What happens when you have an Apple ID without an email address and you change it? (And much more about Apple ID hell.)

I'll provide some back story below, but it's tedious and a bit ranty so I'll put the most useful stuff up front.

For *reasons* (see below) I have had an Apple ID associated with iTunes, App Store, physical Apple Store, hardware and other purchases for about 20 years. For other *reasons* almost lost to memory the username has not been a valid email address for most of those years. Until recently it had an associated email address it would forward to but Apple changed things sometime in the past two years and that stopped working.

I'm simplifying.

We will call this Apple ID username "bob@mac.com". I will use alice@icloud.com and dan@me.com for my new Store Apple ID ("Media & Purchases") and my longstanding iCloud Apple ID respectively.

Once bob@mac.com stopped forwarding I no longer received notifications related to Apple Discussions or emails related to charges. Since bob@mac.com was the store Apple ID for my family (this was the practice in early iTunes days) our children (now adult) used it for purchases. Simplifying a lot and omitting family details the lack of email meant no monthly statements -- so I didn't spot a scam subscription - among other things.

I knew I had to fix this but I dreaded the side-effects. I'd already tried undoing the shared store Apple ID and ran into disaster; I had to reverse that attempt. I had to fix the Apple ID invalid email problem first.

Before Apple broke forwarding for the Apple ID "bob@mac.com" I had used "alice@icloud.com" as a forwarding address. Although there was no clue in the Apple ID online configuration tool, I knew alice@icloud.com was still entangled with bob@mac.com (see below, this post goes on for a long time but still omits much).

Ok, so far? I gets a bit simpler then you can skip the back story.

Anyhow ... when Apple broke forwarding they seem to have introduced the ability to change an Apple ID userid - such as bob@mac.com. I believe, though I can't find any documentation, that the visible username with the form of an email address (ex: bob@mac.com) is an alias for an unchanging hidden identifier (maybe a GUID). 

After some thought I decided the cleanest approach would be to change my Store Apple ID visible username from bob@mac.com to alice@icloud.com (I knew the two were entangled, see below). It's easy to make this change from appleid.apple.com. When I did this I was not asked to confirm that alice@icloud.com was a valid email address I owned. All I got was an email sent to to alice@icloud.com saying the change had been made.

After I made the change I found the following. I expect other changes as Apple's different systems synchronize and update (I will update this as I learn more, I expect to learn of problems from family members later today):

1. I cannot login to the Apple ID or anywhere using bob@mac.com but the two factor notification dialog still says bob@mac.com (this may change).
2. I think I may have more control over Apple ID two-factor, I can add/remove trusted devices, remove from account, and I can add a second trusted phone number. I still can't add a backup email address; that is available on some other Apple IDs I have
3. Apple Discussions is intact. When I login with alice@icloud.com I show as "member since June 23, 2003".
4. Mail sent to bob@mac.com still fails, there's no redirect.
5.  iTunes on Mojave: asks me to sign in and displays new alice@icloud.com. Says session expired, asks again. Purchase history intact.
6. Media & Purchases on iPhone showed new iCloud address and I had no trouble with updating apps.

In addition, Messages in my personal dan@me.com iCloud stopped working! It turns out "Messages" has legacy associations with the old Apple Store ID used with iMessage before Apple implemented iCloud. I got this error message

Messages in iCloud not available as iCloud and iMessage accounts do not match. (Messages in iCloud is not available because iCloud and iMessage accounts are different.)

There's a fix here but it's not the one I needed. When I looked at Messages on my iPhone it showed only my Phone number, the Apple IDs were all absent. When I tried to enter an Apple ID it showed my store Apple ID; I chose "use other Apple ID" and entered my personal iCloud Apple ID. That worked and it immediately restored all my send/receive message list. I could then reenable messages in iCloud.

It didn't fully work on Mojave iMessages though. I reenabled using iCloud Messages in preferences there and about an hour or two later it seemed to start working (though uploading messages to iCloud is still ongoing.)

That concludes the current record of changes to date. So far it has been less of a problem than anticipated, but it's early days. I will add other issues as they emerge. Then I can return to the herculean tasks of moving family members off of a shared Media & Purchases account.

Below are details for the benefit of someone searching who finds this post. They are related older items that I will summarize in outline.

----------- additional details ---------------

As noted above years ago I had alice@icloud.com as forwarding email for the Apple ID bob@mac.com. The address bob@mac.com had no associated email because of complex changes Apple made in migrating from free iTools to not-free .Mac to MobileMe. [1][2]

When I finally realized I wasn't getting Apple media purchase statements for bob@mac.com I began investigating what had happened to the old alice@icloud.com iCloud account. I found it was deactivated. I was able to reenable it. That's when things got weird. Remember (if you read above) that there was no longer anything I the Apple ID settings for bob@mac.com that showed alice@icloud.com.

Once I reenabled alice@icloud.com with a new password I found that:

• Both alice@icloud.com and bob@mac.com worked as usernames for the same bob@mac.com Apple ID.
• The password for the bob@mac.com Apple ID had changed to match the alice@icloud.com password. [This actually took a day to propagate to iTunes purchases]
• Both alice@icloud.com and bob@mac.com showed the same iCloud services (mail, etc).
• bob@mac.com was still not a valid email address. 

fn -

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MobileMe#.Mac

Originally launched on January 5, 2000, as iTools, a free collection of Internet-based services for Mac OS 9 users, Apple relaunched it as .Mac on July 17, 2002, when it became a paid subscription service primarily designed for Mac OS X users. Apple relaunched the service again as MobileMe on July 9, 2008, now targeting Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, iPhone, and iPod Touch users.

On February 24, 2011, Apple discontinued offering MobileMe at its retail stores, and later from resellers.[2] New subscriptions were also stopped. On October 12, 2011, Apple launched iCloud to replace MobileMe for new users, with current users having access until June 30, 2012, when the service was to cease.

... The original collection of Internet software and services now known as iCloud was first called iTools, released on January 5, 2000, and made available free of charge for Mac users.

Services offered by iTools included the first availability of @mac.com email addresses, which could only be accessed through an email client (e.g. the Mail app); iCards, a free greeting card service; iReview, a collection of reviews of popular web sites; HomePage, a free web page publishing service; the first version of iDisk, an online data storage system; and KidSafe, a directory of family-friendly web sites.

.Mac[edit]
As costs rose, most particularly due to iDisk storage space, the wide demand for @mac.com email accounts, and increasing support needs, iTools was renamed .Mac on July 17, 2002, as a subscription-based suite of services with a dedicated technical support team.[25]

... Existing iTools accounts were transitioned to .Mac accounts during a free trial period that ended on September 30, 2002. This move generated a mixed reaction among Mac users, some believing .Mac was overpriced...

[2] eWorld https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EWorld

. Yesterday the password for App Store was different from password for Apple ID but today they seem to be same. I think they are two different systems that update every few hours...

 · Feb 19

Today it appears there is a single Apple ID with two usernames and one password. One username has iCloud services but is nowhere displayed in Apple ID information. twitter.com/jgordonshare/s…

... If you change a phone's Store ID to match the phone's iCloud ID  you cannot update all their apps with their iCloud ID password. You need to use the old Store ID password. Even when family sharing is in play...

... I have a hunch that Apple has an internal ID for users separate from the username (email form) displayed with their Apple IDs and Store IDs and iCloud IDs and that is what they use in FairPlay. 

Apple's Apple ID fiasco is getting worse -- declining support for Apple Store ID that is not iCloud ID

Like many veteran geeks I have a different iCloud ID and Apple store ID. This used to be a supported configuration. In my case it was essential because of some complicated history with Apple’s .mac precursor to MobileMe and iCloud. (In an unrelated matter I have another 3-4 Apple IDs that aren’t connected to anything but, depending on the vagaries of Apple’s hacked together legacy databases, sometimes pickup Apple Store hardware purchases.)

This is what Apple’s support document says now (emphases mine) …

Sign in with your Apple ID - Apple Support

… We recommend that you use the same Apple ID for all Apple services on your device—including the iTunes & App Stores and iCloud …

… If you have multiple Apple IDs, you can’t merge them …

I went looking for this document because I think iBooks.app doesn’t work properly with an iCloud ID that’s different from the Apple Store ID that can be used to purchase iBooks. It looks like this will be a trend.

Note what Apple says here. Your Apple Store ID and iCloud ID should be the same. You also can’t merge them [1]. So you either need to abandon all your Apple Store purchases or your iCloud storage purchase.

Anyone remember when Cook promised to fix Apple’s original sin of  botched identity management system? Apparently the problem is harder than building spaceship headquarters.

Apple should bite the bullet and come up with a process to merge Apple IDs. I fear they aren’t going to bother though. I really miss class action lawsuits.

- fn -

[1] There is a possible workaround. You may be able to use your iCloud ID as an Apple Store ID and then make it a family member of the original Apple Store ID. This will run into rules about changing device Store IDs and constraints on family member size as well as issues with the total number of devices that are part of a family (10). It isn’t an official workaround and I suspect it has irreversible problems of its own.

Why is Apple's mysterious two factor authentication better than a strong password?

What would I do if my home burned down and Emily and the kids get out alive but I’m dead?

That’s what I think about when I read about Apple’s “two-factor” authentication (vs. the now obsolete but similar “two-step verification” they used to have). Particularly the scary procedure you need to follow if you’ve lost your authentication devices …

Two-factor authentication for Apple ID - Apple Support

…. If you can’t sign in, reset your password, or receive verification codes, you can request account recovery to regain access to your account. Account recovery is an automatic process designed to get you back in to your account as quickly as possible while denying access to anyone who might be pretending to be you. It might take a few days—or longer—depending on what specific account information you can provide to verify your identity…

… With two-factor authentication, you don't need to choose or remember any security questions. Your identity is verified exclusively using your password and verification codes sent to your devices and trusted phone numbers.

 and

Regain access to your Apple ID with two-factor authentication account recovery - Apple Support

… You might be asked to verify other account information to help shorten your recovery period. After you verify your phone number, you’ll see a confirmation that your request has been received and you’ll be contacted when your account is ready for recovery...

… We’ll also send an email to your Apple ID or notification email address to make sure you’re the person who made the request. You can click Confirm Account Recovery in the email to help us shorten the account recovery period. …

Scary indeed. It’s vague as hell. Even control of a confirmed email account (presumably different from the iCloud account) only “shortens” the recovery period. There’s nothing in Apple’s process comparable to Google’s inactive account manager. There’s no secret recovery key I can store in an encrypted repository on an offsite drive with a password known to 3 family members.

Apple’s 2FA either makes my data too hard to recover or too easy for someone to steal … or both.

I don’t see the advantage, yet, over a strong password used only on a secure device. Google does this better — and even Google 2FA is too complex for me to manage for multiple family members.

I’m staying with a strong iCloud password for now — until Apple forces me to change. (The way they’re forcing 2FA with the 10.3.1 update makes me wonder if iCloud really was thoroughly hacked.)

PS. As best I can tell if you use Apple’s new 2FA when you change your iCloud password on one device you change it on every authenticated device. Better be sure you have them all.

PPS. At least they got rid of the secret questions … but only to replace them with some mysterious, fully automated, no humans involved, identity validation process.

PPPS. Ok, we’re traveling. Both our iPhones are lost. What do we do? hmm. I think Charlie Stross had something about this in a story … accelerando?

See also

• Gordon’s Notes: Preparing for the inevitable - Google Docs for the “Not available” letter 2/16/2013. There are certain passwords in this document that useful to people who have physical access to one of my backup drives. I have a task that triggers a reminder 3 times a year to my trusted persons that this exists.
• Gordon’s Notes: Inherit the Cloud: Who gets your Google Docs when you die? 2/17/2013

The sensible way to subscribe to a calendar feed in Apple's screwed up calendar ecosystem.

I think I know how Apple screwed this up. It’s one of those evolutionary path-dependency things. Their iCloud calendar is the child of their old OS X Server calendar (via MobileMe). They bolted a web service atop a server side model. In the old model the client was where different calendar sources were assembled, not the server. iCloud/web is stuck with that model.

So when it comes to Calendar feed subscription assembly happens on the Mac, or it happens on the iPhone. It doesn’t happen in iCloud/web. There’s no UI for adding a feed to iCloud/web because there’s no application model for that.

Which explains Apple’s bizarre instructions for getting a feed to iCloud to iPhone via the Mac. Whoever wrote that up was probably sobbing with despair. I suspect the resulting iCloud/web calendar only gets updated when the Mac updates itself. Let me know if I’m wrong.

I think there are really only two ways to do calendar feeds in the Apple world. One is to add the feed to the iOS device(s) (calendar.app) and the Mac (calendar.app) separately. Forget about seeing it in iCloud/web - that really doesn’t work.

The other is to do the subscription in a Google Calendar and subscribe to that on Mac or iPhone (and give up on iCloud/web). But then you’re going to have to deal with iOS failure to support Google’s CalDAV sync select. So this is a geek-only solution (It’s what my family does).

Here’s how to do it the simple way (iPhone and Mac only, not iCloud/web):

• iPhone: Calendars:Add Account:Other:Add Subscribed.
• Mac: I think you should ignore the iCloud option, but let me know if it updates without the Mac driving the update.

You can delete Facebook ID and Google ID, but Apple IDs are eternal (also iCloud).

My mother died on Dec 14, 2014. She was fortunate to live in Quebec, which manages the dying process far better than anywhere in the US. It went about as well as it could, and, thanks to all that socialism stuff, she left her family the estate she was determined to pass on. Points for a stubborn woman.

Dying is a complicated business, and I’m only now getting around to cleaning up her online accounts. They are a bit simpler than mine — I had only 3 identities to remove - Facebook, Google and Apple.

Facebook and Google were simple.

Apple — not so much. There is no way to remove an Apple ID, or to remove the associated iCloud data. Apple IDs are eternal.

Sigh. Oh Apple, you get away with so much.

The best I could do was to change her password to something awesomely strong by today’s standards and hope it doesn’t get hacked around 2040 or so.

Restoring iOS deleted Contacts: the iTunes method and OS X Contacts.app method

Clark Goble has a solid iOS 9 wish list addressing longstanding half-implemented oddities like Contact Groups. It omits one longstanding product gap though.

There’s no iOS backup feature.

Yeah, I hear your scoff, but iCloud Backup is not Backup. It’s a system clone. If you delete Contacts accidentally, you can’t readily restore Contacts of, say, 3 days before. When my sister accidentally deleted most of her contacts she had no way to restore them from iCloud.

If she’d been synchronizing with iTunes she could have used a remarkably complicated hack: Recovering iCloud contacts, calendars, and bookmarks from an iTunes backup of an iOS device. Honestly, Apple, that’s just embarrassing.

In this case I had a Mavericks account for her on my primary machine that’s linked to her iCloud account (even though she’s never used it). I took the machine off the network and launched her account. Most of her Contacts were there. I created a local Contacts archive backup, did some cleanup, and put the network cable back in. I didn’t need to use my archive backup though — when sync was done she had a complete set again (which is weird, actually, but that’s iCloud).

I’ve read rumors of some sort of Time Machine/Time Capsule support in 8.x for true iOS backup, but that would still require a desktop machine. IOS needs more than system clone backup, it needs real backup.

Mavericks iBooks Apple ID and Sync issues - one possible fix

iBooks for Mac 1.0 has not been well received; Apple Discussions include a good range of rants and removal hacks. (You can, and should, register your feedback here. Tom Cook’s Apple seems to pay attention to those submissions.)

I’ll join the chorus. My initial experience on a Mac that migrated from Mountain Lion to Mavericks did not go well — possibly because my Mavericks account iCloud services use a different Apple ID than my iTunes/Apple Store/App Store purchases.

In particular when I did my usual wired sync with iTunes I received this unfortunate error message:

It’s an unfortunate error message because;

1. There’s nothing to tell me what “A_Decade_of_Reversal” is (book? app? podcast?).
2. The item (a PDF) was actually on the iPhone, the problem is it wouldn’t sync to my Mac. (Precisely the opposite of the error message.)

Once I figured out what this item was (I searched Google on “A Decade of Reversal” and found the medical journal article I’d saved to iOS iBooks.app from Safari.app for iOS) I tried starting up iBooks and was asked to provide my Apple ID for iBooks store purchases…

Except the Apple ID I use for all my purchases is not the old me.com/icloud.com address shown above, nor is it two of my other 3 (known) Apple IDs, it’s my jfaughnan@mac.com Apple ID [1]. I tried entering that one and iBooks refused it.

I was stuck.

This is what seemed to work:

1. Got iBooks to sign me out of the me.com address. I did this by messing with Store and auto-download setting in Preferences, but I think one could just go to the Store menu and sign out. Then sign in again with the correct Apple ID for purchases. This triggered a message telling me I would have access only to books for the new Apple ID, but interestingly very little content seemed to change.
2. From within iBooks choose “Move Books from iTunes”. I thought this already happened, but it seemed to happen “again”.

After that I could sync, and after my first sync the PDF “A Decade of Reversal” nicely synchronized disappeared. Oh, nicely played Apple.

 

So I downloaded it to my phone again (view PDF, choose open in iBooks) and tried another sync. This time it showed up in iBooks for OS X. I’m hopeful sync will work from now on.

 

BTW, if you do provide feedback, don’t forget we need to be able to edit basic metadata again (lost Mavericks) - Category, author, title, etc. 

[1] Which, but the way, I thought didn’t have an associated iCloud account. Wrong; I just checked and it does. Everything except email, probably because the jfaughnan@mac.com email address was orphaned when I failed to renew my .Mac online service some time in the early 00s.

Google Contact Sync on Mountain Lion and iOS - CardDAV (Project Contacts 2013)

I'm rather late to this party [6], but around the time Google ended ActiveSync support for unpaid accounts [1] they added vCard 3 (1998) based CardDAV support [3]. Up until then one could sync iOS and OS X mail and Calendars via IMAP and CalDAV, but Contact sync was only via Active Sync. [2]

TUAW has some details and Google's iOS CardDAV instructions are here.

As we all know, synchronization is hell. Even if Apple and Google actually used the same vCard spec (probably vCard 3, 1998), and even if they agreed on newline characters, they still have to deal with distinctions between their internal data models and vCard. Some of those data model gaps are non-computable. [5]. Even thought Google and Apple have similar 'Group' models that relationship metadata is ignored [8].

That said, at least CardDAV is relatively Apple friendly. Most importantly, this standard means, for the very first time I know of [7], there's a somewhat supported way to synchronize Contacts between Google and OS X Contacts and iOS contacts.

I've begun using it on Mountain Lion. Since I use Google two factor authentication I had to use one of their totally-defeats-the-purpose-giant-security-hole-not-single-use-god-i-hate-passwords-humans-are-losing-the-battle alternative passwords. There was some kind of transient authentication glitch but on a second try it worked. After a few minutes I had all 634 of my Google "My Contacts" on my Mac. Because of the long history of my Google/Apple Contact sync efforts (See Also, below) these largely duplicate my Address Book/iCloud contacts -- but Mountain Lion Contacts.app seems to merge the duplicates when I search [9].

This looks promising in a terrifying sort of way. You can drag and drop contacts between the iCloud and Google Contact lists; they'll be copied.

So what about Snow Leopard? Many fine machines run Snowie (and should not upgrade to Lion even if they theoretically can). They're (more or less) cut off from iCloud. Does CardDAV sync work with Google now? I wonder about adopting Hsiaio's technique, but so far the answer is no (same with Yahoo CardDAV). I didn't find much research on this question, but I suspect it's a combination of 10.6 bugs and SSL requirements. [9]. There is some limited Google Contacts sync on Snow Leopard that some still use.

- fn - lots

[1] Google grandfathered my half-dozen Google Apps accounts and recently extended the termination date for non-Apps users.

[2] Google says Google Apps accounts should use "Google Sync", which is their implementation of Microsoft's Exchange Server derived ActiveSync (with different bugs one assumes).

[3] vCard over HTTP/WebDAV. vCard has been Apple's Contact/Address Book export option for as long as I can recall, so it may be a good match to their Contact data model. CardDAV is also used by Apple's ancient Address Book Server. vCard 4 2011 has old-style and XML representations, but I suspect Apple, like Google, is more or less on 1998's vCard 3.

Google's vCard implementation has limits; worse the only partly implement the 1998 vCard 3 spec: "why did Google move the ADR extended address "Oak and Pine" into the street address component? And worse still, why did it separate the two using an '\r\n' (CRLF) sequence? The VCard 3.0 specification clearly states that CRLF must be escaped by the single escape sequence '\n', not by '\r\n'".[4]

[4] Reading the last line of [3], by the way, a penny dropped. Apple changed the way they handled CRLF and vCard between MobileMe and iCloud, with near-disastrous consequences for my OS X Contacts. By Darwin, I hate the ancient DOS/unix/mac line newline debacle.

[5] Meaning data loss is inevitable, transferring a Contact between systems won't return the original. Incidentally, under my TrueName, I've spent 15 years dealing with interoperability issues in healthcare - from HL7 to TermInfo to SNOMED/RxNORM and back again via cCCD and the like. If you understand why CardDAV is hard, then you have a glimmer of a smidgen of a hint of an idea why we don't have true interoperability between EpicCare and Cerner -- and why we won't for decades.

I think the people who trudge away on vCardX are heroic figures who should be carried upon our shoulders. Forget Ive, these people do the work I rely on.

[6] The marketing/interest problem is unsolved -- largely because of the spam/advertising counter-current. I'm very interested in productivity software and I follow a number of related feeds; but I still miss news like this.

[7] Check out "See also" - lots of history here.

[8] Looking at Apple's braindead implementation of iOS Contacts and Groups I'd pin this failure on Cupertino and Apple's corporate silos.

[9] A friend of mine has a 10.6 MacBook and needs to use Google's world (as do we all). I think the easiest way to manager her Contract migration will be to get them to iOS/Google and then use Gmail web on Mac. I may put them on an account on my ML machine to help with cleanup.

[9] So which gets edited when one clicks "Edit" in Mac Contacts.app? Don't ask those questions. OS X doesn't say.

See also - via Gordon's Tech

Yeah, I've been fighting this war a long time. February 2009, almost exactly 4 years ago, was a big series of battles, but the 2008 PalmOS to iOS migration was probably the worst (later there were tools). I've read recently that Apple is an intensely siloed company -- that explains why iOS and OS X contract integration is so very bad.

• OS X 10.6: Synchronizing Address Book to Google Contacts 9/2010 - Snow Leopard sort of synchronized to Google Contacts, but Apple never finished the job.
• Migrating Contacts from Outlook/Exchange server to OS X Address Book via MobileMe: 8/2011. MobileMe was working well when Apple killed it.
• How I synchronize OS X Contacts with Google Contacts and my iPhone 1/2011: I was using Spanning Sync to connect Google Contacts to a set defined in an Address Book Group. I did that for about a year but I think it foundered on OS X and iOS updates. Eventually Spanning Sync gave up -- understandably. I still use and recommend their Contact Cleaner.
• Googaby: Novel approach to Google Contacts and OS X Address Book integration 2/2009: It's still sort-of-living, but I think Lion killed it (Lion was an impressive killer). I haven't tried it.
• OS X Address Book to Google Apps Contacs using Google ActiveSync 2/2009: It didn't quite work.
• iPhone sync to Google contacts - 3 methods and work/home implications 11/2008: Five years later we are still struggling with the same issues.
• Project Contacts: Integration across iPhone, Google and whatever 2/2009: Slow progress indeed. Contacts have been hard.
• Project Contacts: Now mixing Outlook/Exchange, PST file, Outlook/Home, MobileMe Sync, OS X Address Book and the iPhone. 5/2009. Shudder. More struggle.
• MobileMe: Integrating Work and Personal Contacts 5/2009: MobileMe was pretty good around mid-2009 and then continued to improve. iCloud still isn't up to that mark.
• iPhone Google Sync - Mail and Google Apps and Google saves my iPhone 2/2009: Did a lot that month! Google's original ActiveSync implementation saved the iPhone for me. I was ready to toss it out a window.
• Work home contact integration: Outlook to Google to OS X Address Book
• I try NuevaSync on my secondary iPhone 2/2009: They are still around. Alas, no OS X support.
• MobileMe to iCloud - Is Apple getting nervous? 5/2012: I keep reading how much better iCloud is than MobileMe. That's not my experience.
• iCloud transition went as expected - disastrously 6/2012: My Battle of the Bulge. Ugh.
• Consolidating Contacts: From Outlook to Address Book via MobileMe and the 5th Circle 9/2011: Migration from Outlook. Has to be a better way.
• Sync heck: CalDAV vs Exchange Server - a Google Apple review 2/2010: These days CalDAV might be ahead, but each has merits. I'm still on ActiveSync, but in 11/2009 I tried it the other way: Big switch on my iPhone sync: CalDAV and Exchange server.
• Plaxo - just not a good feeling 5/2009: Now we surrender everything at the drop of a hat. They are still around.
• MobileMe, Microsoft Outlook, Exchange, iTunes and yes, sync Hell 10/2008. I'm having flashbacks now.
• Palm to iPhone migration - address book and notes: 8/2008. Moving from Palm to iOS was exquisitely hard.

iCloud transition - Contacts take 2

Four months ago, when MobileMe was turned off, an attempt to move my OS X Lion Contacts to iCloud transition was a first class debacle. I still have PTSD from that disaster; it took several consultations over a week and some AppleScript intervention to undo the mess.

Since then I've maintained a test set of Contacts on iCloud while I sync my primary Contacts from iPhone to Desktop via iTunes. Now my primary machine is on Mountain Lion, iCloud presumably has fewer bugs, and my iPhone is on iOS 6.01. So I tried again, following this procedure:

1. Create a backup copy of my contacts on my main mac - prior to iCloud migration.
2. MacBook Air - remove all contacts. (Cloud empty)
3. MacBook - sync, confirm empty.
4. OS X: set up iCloud -- everything goes over.
1. 1833 cards on desktop
2. 1833 cards in web view of iCloud (a friggin miracle that they match) - thanks to Nigel Garvey's CR/LF cleanup script.  I did see an issue - the web view seemed to be hanging mid-way through the letter S. I edited the note for that contact, quit and tried again. Everything showed up. Don't know what that means.
5. iPhone -- need to clear out existing Contacts (was synchronizing via iTunes). Can't just turn on iCloud contacts because it will try to merge with iCloud. i'm sure that would be a disaster.
1. Turn on iPhone sync with my Google Contacts (usually that's off). iPhone offers to delete local. I accept.
2. Turn off Google Contact sync
3. Confirm no contacts left on phone
6. iPhone - turn on iCloud contacts
1. 1833 cards on iPhone (note that matches the above counts. Another flaming miracle.)
7. MacBook Air - turn on iCloud contacts
1. Yes, again, 1833. Whoopee.
8. MacBook running Lion …
1. Here I chickened out. I really don't use that machine much any more and I don't really need to replicate my Contacts there. Why take the risk of adding another OS in the mix, especially Lion? In fact, I plan to revert that machine back to Snowie with a fresh install. Then my house will be Snowie and ML - two decent versions of OS X.

So I'm back on iCloud again for Contacts, and I think a few bugs have been worked out.

iCloud transition went as expected - disastrously

I was sure Apple would screw up my iCloud transition.

So I did everyone else on our family account first. I backed up my Contacts. I did a final MobileMe sync on all machines. I logged out of MobileMe on all but my Lion MacBook Air (fully updated).

Then I migrated. All seemed well until the Preference Pane opened. And crashed.

Address Book synchronization failed.

My Address Book now has one entry instead of 1,824 entries.

Apple, your competence is not complete.

Happily, I have backups.

I ended up disconnecting the Air from iCloud and moving my Contacts from my iPhone.

Did I mention that iCloud doesn't render well with Chrome?

And Apple thinks they can do Maps?

Update: 

• My old MacBook, barely able to run Lion, managed to synchronize its Address Book correctly (at least counts and samples match) to iCloud.
• I signed out of iCloud completely on the MacBook Air and logged out. When I logged in again my Address Book entries were back. Looks like they weren't removed, rather the sync failure left Address Book in an unhappy state. I logged out of iCloud completely then logged back in and that restarted iCloud synchronization. It appeared to complete successfully.
• You can't enter an admin un/pw to active Find My Mac, you have to activate it from an admin account (so same iCloud settings have to be active in two accounts.)
• On the plus side, the web version of Contacts is pretty good in Safari. I'll be using that until I convert my iMac to (yech) Lion. I may see if I can wait long enough to go to Mountain Lion directly.

Update 6/27/2012

• There are 1831 contacts on the iCloud site, 1828 on my MacBook Air and MacBook, 1831 in Snow Leopard (no longer synchronizing but at this point should still be in sync) and 1829 on my iPhone. I tried removing all contacts from my iPhone and then restoring from iCloud, that gave me 1828. So there are 3 on iCloud that aren't anywhere else. 
• My MacBook Air (the one that crashed on initial configuration) was hanging on iCloud login, so I tried restarting it in safe mode then tried connecting to iCloud again. I got a curious error message, it seemed as though the machine was in a mixed state part way between MobileMe and iCloud state. From the 'Mail, Contacts and Calendars'  Preference Pane I removed a residual mail account that seemed a 'mix' of MobileMe and iCloud. Then I learned that I was entering an incorrect password, which perhaps didn't fail as it should have because of a partial MobileMe connection. After this I was able to login to MobileMe easily, and I got a System Preferences Directory Services configuration modification notice. Subsequently my Address Book slowly updated without any UI indication of ongoing synchronization. Although my MacBook is now behaving better, it still has 1828 Contacts (Cards) compared to 1831 in iCloud. So those numbers aren't changing.
• After the initial synchronization, I realized updates were not propagating to my OS X Address Books. I unsubscribed from iCloud Contacts, removed all contacts, and resubscribe. At the moment they are updating. (See Apple's very popular iCloud Contacts troubleshooting article for more on this.)
• I'm trying Contact Cleaner to look for problems on one of my Lion machines.
• Looks like I have another update for my Synchronization is Hell blog post. MobileMe, over the past few months at least, was actually working reasonably well.
• Apple Discussion on this post.

Update 6/27/2012: Disaster diagnosed

It appears that each time iCloud synchronizes it duplicates the Notes in many of my Contacts. MobileMe and Snow Leopard Address Book didn't do this.

I've abandoned iCloud. I'm now synchronizing the same way I did my old PalmPilot -- by cable. It works quite well. After some Contact Cleanup I've 1821 contacts on Snow Leopard and 1821 on my phone.

I then copied my Snowie Address Book archive to a thumb drive and found that Lion would import it. Now I have 1821 contacts on my machines. These sync to iCloud still, I'll see how badly that goes and I'll experiment with dropbox distribution.

Update 6/27/2012: I find the extra 3, and a theory on the iCloud bug

I figured out how to find the 3 extra iCloud Contacts. I deleted all the contacts from an Address Book on one of my machines, then I looked at what was left in iCloud.com. There were 3 duplicate addresses left, all dupes of a single good address. So I removed them.

My theory on this bug is that it's one of the oldest bugs in the Mac world -- the CR/LF vs. CR vs. LF bug. Many of the entries in my Address Book started in Outlook on Windows, and moved over via MobileMe Windows. They probably have a line termination issue. This was ok with MobileMe and with Snow Leopard, but iCloud can't handle it.

I'm reasonably sure this is part of the problem, because when I move my Contacts to iCloud I see extra line spaces, even when the notes aren't duplicated.

As I wrote in my Apple Discussion post:

I think I've figured out the bug.

It's the oldest bug in the book -- line termination.

My Address Book contains contacts that started out in Outlook, then went via MobileMe Windows Control Panel to live in MobileMe, and then into my desktop machine.

MobileMe could handle the LF (Mac) vs CRLF (Windows) difference. So can Address Book in Lion and in Snow Leopard.

iCloud can't.

I'm seeing extra line spaces in all of my contacts with notes that started out life on Windows.

Each time iCloud does its sync with desktop it finds a mismatch -- because OS X and iCloud handle CR and CR/LF differently.

So it replicates the Note.

The Note grows eternally, until everything crumps.

Nasty bug! I hope Apple figures this one out soon.

There's an option to specify a text encoding on Address Book import. I'm experimenting with exporting an archive, then reimporting as UTF-8 rather than "automatic".

Additionally, I figured a way to crash iCloud Contacts reliably. Just try deleting 1800 contacts from the web UI.

Update 6/29/12: Ongoing experiments

• I tried importing an archive into Address Book using Western (Mac OS Roman) text encoding, but that didn't help.
• When I export a VCF file for the contacts that show extra line spaces, the vCard shows \n\n\n\n where, based on the Notes display, I'd expect \n\n.
• I installed a trial version of Bento, opened a contact and inspected the text in TextWrangler then pasted it back in from TW. I also migrated to a Bento Contacts view. Then I exported a vCard again and this time it only showed \n\n. The Card synchronized to iCloud and the extra line feeds disappeared there. 
• I get the same results just using Address Book, pasting into Text Wranger, then pasting back into Address Book. The round trip through Text Wrangler solves the EOL problem. I wonder if that's something I could write an Apple script to do.
• Mac OS X hints has the best information on doing this conversion. From 2003.
• I found a Service that I could enable in Service Preferences called "Macintosh Line Endings". It may have come with Devon Technologies WordService. Highlight Address Book then applying this service removed the Windows CRLF pairs and left Mac OS X LF line feeds. It fixed the problem. So if I can figure a way to walk my Contact Notes and apply this Service the problem will be fixed.
• iCloud updates are unpredictable. Sometimes fairly fast, sometimes I give up.

Update 6/30/2012: vCard options

i've decided there's an Uncanny Valley for software; products that look almost like real software, but don't quite make it. Bento and Automator are like that.

Bento didn't turn out to be very useful, but it showed me there were 1000s of notes to clean up. Too many to brute force, even after creating kb shortcuts for the "Macintosh Line Ending" WordService.

I looked at scripting Bento, but it's not scriptable. Address Book is very scriptable, but there didn't seem to be a way to walk through a list of addresses applying the Line Ending utility to each note in turn.

vCard is more promising though. I can use TextWrangler to change \n\n to \n and remove the dangling \n at the end of many vCard Note strings. On import then Address Book will turn the \n into a LF -- no more CRLF problem.

As expected, however, Apple's Address Book import is unable to process the %^$#! CATEGORY strings that Apple Address Book Export $^@%# writes! Grrr. #$#@!$% Apple.

I tried using the 'merge' function, but, like iCloud, that merely replicated the Notes. I'm looking at ways to put the CATEGORY strings into the Notes field (Append), so perhaps I can use smart groups to recreate my Group assignments. Maybe Stefan Kelley'rs Export Address Book utility will help. I need to think on this one.

Update 7/1/2012: Hex Editor won't help

It occurred to me that I could use a hex editor to try to fix the problem. Alas, .abbu is just a Pacakage, there's no single file I can try editing.

So I think I'll be doing the vCard export/import and I'm experimenting with ways to speed group membership recreation on import. Some useful references:

• vCard import group 9/2008
• Difficulty importing Categories into 2/2009
• HT4489 Importing vCards to iCloud from... 5/2012
• VCard grayed out when attempting to... 4/2012
• Custom fields in Mac OS X Address Book « Diaries, Triumphs, Failures, and Rants
• Address Book Power Tips | Mac|Life

Update 7/2/2012: Exploring more options, with a focus on somehow retaining Group membership

Lion's Address Book 6.0 has more import/export behaviors, including restoring 10.4's option-export individual vCard. That makes its continued inability import Categories as groups, or import "custom fields", all the more exasperating.

• Address Book 6.x: Resolve dulicate cards when importing cards: After first review can apply to all.
• Address Book 6.x: Import contacts
• Address Book 6.x: Export and import vCards

And LDIF is perhaps an option ...

• Importing an ldif address book?

Some potentially useful tips ...

• 5 handy Address Book tips -- Reality Distortion: Macs, Mac OS X, and Apple stuff
• Mac Address Book tips: 5 more handy hints
• Hawk Wings - Plug-ins for Address Book (and other) (there used to be an advanced importer plugin, but it appears to be gone - Address Book importer)

I suspect vCard import/export includes the Department field. I don't often use Department, so I could probably copy the Category strings into Department, and then use Smart Groups to create subsets from which to create Groups.

Update 7/3/2012: vCard export/import won't work, but a hybrid hack looks promising

Many fields are omitted from Address Book's vCard option. So I can't do clean up and restore from there, I'd lose too much. Worse, Address Book Import is also quite weak. Instead on a test machine running Lion and Address Book 6.0 I tried this convoluted process on a copy of my Snow Leopard Address Book.

1. I selected all contacts and exported Group vCard (1820 contacts)
2. I used Bento to delete all Notes (select column, hit delete, exit Bento)
3. Working on the vCard export, I used TextWrangler to replace \n\n with \n everywhere and remove a trailing \n at the end of the NOTES string. This removed some paragraph definitions but I didn't mind that. Simpler to do.
4. I then imported the vCard file back into Address Book. Address Book said it had found 1818 duplicates and merged those in; I ended up with 1822 Cards. So there were two duplicates.

The results seemed good, I no longer found duplicate notes. The Address Book synchronized to iCloud far more quickly than before, and iCloud also appeared fine and without duplicate Notes.

I considered using Address Book merge to resolve the two duplicate Cards, but it is too aggressive and would merge addresses I wish to keep separate. So I used Contacts Cleaner. It found 3 duplicates and a (new) 5-6 duplicate addresses. Those were quickly resolved and I ended up with 1819 cards, but iCloud did not update; it still showed 1822 Cards. I suspect that because Contact Cleaner is altering records "behind Address Book's back" that it doesn't know what to sync to iCloud.

Unfortunately Contacts Cleaner still refers to MobileMe in the UI and the App Store support link goes to a 1 page contact-free FAQ that is also the entire product documentation.

I suspect the only way to force iCloud updating is one outlined for a different product; Address Book Cleaner. It requires deletion of all contacts on iCloud to enable synchronization. Since I've shown previously that Safari will crash if you try to delete 1,800 Contacts this way, you have to do it using Address Book and some Archive shuffling (if you are reading this you are enough of a geek to figure that one out on your own).

This approach, though inelegant, appears to work. I'll do some more testing before I try it on my real Address Book. (I haven't tested yet to see if Snowie will open a Lion Address Book. I suspect not, but the process I used will probably work on Snowie. As long as one backups up the Archive, it's easy to restore an Address Book.

*OOPS* Late update: Even if I delete all entries, iCloud/Address Book now has large numbers of replicated Categories/Groups. This is quite comical!

Update 7/4/2012: Every iCloud client Address Book irrevocably poisoned by metastatic Groups

This was when I gave up. I'd solved my Notes duplication issue, and I'd gotten the Contacts Cleaned. I'd even figured out how to clear out iCloud (I thought!) and how to push changes from one machine to others. Then I noticed this:

That's a portion of the hundreds of replications of the Personal Group as shown in iCloud.com. I see the same list in every Address Book synchronized with this iCloud account, even though all the Contacts/Cards have been removed.

Wait, it gets worse. On these test machines I tried removing the entire contents of Library/Application Support/AddressBook. (I found I had to quite LaunchBar to empty the trash -- it holds onto this data. Which means LaunchBar is a minor suspect in this crime.) It didn't work; they came back (I could see them being added to Library/Application Support/AddressBook/Metadata as Address Book launched).  They are immortal and they're spreading to all of my machines. These iCloud Groups are the metastatic cancer of OS X Lion.

How can this be? Clearly they don't only live in Address Book. I suspect that after one syncs with iCloud, regardless of whatever one does later including signing out of iCloud, the group definition lives in iCloud. On a disconnected machine it's somewhere in an iCloud offline cache, and they get synchronized into Address Book. To delete them one would need to clean out the iCloud local data store. There's no known way to do that (no iCloud equivalent of  reset SyncServices).), just as, incidentally, there's no way to delete an iCloud.com account. 

Of course there are still options. Given enough time, I could delete them one at a time in Address book.app or iCloud Contacts. Maybe I could track down the cache and remove it. Maybe I could see if creating a different iCloud account removed them.

I could do a lot of things ... but ... really, I'm done. I've established to my own satisfaction that iCloud and Lion are broken.

I'm done. My Address Book is in Snow Leopard, and it works -- even with the EOL bug. I sync now to my iPhone via the iTunes cable. Maybe I'll sync them to a special Google Apps account as well -- using iTunes. One that's setup just to provide access to my Contacts.

I'll try again when Mountain Lion is out. (Update: Mountain Lion helped a bit, but AppleScript was the fix. See below.)

Update 7/4/2012b: More broken iCloud (I can't resist).

I have a mac.com Apple ID. For kicks I tried creating an iCloud account from it. Turns out you can -- except iCloud hangs. So you get part of an account I think. Did Apple outsource all their iCloud development? I mean, this thing is made of cheap crystal.

Also, when I did this OS X told me that this new account wasn't my primary iCloud account. So you might ask - how does one change or configure the primary iCloud account? It's not clear, but in some experimentation involving removing accounts, logging in and out, etc. I think I did.

One more discovery. In the iCloud world data really lives on the Cloud. My local data seems like a cached version of Cloud data. So, once you make the Cloud transition, Apple owns your Contacts. I don't see a way to get them back. I have noticed that the Address Book archives are bound to a .me account, not to my machine.

Update 7/4/2012c: Postscript, in which all 1819 contacts move to a new iCloud account with the EOL problem fixed.

I couldn't quite leave it alone. In further experiments I discovered:

• Sometimes my Address Book 6.x Import option would be grayed out. Deleting everything in AddressBook fixed this. Seems to be a permissions problem related to iCloud.
• It's iCloud that's writing the Groups back into Address Book. Indeed, I discovered when iCloud is active it's impossible to truly delete all files from AddressBook. It grabs hold of some on startup. When all iCloud accounts are moved both from System Preferences and Address Book Preferences you can delete the files.
• You can drag and drop Contacts from "iCloud" to "On My Mac" and create a local set -- but you can't move or copy Groups. Groups live only on iCloud. Makes you wonder what Apple wants to do with groups.
• I was able to make my mac.com account my Primary iCloud account. It told me if I wanted email to work I'd have to pick a me.com email address. I ignored that.
• I deleted everything from iCloud on my test Mac (I've figured out how to do that). Then I copied my Address Book archive from Snowie. Then I went through the  EOL cleanup process I described above. Then I set up an iCloud connection to my mac.com identity. This time it moved everything over (so what I see on my Mac is only a cached version). With the EOL bug fixed I had no duplicate notes and no metastatic Groups, and the same count on both.

And now I wait for Mountain Lion. At least I know the EOL fix works; I'll be sure to test that before I try Mountain Lion. At some point I may take my machine to an Apple "Genius" and see if they can get the original iCloud account cleaned up.

Update 7/26/2012: I fixed the Group Replication problem - deleted the Groups with AppleScript.

Update 7/27/2012: Nigel Garvey of MacScripter writes an AppleScript to fix the line terminations (!)

Notes on converting a MacBook Core 2 Duo dual USB to Lion

Our vintage 2006 MacBook Core 2 Duo can, in theory, run Lion [1]. I just upgraded it from Snow Leopard, which it ran reasonably well albeit with lots of fan activity.

I didn't upgrade happily. There's a reason I've waited this long. I wanted to stay with Snow Leopard, but Apple's MobileMe migration was going to cause problem for Emily's Address Book/iPhone Contact sync. Yes, that was the primary reason. Sad.

I upgraded all the apps we use, said farewell to AppleWorks and many games the kids no longer use, removed all PreferencePanes and extensions, unplugged all cables, did a safeboot cleanup and two completely independent backups (one a clone). Then I upgraded.

It seemed to go well enough once Spotlight rebuilt its indices and I refreshed everyone's account. it does take a very long time to log out; Lion is saving a lot of state information and the MacBook doesn't like that.

It went well enough, that is, until my old account. Then things got slow. Even though I'd updated VMWare Fusion to the final "Lion Compatible" 3.x version, I suspected it was the problem. I tried running my VM -- that was a disaster. After power down and a safe boot I uninstalled VMWare 3 per directions.

That helped a great deal. In fact, the laptop is quieter than it used to be. I suspect Fusion has been causing problems for a while [3].

So will I try Fusion 4?

No, not on this old machine. I really don't use my VM's very often, and neither Parallels nor Fusion are sold through the App Store. To do their magic without Apple's help they must be hacking the underlying OS; and OS X is increasingly hard to safely hack.

For now the MacBook seems to have survived Lion - albeit at the cost of a little used VM I'm probably better off without and a dozen or so older games -- and AppleWorks.

So far, better than it could have been. I am, however, regretting obeying Lion's command to update my Airport firmware [2]. 

[1] That's almost six years ago! I'd forgotten how old it really was. Maybe I shouldn't be too upset it can't run Mountain Lion. [2] Lion really wanted me to undo my Time Capsule firmware regression, so I did. Now I'm seeing more problems with losing connectivity, i saw a -1 error again, and I'm again having to rebuild Spotlight indices of the backups. I have a strong feeling I'll be reverting again. I seem to be the only one with this problem though. [3] My best Fusion experience was version 2 with a Windows 2000 VM -- on that old MacBook probably with Leopard (10.5). It's never worked as well since. 

Update 6/17/2012: Logging out and user switching is much slower. It takes about 20-30 seconds to log out and 15-20 to switch. I think it's because of all the context saving Lion does; this old machine can't handle it. There are ways to disable saving of application states, but I'm going to wait a while on this one. Otherwise things aren't too bad. The machine is quieter than it has been for years, the fan no longer roars. I suspect that's due to uninstalling Fusion 3.x, but it could be a Lion improvement.

Update 6/17/2012: I went through each user account and turned off 'save and restore windows' in system preferences. Then I logged out and unchecked the restore windows on login option shown there. No logout and login is back to Snow Leopard times. Now I have to figure out what to do about #$@$ Google Software Update. it keeps popping up in managed accounts that don't have privileges to run it.

Apple ID Hell: Apple's identity mismanagement and an insanely obscure ID bug with MobileMe send as email

Apple has long had trouble with truly basic concepts of authentication, but lately they've gone off the rails.

It's not just the new and quite demanding Apple ID password requirements that will lead most customers to put them into iPhone Notes -- since it must be entered each time you buy something.

It's not just the bug in their password instructions; when they say "no more than 3" repeating characters they mean "no more than 2" repeating characters (test it yourself).

It's not just that Apple prevents one from seeing the ugly and unmemorable Apple ID that we have to type in -- while also disallowing copy/paste into the password field (take that password manager!).

It's not just that Apple's Apple ID maintenance UI wants me to change my primary email address to match my .mac ID -- which doesn't have email.

No, it's even worse than all that.  The big problems are the proliferation of Apple IDs, and a bug that hit my very old Apple ID.

By trial and error I've discovered I have no less than four distinct Apple IDs.

I have an Apple ID that matches an old MobileMe account I abandoned years ago.

I have an Apple ID that matches my current MobileMe account. When I changed its password I also changed my MobileMe account password.

I even found an old developer account that is now an Apple ID too. (Apple merged these databases). So that's #4. It has yet another email address of mine and so I verified that. 

Lastly I have the Apple ID that is associated with hundreds of dollars of purchases. That's the one I care about -- and that one has two email addresses associated with it. That's critical for password security. One of the email addresses is my personal Gmail address.

Except ... neither of them are "validated". That's bad.

Apple won't let me validate them either. It claims both are associated with other Apple IDs.

One of them is my current MobileMe email. Since I've discovered that account morphed into yet another Apple ID, that makes sense. I removed that one and added a new email that I was able to verify (I own my own domains, so it's easy to make email redirects).

Then I tried removing the Gmail address and adding it back in. Uh-Oh, that's no longer allowed. It's been orphaned.

I check each Apple ID in turn, including my mother's and the kids. The Gmail address is not associated with any of them. So is there a fifth AppleID somewhere? Is there a bug? Is there a security breech?

There's more. After I changed the email address and password for my mac.com Apple ID, Apple enrolled me in iCloud for that account! So now it has an email address too?

I'm beginning to understand why Apple's share price is relatively low. If they can't manage something this basic, they're in trouble.

Apple, if you need a clue, here's a few:

1. We need a way to delete Apple IDs. Unwanted IDs are a security risk.
2. Or we need a way to merge Apple IDs!
3. You need to fix my gmail bug Apple.  If #2 is not a bug, you need a way to reclaim that address (does someone else have it as "unverified"? Is that part of how iTunes accounts are hacked?

See also:

• Apple's messed up Apple ID system: what are they smoking?! 7/2008 (!)
• Apple's identity and account system is screwed up. Again. 10/2008
• Apple is again messing with Apple IDs – pay attention! 6/2009

Update: I've figured out the bug. It arose as a side-effect of changes to the way Apple IDs work, and it only impacts people who are still on MobileMe accounts and who have the same email address associated with two Apple accounts prior to the time Apple made that illegal. In brief:

1. The Gmail address was a validated 'send as' forwarding address in Mobile Me Mail.
2. The Gmail address was the primary email on my mac.com Apple ID.
3. Then Apple created an Apple ID for Mobile Me email. Somewhere in Apple's databases the Gmail 'send as' address became an alternate email for the new Apple ID. HOWEVER, it was already a primary email for another Apple ID. So it didn't display in the AppleID maintenance screens for my Mobile Me account.
4. Since it existed in the database, however, it couldn't be validated in my .Mac account.
5. When I removed it from my .Mac account I wasn't allowed to add it back, since it was associated with my MobileMe account -- but in a partial state there.
6. It couldn't be located using my First and Last name in the Apple ID locator page because it wasn't properly associated with the MobileMe account. However, Apple's 2nd tier phone support was able to see it there.
7. I went to the MobileMe account and added the email manually. It suddenly appeared -- as verified! I removed it, but Apple Support confirmed it didn't remove completely. So I left it "verified" with the MobileMe account. Now I know where it is.

Apple is closing MobileMe, so there's no way they'll ever fix this bug. I'm glad I seem to have fixed it however, it might have screwed up my iCloud migration. I think before I go to iCloud I'll remove that forwarding email address.

Postscript: Apple's Support Profile is supposed to show the products associated with my Apple ID. I think it used to. I don't see them any more. It says my home number is associated with a different Apple ID...

MobileMe to iCloud - Is Apple getting nervous?

Apple's MobileMe service officially ends on June 30th, almost 8 weeks from now. When it ends we either need to go to iCloud or give up on easy address book synchronization across our iOS and OS X devices and user accounts. (I've already moved the kids over.)

I'm in no rush. iCloud/Mac requires Lion and Lion won't install on the older iMac the kids still use. Worse, I don't even like Lion on the machines it supports. Lion is a disappointment.

I'd prefer to stay with Snow Leopard until early 2013, then switch to Mountain Lion. Except, of course, Mountain Lion won't install on our MacBook.

Yech.

I suspect I'm not the only one who isn't in a rush. Apple seems worried. The last time I used the MobileMe web interface I ran into a fake-out splash screen that tried to convince me MobileMe was already gone (nice try Apple). Recently Apple sent me a free Snow Leopard DVD to reduce the cost of a Lion upgrade (the cost is irrelevant). Today Apple is telling me I can keep my email address even on machines that don't support Lion [1]. Meanwhile, Macintouch, an old-school Mac site, shares ideas  from MobileMe dead-enders and iCloud denialists.

The pushback is strong enough that hard core geeks are coming up with inventive ways to sync Snow Leopard Address Book and Calendar to iCloud [2].

One option, of course, is to go all in with Google. This was more appealing when Google was less evil than Facebook. Worse, it's not clear how well Snow Leopard Address Book did synchronizing with Google. Lion still supports this; I created an empty account and synchronized with Google. It ended up bringing over 598 cards from the group "My Contacts". (All Contact had 2091 members). I've no idea how reliable this is, but iOS synchronization with Google works quite well. So this might be an option for Lion machines, and non-Lion machines would use Gmail (which is evil now, but works well [3]).

Lastly there's Spanning Sync - an alternative Mac Address Book to Google Contacts option for those who want to abandon MobileMe for Google Apps. (It's an expensive option for a family however.)

Alas, these days I don't want to get closer to Google; I'm trying to move the other way.

So I'm stuck, waiting to see if anyone else comes up with something better. Maybe if I wait long enough Apple will make Mountain Lion run on my old MacBook.

[1] Sort of. Apple botched this half-measure, even by lowest of standards. There's no way to tell from Apple what this means.. What it really means is email and calendars currently in MobileMe will be accessible on iCloud via the web UI.Unofficially Snow Leopard Mail.app may also be able access this email via IMAP.

[2] I doubt this will work all that well; synchronization is hell even when it's supported.

[3] iCloud's web apps are better than MobileMe's -- but an earthworm could clear that bar. iCloud Contacts, for example, is even more awful than Lion Address Book.

Apple fixed Message.app (iMessage) in iOS 5.1 -- and nobody noticed

I give Apple a lot of hurt, but here they fixed something big and nobody else seems to have noticed. Even better, by fixing it they put more hurt on a deserving AT&T.

A few months ago I wrote about iMessage use on an AT&T iPhone without a SIM card (iPod Touch mode) using .me accounts. Problem was Message/iMessage 5.0 wouldn't let me enter a .me account in the iMessage app, nor would it show .me email addresses. I could only iMessage my son from the Contact UI. From Message.app, since he's on H2O wireless rather than AT&T, I could only initiate a conversation using SMS (20 cents for me, 5 cents for him).

I'm still on iOS 5.0 on my phone [1], but my son is on 5.1. So I could see than on his phone I can enter email addresses (the keyboard has a '.' now) as well as choose a .me address -- all from the Message.app UI. I've now updated my phone to 5.1 and it works there too.

It's a significant enhancement, but I don't think anyone else noticed ...

[1] I was concerned it wouldn't work with MobileMe, and I've yet to switch to the inferior and problematic iCloud alternative.

Lion: Only 3.5 stars on Apple's App Store

I have no compelling reason to move our family accounts from MobileMe to iCloud, though Find My Friends might be nice. Still, I'd probably do it -- except that I want to keep my iPhone and OS X Contacts in sync. Moving to iCloud for my iPhone means I need to move to iCloud on the desktop -- and i have only one Lion machine. Two others are Snow Leopard and a fourth won't run Lion at all.

I'd need to put Lion on the dual core MacBook, where it will run slowly even with encryption off. It should be fine on my i5 memory loaded desktop.

The bigger problem is that I'll need to upgrade software. FileMaker for sure, and probably a few other odd apps need Rosetta. The experience is guaranteed to be painful and expensive.

Apple's App Store is not encouraging. Lion gets 3.5 stars there, and the negative comments (only ones I bother with) are persuasive. That is, they complain about issues I know are real (such as software upgrades).

Meh. I'll wait until March or so. Maybe Lion and iCloud will both look better then.

Migrating MobileMe family accounts to iCloud

I've started migrating family accounts to iCloud. This explanation from Apple Discussions is helpful ...

With a Family Pack, the master account holder and the sub-account holders can each migrate to an individual iCloud account by going to http://me.com/move and entering their email address and password (not www.icloud.com). The order they do this in is immaterial; if the master account moves first it can no longer administrate the sub-accounts. If a sub-account moves first the master account cannot create a new sub-account to replace it. Once migrated each account becomes a full iCloud account entirely separate from the others. The master account holder will get the 20GB storage upgrade free until June 30th 2012; the sub account holders will not, and will have only the basic 5GB.

I began with #2, currently using a SIM-less iPhone 4. He's got almost no data to lose.

I want him to continue to use my Apple ID however ...

... iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch must have iOS 5 or later. Note: When you are asked to provide your Apple ID during iOS setup, use your MobileMe email address and password. To use a different Apple ID for iTunes and iCloud, just go to Settings > Store on your iOS device after you've finished the iOS setup assistant...

... Inactive and expired MobileMe accounts do not need to move to iCloud. Simply use your inactive or expired account to sign up for an iCloud account and follow the onscreen instructions. See this article for more information...

and

When you first set up your iOS 5 device, enter the Apple ID you want to use with iCloud. If you skipped the setup assistant, sign in to Settings > iCloud and enter the Apple ID you’d like to use with iCloud.In Settings > Store, sign in with the Apple ID you want to use for store purchases (including iTunes in the Cloud and iTunes Match). You may need to sign out first to change the Apple ID.

Following this path I learned that #2 will still have MobileMe Gallery, iDisk and iWeb Publishing through 6/30/2012 -- even after moving to iCloud. Better than I'd expected. No keychain sync though. I hope that comes back in some form.

I had to enter his iCloud (same as MobileMe) credentials to setup Facetime and iMessage on his SIM-less device. Although the phone doesn't need a SIM for this, it can't be in Airplane mode.

So far, it has gone better than expected.

Update: Thinking this over, I realize I need to update my machines to Lion before I move Emily and I. So this will take a while ...

The iCloud identity problem: manageable?

My MobileMe account user name is different from my very old (.mac) Apple account user name associated with all my iTunes purchases.

These worlds meet with iCloud. Except ...

Getting started with iCloud, Apple's new sync service | Web | Macworld

...Can I merge Apple IDs into one iCloud account? Not at this time, unfortunately....

Sounds bad, but things aren't too bad ...

Apple IDs and iCloud (apple support)

...You can, however, use one Apple ID for iCloud services and another Apple ID for store purchases (including iTunes in the Cloud and iTunes Match). You will get all the benefits of iCloud whether you use the same Apple ID for iCloud and store purchases, or different IDs for each...

... iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch:

When you first set up your iOS 5 device, enter the Apple ID you want to use with iCloud. If you skipped the setup assistant, sign in to Settings > iCloud and enter the Apple ID you’d like to use with iCloud.In Settings > Store, sign in with the Apple ID you want to use for store purchases (including iTunes in the Cloud and iTunes Match). You may need to sign out first to change the Apple ID.

Mac:
Enter the Apple ID you want to use for iCloud in Apple () menu > System Preferences > iCloud. Enter the Apple ID you want to use for store purchases (including iTunes in the Cloud and iTunes Match) in iTunes > iTunes Store...

This means that family members who share a single iTunes account (our case) can still have separate sync accounts.

I'll be taking my time before I transfer to iCloud, but this is better than I expected. Good for Apple.

Migrating Contacts from Outlook/Exchange server to OS X Address Book via MobileMe

For the past year I've had one set of Contacts in Outlook/Exchange server and another set in OS X Address Book/MobileMe. My iPhone pulled in both sets, so they met there. (I'll omit the added complexity of how I sync to Google.)

This worked quite well, but now I need to bring all my Contacts into OS X Address Book. There are several ways to do this [1], but in the midst of some quick Google searches I remembered I'd written about this. I like my approach best, as detailed in two 2009 posts (neither of which rank highly on Google fwiw [2]):

• Gordon's Tech: Project Contacts: Now mixing Outlook/Exchange, PST file, Outlook/Home, MobileMe Sync, OS X Address Book and the iPhone (5/2009)
• Gordon's Tech: MobileMe: Integrating Work and Personal Contacts (11/2009)

The value of this approach is it uses Apple's own software to manage the Outlook to Address Book translation. The problem is that it requires MobileMe, which is no longer publicly available. I'm hoping Apple will do something similar with iCloud -- assuming they don't shut Windows out entirely.

The software I use is the Contact Sync tool built into MobileMe for Windows. These are the components:

1. MobileMe (alas, closed to new users ... maybe iCloud will work one day?)
2. Outlook 2007 running on XP (in my case, in a VM)
3. MobileMe Control Panel for Windows (no support for Outlook/Exchange, only Outlook standalone)
4. OS Address Book.

The first step is to get a copy of my Contacts into Outlook 2007 at home.

1. Clean out all Contacts from Outlook 2007.
2. Using MobileMe control panel and "sync reset" I sync everything from MobileMe into Outlook 2007.

Second step is to copy my Contacts from Exchange Server to a PST file. This has the added benefit of transforming X400 style email addresses to standard format.

Third step is ...

1. Back up OS X Address Book contacts.
2. Add the PST file as a data file and drag and drop Contacts into a subfolder of Contacts (see above articles for details, this is how Apple's sync software treats OS X Address Book Groups -- as Contacts subfolders).
3. Sync again to get them all to MobileMe and inspect MobileMe.
4. In OS X sync to get them all to Address Book.

I'm reminded of something I'd forgotten -- how vastly better Outlook is for managing contacts than OS X Address Book -- especially since Microsoft Access can manipulate Outlook contacts. It's reason alone to have my VM keep synchronizing with MobileMe.

[1] CSV export doesn't work very well. There are some utilities that probably work; one reader of mine had success using Plaxo.
[2] A splog that had stolen a post of mine ranked higher than my stuff. Maybe I should start taking Google's ads?

Lessons from sharing our team videos

In a burst of foolish optimism, I volunteered to do some videos of our team pitchers and share them.

This turned out to be much harder than I imagined. It's one of those tasks where each step has multiple options, but only a few choices really work.

Along the way I tested and abandoned MobileMe's video gallery [1] and Karelia Sandvox [2]. I briefly considered then discarded Picasa Web album video sharing.

I did figure out a path that works. Two of 'em actually. I'll share the easy one first.

The easy option

Use an iPhone. Take short clips. Don't edit. Upload. Share links.

The much more painful deluxe option

The deluxe option assembling multiple video fragments from a Canon dLSR HD video camera into a one video for each pitcher, then embedding them in a web page.

If I ever do this again, this is what I'll do for the deluxe option.

I. Getting the video

1. Bring a tripod (!) and an external microphone.
2. Have the coach use the external microphone to narrate comments.

II. Use iMovie and share via YouTube hidden links

This was the first time I used the new iMovie. I read a few pages in the surprisingly well done Portable Genius Guide to iLife (see [3]).

1. Each player gets one Project/Movie.
2. Edit in 3:4 ratio -- this is the pitcher we're working on.
3. From iMovie share to YouTube as "private" at the highest available resolution.
4. In YouTube change these to "hidden".

This is time consuming. It took about 10 minutes for each clip to create a movie and upload. An alternative would be to export as .mp4 (NOT default .m4v) then bulk upload overnight [4]

III. Share images using Blogger and MarsEdit or HTML markup

1. I tried a few web page editors, but, as noted above, I didn't have much luck.
2. Instead I used YouTube's embed code (iframe markup) and pasted the embed text into the MarsEdit HTML view for each video. It was tedious but gave good results.

- fn -

[1] I'd not tried it before. Now I see why Apple gave up on the Galleries.
[2] Crashed on me during my video uploading attempts. Could be just bad luck -- pretty much every OS X app I use crashes sooner or later. Almost like 10.6.7 is an unhappy host OS. Still, bad timing.
[3] iMovie notes

• Clip Library is a pool of shared clips that can be included by reference in multiple Projects (movies). Clips can be stored in iPhoto, Aperture 3+ or iMovie. I think Clip processing is smoothest if they live in iMovie. Clips can be split, reorganized, rated, merged. Even deleted, though that's not obvious.
• A "project" is a movie.
• In a clip or a project/movie click to set start point, space to play
• click then drag to create a frame within a single clip (can't span clip): Click into  this frame and drag and drop to the Project area. It took me forever to understand this. I kept thinking I had to edit the clip first.
• Native export is .m4v -> evil, vile, worthless, foul spawn of satan. Want .mp4

[4] The settings to make this work are not obvious. I got decent results when I used Export to Quicktime, MP4, then set data rate to 4096, image size 768x576, Fit within size for crop, and "best quality" encoding mode in video options.

Being the bug: Things I learned upgrading my mother's Mac Mini

...Sometimes you're the windshield
Sometimes you're the bug...
Mary Chapin Carpenter

I followed the iFixt directions to Install a Mac mini Model A1176 Hard Drive; now my Mother's Mini has more capacity and is clunk-free too.. I boosted the memory to 2GB as well; that's easy to do on the way to a drive replacement.. Blew out a tone of dust when I had the top off.

The last was probably my downfall ...

"seemed to succeed - until I discovered my optical drive had broken. Disks do not mount, after some tries they eject. There was a LOT of dust inside my Mini, I think some got in the optical drive. A cleaning DVD and compressed gas didn't fix it. I wonder if it would be wise to seal the opening to the optical drive -- certainly before cleaning...

The Super Drives in this model of Mini have a high failure rate. I'm not sure how to replace it, but I'll find out.

I wanted to get my mother's machine to 10.6 so I could try auto-answer Facetime with her, so I persisted. Along the way I learned ...

1. DVD sharing didn't work. I have no idea why. The 10.5.8 Mini couldn't see the Snow Leopard disk in my MacBook.
2. Putting the MacBook into Target Mode (firewire link) let the Mini see the drive, but Snowie wouldn't install.
3. Putting the Mini into Target Mode with 10.6 in the MacBook DVD worked ... until it froze. I have a hunch a locked user 'Applications' folder on my mother's mini [1] caused the installer to hang when it was all but done. This locked up both machines. I had to power cycle the Mini -- to my surprise it came up ok. I hand repaired the locked folder issue. My MacBook was stuck with a white screen; I had to restart it and hold down the mouse key to force eject the Snowie install disk (install disks are special - they don't pop out on restart).
4. iFixIt understates repair difficulty (I knew that from my iPhone repair).
5. At least if you're using MobileMe as your Facetime "address" you don't need Facetime running for it to answer.
6. Facetime is less reliable than I'd thought; at her home it failed frequently in testing.

[1] So she couldn't accidentally edit the folder.

Update 4/23/11: The replacement for this drive is ... nothing. Nobody sells replacements at anything like a reasonable price. Bugger.

Update 4/27/11: Mayer of iFixit provided a list of substitute drives:

Just about any 12.7 mm ATA/IDE/PATA drive will work. So before you spend the bucks decide what capabilities will meet your needs. Here's one that iFixit has: 12.7 mm PATA 8x SuperDrive (UJ-85J)

Here are some that will work:

• 661-3887 24x combo
• 661-3888 4x super drive
• 661-4442 24x combo
• 661-4421 8x super drive

As of April 2011 the $90 iFixit drive is one of the few I can find, they have 1 left. SATA has replaced IDE.