Did you follow Apple's two-factor authentication advice to provide a friend's phone number for SMS authentication?

I bet you didn’t do this [emphases mine]:

…You should also consider verifying an additional phone number you can access, such as a home phone, or a number used by a family member or close friend. You can use this number if you temporarily can’t access your primary number or your own devices….

… To use two-factor authentication, you need at least one trusted phone number on file where you can receive verification codes. Consider verifying an additional trusted phone number other than your own phone number. If your iPhone is your only trusted device and it is missing or damaged, you will be unable to receive verification codes required to access your account…

… If you're signing in and don’t have a trusted device handy that can display verification codes, you can have a code sent to your trusted phone number via text message or an automated phone call instead. Click Didn’t Get a Code on the sign in screen and choose to send a code to your trusted phone number…

Apple 2FA implementation has a high risk of account access loss (Google has better 2FA recovery options). Apple’s recommended mitigation is to use multiple SMS verification numbers, not just the one mandatory number. Since SMS is an essential part of Apple’s 2FA, and SMS is a poor way to do 2FA, Apple’s 2FA is fundamentally insecure (mac bloggers seem universally unaware of this incidentally).

Damned if you do and damned if you don’t. On balance, if you use 2FA, you should have at least two SMS numbers numbers associated with your (insecure) Apple ID.

PS. To Apple’s credit, you need both a password and SMS to access your iCloud account, and you can’t reset the password just using SMS. In the absence of a trusted device the password reset process is mysterious and takes a few days.

PPS. You can use a Google Voice number as a trusted number. That way you can use a web browser to retrieve the authentication code.

iOS 12.1 Files.app will open Google Drive hosted ePub directly in Books.app

iOS 12.1 Files.app will open Google Drive hosted ePub files directly in Books.app (formerly iBooks). I don’t know how new this is, but tapping on the same file in Google’s Drive.app gives an “unsupported file type” error. (You can still copy it to Books, it’s just awkward.) I’d long used Drive.app to open my ePubs, just happened to try Files.app today.

Books UI doesn’t scale well to significant number of ePubs, storing them in Google Drive or iCloud Drive works much better [1]. I treat iBooks as a temporary store, periodically I clean it out.

[1] Also iOS 12 Books.app won’t sync with Sierra iBooks, so those of us who are putting off painful updates have another reason to store in the file system. Really, though, it’s just way better than using iBooks storage. I’m a bit disappointed Apple hasn’t fully integrated iBook storage with iCloud Files, but this is nice.

iOS 12 Notes.app tables don't render in Notes.web (or Sierra Notes)

Tables have been neglected in the past 20 years of software, so I was surprised to see them in iOS 12.1 Notes.app.

Sadly, they don’t render in Notes.web (Safari or Chrome). Instead we see the same empty block that Sierra Notes uses:

That’s disappointing. iCloud is overdue for some maintenance.

Apple Manage Devices / Associated Devices is still kind of broken

If multiple devices share a Store Apple ID they will show up in Apple ID Devices. They will also show in iTunes (for that Store Apple ID), Apple’s current documentation states iTunes is the only way to see and manage this list. “You can have ten devices (no more than five of them computers) associated with your Apple ID and iTunes at one time."

And you thought iTunes was dead!

You have to remove devices manually from this list after you stop using them. If, like me, you use the same Store Apple ID on family devices it’s easy to hit the limit.

The interesting bit is these two lists are different and they don’t synchronize. They are presumably on two different databases.

The applied.apple.com list is current and shows 8 devices. I think if you sign out of a device you’re not using this list will be updated.

The iTunes managed list is not updated when you sign out of a device. You have to update it manually. I think it still supports iPods. It had one of our devices that was no longer active on it, but it also had an old iPhone 4 we use for music only that runs iOS7 [1]

iPod support explains why the iTunes managed list can’t be automatically updated. I don’t know what happens if you exceed the limit on one list but not the other.

- fn -

[1] The iCloud My Devices display supports “iOS 8, macOS Yosemite … or later …”

iOS 12 Family Sharing: Purchase Sharing supports changing Apple ID and UI could support future multiple Apple IDs.

One of Apple’s “original sins” is the proliferation of Apple IDs and the inability to merge or manage them. I have four that I know of with cryptic and fungible relationships between Apple ID and product ownership. (The worst bugs in the software world are data model bugs.)

In iOS 12 Family Sharing there’s now a setting for Purchase Sharing with an associated Apple ID. Mine is set to my Apple Store ID which is historically distinct from my iCloud ID (many old timers have this unfixable issue). If you tap on this Apple ID it rings up a dialog that allows this to be changed (there’s a bug here — tapping on it doesn’t always work. I had to leave the screen and return to it to enable tap). When I tapped it switched the default to my iCloud Apple ID.

I believe this is a new control. It will be interesting to see what happens when I migrate other family devices that use this iTunes Store ID for purchasing.

At the moment only one Apple ID can be used, but this UI could support multiple Apple IDs. The screen also displays a payment method that cannot be changed, it’s presumably defined by Apple ID.

This is something to watch.

PS. The ten year history of this mess is one reason I recommend Spotify over Apple Music for families.

See also:

• Move your Apple product records from one Apple ID to another Apple ID 11/2014
• How to delete your iCloud account and Apple ID 6/2017 (not)
• iCloud Family Sharing storage: What happens to Alice’s photos when Bob drops her from the Family? 10/2017. Wonder if this has changed.
• Apple’s Apple ID fiasco is getting worse — declining support for Apple Store ID that is not iCloud ID 11/2017 Then it seemed to reverse. I don’t know where Apple is going with this.
• Apple has a new problem with DRM and device management 3/2018 This will be interesting to retest.
• Converting from shared store ID to Family Sharing - and what didn’t work 4/2018. That was a fiasco - largely because family sharing only works for children.
• Apple ID Hell: Apple’s identity mismanagement - back in 5/2012
• Apple’s messed up Apple ID system: what are they smoking?! - 7/2008. Ten years ago.
• My Apple purchase records jumped from true AppleID to one I've never used. This is what I think happened. 7/2012. I think they were missing a ‘foreign key’ between two or more database systems.
• Apple's identity and account system is screwed up. Again. 10/2008
• Apple ID associated purchase records have jumped again: partly back to my old Dev account 7/2014

iOS 12 Parental Controls / Restrictions / Screen Time: Parental Controls (Passcode restricted) is not always compatible with "Share Across Devices"

Experimenting with Screen Time I enabled a passcode on my personal iPad after I’d enabled “Share Across Devices” [1]. I then found I could disable it without reentering the passcode. Which kind of defeats the purpose of a parental control passcode.

Then I turned it on again, and this time I was asked something like: “Is this iPad for you or your child?” [2]. Once I chose child I could no longer remove the passcode without entering it.

“Share Across Devices” then turned itself off.

When I turned “Share Across Devices” back on then I had to reenter my Screen Time Passcode. After than Screen Time Passcode was disabled.

Maybe this isn’t exactly a bug, but it certainly is awkward. I wonder if “Share Across Devices” uses iCloud ID or iTunes/Store ID.

Screen Time for family is enabled through the “Family Sharing” screen.

- fn -

[1] I think Share Across Devices Requires Apple’s two-factor authentication, which seems to rely on SIM-hack-friendly justly scorned phone number authentication. Yay Apple.

[2] Remember when iOS was going to allow multiple accounts on a single iPad? Android did that for their now defunct tablets.

Converting from shared store ID to Family Sharing - and what didn't work

Maybe this worked. Or not. See update.

Our five family members have long shared one store Apple ID. We’ve done this before there was Family Sharing. I put off switching to Family Sharing as I figured it would take Apple 3-4 years to get it working.

With iOS 11.3 Apple broke a longstanding purchase behavior. My son’s iPhone no longer required a password for purchases, only his fingerprint. There might be a fix, but I decided instead to move him to Family Sharing. (There is a fix, see below.)

The story went something like this [1]:

• I have an iCloud Apple ID (john.___@icloud.com) and a different Store Apple ID (j____@mac.com) — because I’m old. He has an iCloud Apple ID (sam.___@icloud.com) and my store Apple ID.
• In my iCloud Apple ID he is a family member. 
• I removed my Store Apple ID from his phone and added his iCloud Apple ID.
• I sent $15 to his iCloud Apple ID from my App Store account.

So far he still can access our movies and apps. Now he will make his own purchases that will be associated with his Apple ID. When he runs through his $15 he’ll give me cash and I’ll send more money. Eventually I do need to get a debit or managed credit card on his phone but we’ll start with cash. Alas, it doesn’t work that way. See update.

After the change I checked the (this is broken) two places Apple currently tracks devices associated with an Apple ID

• appleid.apple.com/account/manage: showed 7 devices including an old iPhone my son used to have that I’d previously removed. This also showed on his iPhone Apple ID view. I removed it from both places and it has not returned.
• iTunes Manage Devices showed 8 devices, but not my son’s current iPhone. This, in contrast to past testing, is correct while the appleid.apple.com list is incomplete. It’s interesting that moving my son’s phone to Family Sharing means I’m no longer at my 10 item device limit (if that rule still applies!)

- fn -

[1] He is, incidentally, a special needs adult. I’d have liked to be able to use Apple Ask to Buy for him but that’s not available for an adult. (I wish Apple considered special needs as a disability — they have great support for visual and auditory needs, but not for cognitive.)

Update 4/19/2018

• Seeing purchase histories is really clunky. You can see what apps a family member has purchased by launching App Store.app, logging out and then logging in as the family member. To see both tunes and apps you go to Apps & iTunes in Settings (yeah, this is crazy). You have to log in as the family member — I got the ancient iOS 1.0 un/pw dialog that shows up when you get to a part of iOS that desperately needs a replacement. It did work, but seriously ugly.

Update 4/20/2018

• Subscriptions aren’t Family shareable. So that’s a significant bummer; several of his apps are subscription based. All is not lost though, At Bat.app presented my Store Apple ID username and accepted the password. In-App purchases aren’t Family shareable either — which is bad news for Omni Group. Apple has a list of what’s not shared.

Update 4/28/2018 - what I wish I’d known

My son ran up a $70 bill on a $15 credit — all on my account — because “Any time a family member makes a new purchase, it’s billed directly to the family organizer’s account”. It doesn’t work the way I thought it did. If a family member is under 18 you can activate Ask to Buy, but not for someone over 18.

Family sharing is clearly designed to only work for children. It’s a poor match for a couple that wants to keep separate finances and it’s unsuited to adult children.

I found that the 11.3 update bug didn’t truly break the ability to require an iCloud password for purchases. It only bypassed the requirement to enter the iCloud password to enable Touch ID. I went into Touch ID & Passcode and turned off “USE TOUCH ID FOR … iTunes & App Store”. 

He doesn’t know his iCloud password (so he can’t lose it in a phishing attack!), so this meant he again needed us to enter a password into his iPhone to make purchases. Obviously, Ask to Buy would be far better. If Apple wanted to support users with cognitive disabilities …well, this blog accepts comments. I’d be glad to advise.

We didn’t want to have to memorize another password, so I changed his iCloud password to match my App Store & iTunes password.

"This item was not added to your iCloud Music Library because an error occurred"

This is why Apple Stores are overloaded. I have 254 items like this. No explanation, no hints on fixing it.

Low quality is expensive.

PS. In this particular case it looks like iTunes and iPhone supported .mp4 audio, but iCloud does not. Long ago I ripped these and the software did .mp4.

I found the on drive files and used quicktime player to export as .m4a — a lossless transform that strips out the some of the .mp4 wrapper. Then I deleted originals in iTunes and added these back in.

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.

Did iOS 11.1 (partly) fix iTunes photo sync?

I’m back to wired sync for photo transfer after giving up on iCloud Shared Albums. The simplicity is a relief — except with 11.0 it wasn’t working well. Out of 8300 images in Aperture I was lucky to get 6200 to sync. Sometimes repeated sync brought over a few more, other times I was stuck.
With 11.1 I got them all.

I still can’t get iTunes WiFi sync working though.

PS. I finally found some use for my iPad Air 2. I set it up at work without a network connection and play on device music and randomly display family album images using LiveFrame.app. I use MindNode.app to organize projects. It’s still marginally useful but that’s progress.

Update 11/3/2017: I think WiFi sync is working now.

Update 6/9/2018: I had to do a restore to my iPad and the bug is back again. I might try iOS 4.

Moving the family to 2TB of iCloud shared storage (Family Sharing)

We have five family members with 7 devices using iCloud storage. Four of us are paying $1/month for 50GB of storage, one is fine on the free 5GB. Mostly this suffices, but my daughter’s photos have been near the edge for a while [1]. Instead of updating her quota I decided to update the family to 2TB ($120 a year) and not have to worry about this for a while. First, of course, I confirmed that there was a way to unwind this decision.

I wondered how it would go since we all use a single iTunes account for purchasing DRMd material (video, movies, etc). We’ve done this long before family sharing was a feature and switching from to the new approach is a bit worrisome. (Family Sharing of DRMd material does have one advantage — whoever buys things gets to keep them when they separate from the family. As the kids tastes have diverged sharing is less useful.).

The iTunes account turned out not to matter. Family iCloud sharing runs off the family owner iCloud account, not the family owner’s iTunes account (Of course for most people these are, at least superficially, the same thing. I suspect they aren’t all that integrated in Apple’s famously messed up back end servers.)

I followed Apple’s support guide to update myself to 2TB. The guides aren’t that well done, they don’t make it obvious how the process works. I couldn’t enable the family sharing of my iCloud quota in Sierra (probably needs High Sierra), but it was easy to do on my iPad. Once that was enabled an iMessage went to family members for them to transition.

The experience for family members was a bit glitchy. For two members I could just tap on the iMessage, enter iCloud credentials and accept the switch. Users get a notice their current plan will end and they’ll receive a prorated reimbursement. The family member who was on the free quota didn’t need to opt in, he just go the expanded quota (an interesting security-convenience tradeoff). For the fifth family member I ran into several failed attempts on an iOS 10 device. I got as far as entering his credentials to access the upgrade but then the process failed. On his iOS 11 device I was able to make the switch from this iCloud manage storage settings. His iOS 10 device then also showed the correct settings.

Two TB is overkill. I might drop back to 200GB in a month or two — especially since I’m using less iCloud storage now. (I’ve gone back to Aperture-iTunes and a lightning cable for getting photos to my devices).

Update: After doing this I realized our family total is now just 67GB. So I downgraded to 200GB. Interestingly this didn’t take effect immediately — I wonder if it will take until the end of the current month. I’m not that concerned about the delay but it is a bit annoying. Note that we currently pay $4 for 200GB for each of four users, but will pay $3 for 200GB shared between 5 users. The 25% cost reduction is nice (I’m cheap) but the real deal is that a shared 200GB is far more efficient. My daughter will end up using 150GB and the rest of us will be fine with the residual 50GB. I’ll move the family to 2TB if/when we need to. Perhaps by summer 2020 Apple will have enhanced Photos.app and iCloud Photo Library enough for me to switch off Aperture. I’ll need the 2TB for that.

Update 11/8/2017: I checked with Apple Support via Twitter. We prepay for storage. When you go up it’s an immediate change and you are billed in a prorated fashion. When you go down the change applies to next billing cycle.

- fn -

[1] On the one hand the 50GB cap does motivate her to edit things. That’s good, but really she has enough stuff to deal with.  She doesn’t need one more painful discipline. Sometimes I gotta walk my Dad mistakes back …

How to do a simple random image picture frame type slideshow in iOS 11 on an iPad.

You know how you look for something on the web and you can’t find it?

That’s because it can’t be done with the base OS and nobody talks about the features that Apple has removed. There’s no ad revenue in that.

But I don’t take ads, so here you go.

This post exists to tell you that as of iOS 11 you can’t create a random picture-frame like slideshow on an iPad without a 3rd party app. Yes, the iPad used to be able to this. Once upon a time you could set a random image display up as a lock screen. Later this was moved to the Photos app.

With iOS 10 it died. In Photo albums on an iPad there’s a slideshow button (top right), but it only plays linearly. Which I loathe.

There are slideshow options by the way. They are insanely obscure. Start a slideshow. When an image appears, tap on it. There are a few options. No “shuffle” though.

There used to be an excellent third party app to do picture frame slideshows called Picmatic. My father loved it. He died before I updated his iPad to IOS 10. Good thing, because iOS 10 broke Picmatic and the developer never updated it (damn thing needed #$!$ subscription pricing).

There’s one “Picture Frame” app left on the App Store — LiveFrame.app. It worked with my Google shared libraries, but even though it could “see” my iCloud Shared Libraries it would hang when I tried to use them.

I’ve been fairly disgusted with iCloud Shared Libraries so I decided to try life without them (to be fair all image sharing except Instagram seems to have died). I turned iCloud Shared Libraries off on all my devices. I’d already given up on iCloud Photo Library. Then I went back to the stone age. I connected iTunes 12.7 to my iPad with a Lightning cable and had it sync 8,300 images from my Aperture “slideshow” smart album.

Of course the sync didn’t go easily. The image transfer aborted 3 times — without any notice. Mercifully the sync restarted where it left off. Unlike iCloud Photo Sharing I think iTunes supports a true 1 way sync; updates are relatively painless.

With the photos on my iPad, and no evil iCloudness, LiveFrame.app works. It’s no Picmatic, but it’s there. The developer should go to subscription pricing so they have an incentive to keep it around. There’s zero competition and this app is a perfect fit for subscription (no data lock, nothing to prevent switching).

Note — this slide show doesn’t need a data connection. The images are on the iPad.

So today one Apple thing worked — albeit an old thing. Sort of. That’s pretty good for Apple in 2017. (I can’t believe people are buying the iPhone X. Are they insane?!?)

iCloud Family Sharing storage: What happens to Alice's photos when Bob drops her from the Family?

Alice and Bob are a “Family”. Bob, the Family Organizer, pays 2TB of iCloud shared storage. Alice has a 1TB iCloud Photo Library.

Alice and Bob split. Bob drops Alice from the “Family”. What happens to Alice’s photo library?

Apple doesn’t discuss this in their support article on leaving family sharing [1]. So I asked on Apple Discussions. I received several responses that seemed suspiciously knowledgeable [2].

There’s nothing written down, but I think both of these responses are correct …

"Apple is allowing a grace period to transition without issues, but that is an unstated, voluntary policy. AFAIK, Apple makes no promises of any kind that this policy won’t change, or even that it will be applied to all users.”

and

"iCloud keeps all of the information associated with your Apple/iCloud ID for 30 days whenever you have a payment issue or change.

When you joined Family Sharing, your Photo Library did not move or get re-associated with the Apple/iCloud ID that "owns" that data. It is tied to your ID even if you went with the Family Sharing plan. All that does is move the responsibility for paying for the storage from you to the Family Sharing organizer.

All you need to do is leave the Family Sharing plan, and then upgrade your iCloud Storage. Anything that was stored under your Apple/iCloud ID will remain in iCloud for 30 days, so if there is a gap between when you leave (or were removed) from Family Sharing and when you upgrade your iCloud Storage, as long as it doesn’t exceed 30 days, you should be good to go."

My takeaway is:

1. Apple needs to write this down.
2. Alice probably has 30 days to up her storage before she loses her photos (or, if Alice is geeky, she can move them locally).
3. Alice should probably up her storage before she’s dropped from Bob’s account (assuming she has warning).
4. Alice should always have a local full res Photos.app Library that’s backed up to a local drive (probably not by Time Machine, Apple is shockingly unclear about whether Photos.app can be safely backed up by Time Machine).

- fn -

[1] This is worth reading. I thought that children, on reaching 18, could retain a copy of DRMd material. Either I remembered incorrectly or policy changed. Effectively any FairPlay DRMd item has only one iTunes account owner.

[2] I think some respondents on Apple Discussions have inside information. I don’t know if they are contractors or employees or what.

iCloud calendar invitations to non-iCloud accounts are still broken

It’s been over a year since I first posted that iCloud invitations to a non-iCloud (ex: Google) account have been broken since 2011. Briefly, if someone sends an invitation from iCloud to my gmail address I’ll never see it. Somehow Apple looks up one of the four (that I know of[1]) iCloud accounts that I have, presumably one that references my gmail address, and uses that one instead.

In late 2016 Apple introduced an obscure workaround, an advanced iCloud (only) Calendar setting to receive event invitations by email — “if your primary calendar is not iCloud”.

I was working on a book chapter today so I revisited the old bug to check out the workaround. From my son’s (unused) iCloud Calendar I sent myself an invitation. Despite the setting nothing appeared in any of my (unused) Apple iCloud Calendars.

I waded through my Apple IDs to identify which one was associated with that Gmail address. I had to answer Apple’s “secret” questions [2] several times, but I found an Apple ID of mine associated with an iCloud account that did had the “receive by email” option enabled and had iCloud mail services. I tried from several iCloud accounts; none of the invitations appeared anywhere. They didn’t show as email, they didn’t show up on my iCloud calendar. They went into the ether.

Apple iCloud calendar invitations to non-iCloud addresses are still broken.

[1] Multiple iCloud accounts, some with email services and some without, is a longstanding Apple fiasco. Cook promised to clean it up several years ago and quietly abandoned hope. I periodically read hints from insiders that Apple’s identity management is more screwed up than even the most cynical outsiders can imagine.

[2] Also known as a hacker’s best friend.

 

Photos.app flailing during sync with iCloud Photo Library? Maybe it's a permissions problem.

My daughter uses Photos.app and a 50 GB iCloud Photo Library to manage her videos and images [1]. She edits on an older Air with a small SSD, in that environment Photos.app caches scaled res images and only downloads full res when editing.

In addition I run an instance of Photos.app for her that stores full res images. The Photos.app Library is stored on an external SSD that hangs off an Elgato T2 Hub attached to my beloved Air. The hub has been very reliable under El Cap and Sierra.

I have a user account for her on my drive, and in that account the external library is the Photos.app System Library. My Time Machine [3] and Carbon Copy [4] backups include that Library.

All was well under El Capitan. A few months ago I upgraded to Sierra [2]. Yesterday I decided to update her Photos.app library — only to discover I was a few months behind [5]. Her user account hadn’t been updated to Sierra; when I opened Photos.app her Library had to be updated.

Things did not go well. Photos.app said it was uploading @8,000 images (really it shouldn’t have uploaded anything, but Photos.app sucks), then @2,000, then @11, then … You get the idea. It did that when I went to bed, and it was doing it in the morning.

After a bit of playing around I discovered that a Sierra bug meant that she no longer had write permissions to the external SSD, even though macOS said she did. I switched to an admin account and there she had no permissions, so I added her. After that she could write to the SSD. Photos.app “stuck upload” was because it had no write permissions at all.

I decided to create a fresh Photos.app Library for her. To do that I turned off WiFi and did option-Photos.app startup to create a new Library. I copied the old Library to an external drive and deleted it. I then opened the new Library, made it the System Library (interestingly it showed images from a cache!), turned on WiFi and enabled iCloud Photo Library. The images then downloaded from iCloud (source of truth) and restored my local backup copy.

- fn -

[1] She is chronically running against the limit — which isn’t all bad. It enforces some editing. I might switch to sharing a 200GB plan, but I’m not sure how that will work with our current family use of a single iTunes password. Future experiment needed.

[2] I like to wait at least 8 months before accepting Apple’s dangerously buggy macOS updates.

[3] Our two Airs do Time Machine backups up to a Synology NAS. After some initial issues that has been utterly trouble-free. The NAS has two RAID 1 drives, if one fails the other survives. This is another reason I wait for macOS bugs to get fixed; I also need things like VMs and NAS to be updated.

[4] CCC backups to a 4TB low heat drive in a Voyager cradle with Firewire 800 connection to the Elgato hub. I rotate 4 drives. Rotation is every 2-3 weeks, 1 drive is across town, the other in my Van. A Yellowstone eruption would take them all out unless the van outran the pyroclastic flow. It is a shame that offsite internet backup has failed.

[5] Only automated backup ever works — and no form of backup is reliable.

Life with Apple: Podcasts move to streaming only

In a move that feels as inevitable as death and taxes, Apple has made podcasts effectively streaming only. The same thing is likely to happen to all media, Podcasts just went first.

Until recently macOS iTunes and iOS Podcasts.app supported both file based sync, including Playlists, and streaming based distribution with an unreliable sync of podcast metadata.

With iOS 11 iTunes playlists are no longer represented in Podcasts.app. You can still create Playlists in iTunes made up of local files and/or cloud references, but they stay in iTunes. The Playlists were the main way I organized listening to my large collection of file-based In Our Time podcasts and my medical education podcasts. No more. I’m now dependent on the very limited (ok, crap) organization abilities of Podcasts.app.

Apple has long had problems with video that moved to an iPhone from both iCloud and iTunes. iBooks synchronization is a mess too if you mix non-Apple store ePub with streamed iBook.

This is ugly and going to get worse. We’re moving fast into the DRMd hard data-lock rental-only future.

Update: Many good threads on this in Apple Communities. They reminded me to leave feedback. Stations are not a substitute for playlist sync, but even on their own they are missing a key filter — limit to on-device items.

Annals of iOS inconsistency: Contacts vs Notes vs Reminders - backup and sharing

https://www.icloud.com/#settings currently shows an “Advanced” subsection for restoring Contacts. It provides options to restore an iCloud data set “archive” from iCloud (not to be confused with restoring an entire iOS device backup):

Notes aren’t on the list though. They have their own note-specific backup restore option, but it’s at the level of an individual note and there’s no version restore, only the ability to undo a delete for 30 days by restoring a Note from “recently deleted”. (BTW, if you Share a Note only the Owner can “delete” — but anyone with Edit privileges can remove all content — and since there’s no version undo that means anyone who can edit a Note can delete it without a recovery option.)

Sharing is another area of odd inconsistency. Notes must be shared one at time, but multiple Reminders can belong to a set of People.

I’d like to see Notes add Google-style Note-specific version save/restore and share by container (folder) as well as Note, but there’s no rumor of that in iOS 11. I’d pay for a third party solution for iCloud, similar to what CloudPull does for Google App docs, but I fear the demand is too small (for example). An Apple iCloud Drive folder view of Notes [1] would be a big help; I’d then be able to restore an individual Note from a Time Machine or Carbon Copy Cloner backup …

Anyone have an AppleScript to create a local daily snapshot of Notes? (There is this, but in Sierra Apple omitted AppleScript dictionary support for PDF creation).

The world moves in unexpected ways. We seem to be converging on a form of backup that’s a regression for people like me, but a big improvement for most. There’s probably some kind of futurist principle there — the good-enough mass solution will drive out the elite ideal …

- fn -

[1] The main reason I’m still on Simplenote is that nvAlt on my Mac maintains a synchronized file store that works just like this. Perfect data freedom — but almost nobody appreciates this …

[2] As of Sierra at least some parts of Notes are in /Users/[username]/Library/Group Containers/group.com.apple.notes. This location has changed a few times. Note content is distributed between media files (PDF, etc) and text in a sqlite database, so recreating an individual Note document as, say, an RTF file, is a non-trivial task. For example (sqlite browser):

I suppose Time Machine backups of this folder might be a kind of ‘restore all notes’ option, but restoring a version of an individual Note would be tricky…. (There’s something deep here about the ways in which we assemble bits to create something our brains perceive and our tools manipulate, but it’s beyond my ken. Once upon a time a BYTE article would have traced the roots of the Notes sqlite store back to database file systems of the 1980s…)

How to delete your iCloud account and Apple ID

First, invent a time machine.

Second, go back in time and force Apple to add account removal.

For now - you can’t.

You can remove your Google account. You can remove your Facebook account. You can’t remove your iCloud account and your Apple ID. They are eternal.

I’ve run into this little oddness before, but I was reminded of it when cleaning up my deceased father’s online presence.

A 2013 Apple forum post says: “Access can be stopped by Apple if they are provided with your Death Certificate.” I bet you have to fly the certificate to Cupertino. Even then it’s not clear if any data is deleted. I wonder if anyone has ever done this.

Apple gets away with a lot.

PS. I did set his email to forward to me.

Partial restoration of lost Apple iCloud photo stream shared albums (updated: didn't work)

Something went wrong. It always does.

I had thousands of images distributed across over 60 shared photo streams. One day I rebuilt Aperture’s database and all the iCloud images were in one recovery folder. I deleted them and then most of my iCloud shared albums vanished.

This is a quick summary of how I recovered most of them from backups. I don’t know how this truly works, but it seems that this folder in my user account was a source of truth for iCloud photo streams:

/Users/[my user name]/Library/Application Support/iLifeAssetManagement

I copied what was there to an external drive then deleted it, logged out (necessary to close open databases) then logged in. With Wifi on when I launched Aperture it showed no images at first then downloaded what was in iCloud. So there was some kind of sync.

Next I did the same thing (closed Aperture, deleted, etc) but this time copied a backup of iLifeAssetManagement from prior to the bad event. I then turned off wifi.

On relaunch Aperture showed about 6100 images in “Shared:iCloud”. It rebuilt thumbnails for them. Then I turned on Wifi. Next I saw the count rise briefly as albums I’d shared previously came down from iCloud. Alas, the count started falling again, stabilizing at 5600.

I had most of my streams back — though one stream was much smaller than it used to be. Still, about 80% recovery and I didn’t lose a few I’d done post-disaster.

Better than nothing.

Sync without controls is truly hell (and Apple never provides enough control).

Update: Aperture shows 56 single owner photo streams (one is empty) and 5 shared. iOS Photos.app shows 20. At least one of the iCloud albums not seen in iOS photos.app cannot be found at its public link. The iCloud library and the Aperture iCloud library are not in sync. So I’d call this a failure.

Aperture crash - sad day for my iCloud Photo Share streams (shared albums)

Aperture locked up when duplicating an image. I had to force quit, when I restarted I rebuilt the database. 5,300 images showed up as recovered.

Turns out they were all thumbnails for iCloud shares, but they’d lost connection to iCloud. When I deleted them I found most of my iCloud share streams were empty.

I believe I have my images, but it is sad to lose the relationship to the shares. Aperture is no longer supported by Apple of course. I’m running El Capitan, for what that’s worth.

Backups are no help of course. Even if I could recover the relationship to photos shared in iCloud I’d lose other work.

Update: 

/Users/jfaughnan/Library/Application Support/iLifeAssetManagement/assets/pub has 7.5GB of files holding 2,634 items including some photo stream temp files. It’s not clear if this can be deleted, but it may be Aperture doesn’t use it…

• tacos - 53 GB in iLifeAssetManagement folder but only 5 GB in Photo Stream - Ask Different
• tacos - What is iLifeAssetManagement, and can I delete it? - Ask Different
• After migrating to iCloud Photo Library can the iLifeAssetManagement folder be deleted? - Ask Different