a message to multiple recipients. I’d quite often use this on a Saturday watching the football. There is no way to receive delivery reports for SMS messages. There is no way to forward on a sent or received SMS to another recipient. Lastly, if you accidentally hit the SEND button, you cannot cancel the message. This has caught me out a number of times, resulting in confusing and wasted SMSs!
Keyboard – I’m used to the T9 standard of predictive text, in that it offers you a list of potential words. I can see why this isn’t used on the iPhone (as you have the whole keyboard not just a bunch of numbers) but it only offers you one word which you have to forcibly reject by tapping the screen on the recommended word. This can get annoying when you hit space and it automatically changes what you’ve entered. The lack of Copy & Paste is also frustrating, not just from within SMS conversations or emails but you should be able to C&P between applications. If I want to quote something from a webpage or indeed a URL in SMS, you have to remember it and type it out yourself.
Images – Although they claim that it is a full version of Safari on the iPhone, there are a number of things missing. The most noticable for me so far is the inability to save images from webpages. If they fixed this it would be a decent enough workaround to the lack of direct MMS support.
Documents – It would be nice to be able to create/edit documents (iWork/Office/whatever) on the go and have them sync’d (over Bluetooth or WiFi ) with the Macbook.

That pretty much concludes my list so far of things the iPhone doesn’t do. Rather than rant on about how much it sucks, i’ll try and sweeten the deal by writing up the good side of it next.

[tags]iPhone, o2, SMS, MMS, Apple, Mac[/tags]