Controlling what iTunes video goes to an iPod or iPhone

This is a bit weird. I think there's an iTunes OS X bug involved.

I wanted to control what TV shows went to my iPhone. My son wants to go to the polls with me early tomorrow, and he will need entertainment if we have a long wait. (Minnesota polls, however, are extremely well run. Waits are unusual.)

There are a lot of controls on what Music goes to the iPhone, but, oddly enough, fewer controls for space hogging TV shows.

The Library "checkbox" selector method breaks down when one has multiple devices -- those are library settings, not user or device settings. There are checkboxes for Movies that are device specific, but not for TV Shows.

One trick is to choose to sync "unwatched" episodes, then use the context menu "set new" option to mark watched episodes as "unwatched". (The new/watched term incongruity is a bug.)

Another is to follow this author's advice: Syncing the Next n Unwatched TV Shows to your iPod, AppleTV or iPhone using iTunes.

What worked for me was to create a simple playlist of the TV Shows I wanted and to use the "Selected playlists" option in TV Show sync.

Obvious in retrospect. Here's the odd part though.

When I first created my Videos folder, it didn't show up as a playlist I could select -- maybe because it also held some home movies. I created a smart playlist of an series of TV shows to see if that would work better; when I next checked BOTH appeared as playlists I could check.

Weird.

Anyway, the Simple playlist approach works fine for my TV Shows. That should get Tim through the voting wait.

We interrupt our programming for this political message

Gordon's Tech, this blog, is where I put my geek experience. It's apolitical, and even my geek business opinions stay out of it.

Those sorts of things go into Gordon's Notes, along with some opinions on other topics.

Topics like American politics, technology opinions, and the Enlightenment. Yeah, I'm a fan of the Enlightenment.

They go into Gordon's Notes, with the exception of this political message.

If you're a rational Republican, who'd have been happy with McCain 2000 but is struggling with McCain 2008 and Palin the Dominionist, please consider the latest endorsement from a rationalist Republican - a former publisher of the National Review, including an endorsement from the daughters of Goldwater's vice-presidential nominee.

Add that to de facto endorsement from David Brooks, explicit endorsements from George Will, the famous Colin Powell endorsement, Christopher Buckley's job-ending plea, endorsements from myrias of conservative newspapers and GOP governors ...

Well, you have a lot of respectable Republican conservative company if you vote for Obama tomorrow.

Consider it a downpayment on the rehabilitation and reform of the GOP.

We post-liberal Democrats need a respectable opposition. We need a reformed GOP. If you vote for Obama, you can join fellow Republicans who want to reform the GOP, and retrieve it from the Paliniacs.

We now return to our regular programming.

Joys of Google Calendar - in Gmail and the toolbar

I've become a Google Calendar fanboy.

Now that Spanning Sync has integrated our glorious family domain Google Calendars with OS X's pathetic and lethargic iCal I can view my work and home calendar, Emily's calendar, and the Google Calendars for Minnesota Special Hockey and more.

I can view and edit them on any browser, and on my iPhone. (Albeit with a once daily sync, please ask Apple to open the iPhone Calender API and invite Google in.)

It's fantastic; the work/home calendar integration is almost worth the pain of my Palm to iPhone conversion by itself.

Now I get the bennies, like attaching my calendar to the Firefox Toolbar or embedding my unified Google Calendar Gadget in the sidebar of my Gmail view. Even iGoogle is getting interesting now that I can create a portal with all my embedded Google Gadgets [1].

Thanks Google.

[1] Which would even more useful if Google's directory would clearly separate Google-authored gadgets from the rest of them!

Update 11/7/08: Had to swap out Google Calendar Sync and swap in gSyncit.

iPhone sync to Google contacts - 3 methods and work/home implications

[Before you do this, ready my update!]

Why, among all the OS X blogs I read, have I not come across much discussion of this July 2008 iTunes 7.7 Apple knowledge base article: iTunes: Syncing address book contacts with your Google contacts?

For that matter, why does iTunes OS X have no relevant Help articles on the topic?

Maybe it's because synchronization in OS X/XP/Address Book/Outlook/iTunes/iPhone/MobileMe/Exchange/Google Apps/Yahoo! is just ... you know ... a wee bit complex? Maybe I'm not the only one lost in the mine field?

Well, it's time to explore this particular quadrant. I hope to update this post over the next few days, but here's the first draft.

I have made progress lately with Work/Home integration. I use Google Sync to one way sync work calendar information to a secure calendar outside my family domain. I found traditional "subscription" (.ics) to this calendar failed due to Google Calendar problems, but that I could acquire the data via either iCal CalDAV support or Spanning Sync. The latter seems faster and more reliable and I'm using that.

So what about Gmail contacts?

There are several options:

1. gContacts for iPhone - pulled from the App store but supposedly to relaunch without trademark issues. I have this, I use it for read-only access to my Google Contacts. No search however.
2. Spanning Sync for OS X: This will pull Google Contacts into the OS X Address Book. The problem here is duplicate resolution -- I don't know how it works. Note that OS X Address book has a Merge facility I've never tested.
3. iTunes 7.7+ will supposedly sync Google Calendar contacts to the iPhone directly (not via the Address Book). On XP this will replace your iPhone Address Book, but on OS X it apparently creates a separate "account" so you can sync the iPhone via iTunes and the USB cable to both the OS X Address Book and Google Calendar. Note the iPhone Contacts has a limited search capability.
   

I'm going to try #3 after I back up my OS X Address Book and my Google Contacts. Be warned, however, that the Google Contacts backup is CSV based and does not include relationships to mailing lists. It is impossible, given the format, to completely restore the data should anything go wrong. At best you will restore an approximation to your original Google Contacts.

The interesting possibility is that one could synchronize Outlook work contacts with Google, then sync that to the iPhone via iTunes, and, on OS X iPhones only, have some integration of work and personal Address Books/Contacts.

Did I mention than Synchronization is Hell?

PS. Despite the lack of documentation, the very existence of this option, and it's implementation as a separate 'account', is encouraging. It suggests Apple may eventually support Google Apps synchronization as a (far better) alternative to MobileMe. Maybe.

Update 11/2/08: Ok, didn't work. I've restored my OS X Address Book from backup.
If you active iTunes sync with multiple sources, it combines them ALL into a SINGLE source, which it then broadcasts back to all sources. So my OS X Address Book, iPhone and Google Contacts all had the sum of all addresses -- without much attempt at reconciliation (though OS X Address has an interesting "detect duplicates" function). I left my Gmail contacts as the sum of all sources, it's never been a very controlled data set so this probably won't cause too much harm. I turned of Gmail synchronization. Someday I'll fix things up, but for today the project is on hold.

Update 12/1/08: See the comments for a bad outcome from one experiment. Synchronization is Hell.

Google calendar iCal share fails - CalDAV or Spanning Sync instead

Google recently announced a quality of service guarantee for their apps:

The official update feed from the Google Apps team: SLAs available for Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Sites and Google Talk:

... Google Apps Premier Edition now includes a 99.9% uptime guarantee for Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Sites and Google Talk....

Google has been comparing their App up time to traditional services, and boasting how much better they are.

My experience is different.

For example, today sharing stopped working from one my Google Calendars. Very annoying.

I run into a variation of this sort of failure every few weeks. Of course my XP work environment is also unreliable, but I ask more of it.

Personally, I'd give Google a "B" grade for reliability. Not B+, but not B-. Just B.

Update 11/2/08: The iCal calendar continued to show an update error icon, and I couldn't connect to the gCal share with a browser. I recalled that Google Calendar has CalDAV support and so does iCal, so I followed the subscription directions.

That worked.

Around that time it finally occurred to me that I own Spanning Sync. Now Spanning Sync only syncs with one Google account (our family domain), and that's not the account that has my work calendar, but that's no problem. My family domain account has read/write privileges with my personal gmail account calendar, so I could reach it through this indirect route.

It seems to work fine. Spanning Sync support means I could theoretically update the work calendar from iCal or even my iPhone, but I don't plan to try that -- ever. The arrangement is too rickety to support true synchronization. Publication is fine.

I have given up on .ics subscription.

PS. I like the way the CalDAV accounts work in iCal Leopard. It's a positive sign in several ways ...

Create your own Quartz filter to reduce OS X PDF size

If you scan a B&W text page at 600 dpi into Adobe Acrobat, and apply fax-style run length compression you'll get a file of about 60K.

Use OS X to create the PDF and the size will be 2MB.

The difference is compression choice. Lossless run-length compression works very well for B&W, OS X is probably using JPEG or TIFF.

What you want are better ways to control PDF size in OS X. The default "Reduce Filesize" quartz filter is lousy, but this page tells you how to create your own filters: Shrinking and Compressing PDF's - Yeraze's Domain.

The trick is to use the ColorSync utility.

I'll have to see if I can create a good one for B&W text ...

iPhone consumer polling app - interesting

Vote for your preferred iPhone fix: Most wanted ever | Please fix the iPhone.

Don't forget:

1. Cut, copy, paste.
2. Search.
3. Sync with Google Calendar and Contacts.
4. External keyboard.

However, do note that many of top requests are silly. (In that they require new technology or address things that the App Store could provide if we had push notification.)

Safari - still a 2nd class client in Google land

Firefox 3 isn't bad on my MacBook, but it still pegs the CPU on my G5 iMac (PPC). The Mozilla team broke PPC support with FF 3, and I guess they're not going to fix it.

So I'd like to make more use of Safari. Problem is, Safari is still a 2nd class client in Google-Land.

Today I tried using Safari with Blogger in Draft. The results looked ok and first, but on review line feeds are missing. An old problem, still there.

Google has a lot of work to do before Safari is a good alternative to FF. Of course even their own Chrome browser failed when I tried it with Google Docs and Spreadsheets, so Safari's not entirely alone.

Google Lab for Google Apps and the Google Solutions Marketplace

Rumor of a "TinyURL like" service for Google Apps gradually led me to the "Google Labs" zone in the Google Solutions Marketplace:

Google Solutions Marketplace - Vendor Profile: Google Labs:

... Google is making it easier for business customers and schools using Google Apps to also take advantage of our innovations and ideas that aren't quite ready for prime time. We encourage your organization to experiment with the Google Labs features listed below to improve how you communicate and collaborate.

These features all are built by Googlers, hosted on Google App Engine, and domain administrators can install them into their Google Apps account by clicking 'Add it now'...

I tried out the "Short Links" Lab service on our family Google Apps domain.

You begin by defining a subdomain, like "sl" as in "sl.mycustomdomain.com". I clicked "activate" and waited ... and waited ...

Just as I was about to give up the Short Links service appeared on my service setting list.

It's not a TinyURL like service at all! It just lets you create redirects. So, for kateva.org for example, I could redirect "sl.kateva.org/news" to www.faughnan.com/news.html.

Well, that's nice, but not a terribly big deal if you own a domain.

So what else is in the Google Solutions marketplace? Mostly consulting services, but the list of migration and sync solutions is interesting. It includes Spanning Sync, which I use (five star rating there, it really is pretty good).

As of today there are 16 Solution Marketplace entries that reference the iPhone, though most of them have little to do with the iPhone. Not so interesting there ...

The curious story of AAC support - why not?

My SONY car stereo plays non-DRMd AAC tunes, as does my wife's BlackBerry and, I think, my old Nokia.

Why not? AAC is a non-Apple music format, as "standard" as MP3.

So here's the mystery. Why don't the iPod's competitors (not least the Zune) support AAC? I don't think it's that costly to license.

At the Target store, for example, I found a Creative Zen player with AAC support. On their web site however there new "ZEN Mosaic" lacks AAC support. You have to dig down to learn that the ZEN X-Fi and ZEM do have AAC support.

Sandisk has no AAC support in any model.

We have very little DRMd music, but a lot of AAC encoded media. I'd consider a ZEN player for my daughter if it were half the cost of a Nano.

So why so little AAC?

iPhone tips: reboot after updates and Starbucks access

Via Gruber, I learn that AT&T hotspots (including Starbucks) have finally launched their long promised iPhone access service with a tedious connection process:

Accessing AT&T Wi-Fi | Wireless from AT&T, formerly Cingular

1. Select 'attwifi' from the list of available networks
2. Enter your 10-digit mobile number and check the box to agree to the Acceptable Use Policy. Tap 'continue'
3. You will receive a text message from AT&T with a secure link to the AT&T Wi-Fi hotspot. You will not be charged for the text message. The SMS link will only be valid for 24 hours at the location it was requested. Another request must be submitted when using another hotspot location.
4. Open the text message and tap on the link for 24-hour access to the AT&T Wi-Fi hotspot

It's of greater interest to iTouch users and users without 3G access.

On an unrelated topic I've come across vendor recommendations to reboot the iPhone after every app update - esp. for users with several App Store products. Based on personal experience I think that's excellent advice.

The Brother MFC-7820N and Mac Leopard 10.5

When upgrading OS X , the cost of the OS is the least of your expenses. There's often software to be replaced [1], an immense amount of time lost to debugging , and the risk that hardware will need to be replaced.

I figured my 3 yo multi-function Brother MFC-7820N was at particular risk. Of course the paper feed has been having trouble, so maybe it's near the end of its lifespan anyway (versus the LaserWriter 360 that preceded it and would have worked for another 20 years if I'd been able to find toner).

In fact the printing worked out of the box with native drivers. There are supposedly native drivers for OS X fax send as well, but I haven't tested that.

After the 10.5.5 update Image Capture even found the device and could drive a scan, but that might have been a residual effect of the 10.4 install. I don't know if that would always work.

The 10.5 update deactivated the Brother "control center" that enables the push-button scan to server feature [2]. Happily, there's a great article on how to restore this functionality in 10.5.5: Inspired by I-57- Brother MFC-7820N and Mac Leopard 10.5 .

Briefly, you download the latest drives from Brother's MFC download site, install, then use "DeviceSelector" to point to your network device. See the Inspired article for details.

I also did a firmware update using Brother's Java updater. I had to reset the printer but power cycling it, but then the update worked well. Remove the phone line (!!) to prevent dangerous interruptions, don't pull the power line, don't mess with your Mac during the update. I'll see if this helps with some printer quirks (such as having to power cycle after scanning to restore printing!).

Credit to Brother for continuing to provide drivers for the scanning button. I don't care for how the software works (basically running an obscure server on the desktop, doubtless a big security hole), but it is a very nice feature [2, again].

[1] Actually most of my old software worked fine with 10.5.5, even s/w that didn't work with 10.5.1.
[2] Why doesn't anyone sell a scanner with embedded Linux that would scan a PDF to a thumb drive?

How to use OS X iCal to sell Microsoft Vista

A few people have complained that Vista is slow.

Personally, I've never touched Vista. I'm willing to bet though, that nothing on Vista could be anywhere near as slow as OS X Leopard's iCal calendaring application. Calendars that were speedy and responsive on Windows 98 can crush a modern OS X 10.5 desktop.

Here's how to sell a Vista solution using OS X:

1. Start with a set of calendars that hav a few thousand events distributed across multiple calendars and iCal subscriptions [1]. (What, your life isn't that busy? Imagine what Obama's calendar looks like.)
2. Use the "period" hack to give Leopard iCal a "list" or "agenda" view of events.
3. Select a set of, say, 50, events from the list view. Using the context menu, move them to a large calendar with a thousand or so events.
4. Go to bed. If you're luck the fifty events will be moved by morning.
   

I remember how awed I was when the hospital I was studying at bought an 80386. Did they really need that much computing power?

That 80386 could have chewed through a few thousand calendar events in no time. Twenty years later a computer with roughly 400 times the power takes over 50 times longer to complete a similar task.

A 20,000 fold decrease in software efficiency is quite an achievement.

Maybe we don't need to worry about the Singularity after all. At the rate we're going the hardware of 2028 will struggle to add single digit numbers.

So what's wrong with OS X and iCal?

There's no easy answer. Apple follows their own set of priorities, and as long as their share price is relatively strong that won't change. In this case I suspect Apple chose a data store architecture that was consistent with Spotlight searches and their own internal aesthetics, rather than a data store that ... you know ... could actually ... perform. Beyond that there must be some nasty OS design constraints and bugs; even the slowest possible data store should be faster than this.

As an Apple customer I'm hoping for great sales of Windows 7 (aka Vista 2.0). Apple needs more fear.

Update 11/2/2008: Bento is just as slow as iCal. I think the data architecture must be the performance killer.

[1] This would be typical of someone migrating from a Palm or Outlook environment. iCal doesn't have the concept of tags or categories, so Palm categories become iCal calendards.

Restoring an iCal event (list) view in Leopard and other iCal oddities

I've been cleaning up my Leopard calendar after my Outlook/Palm to iCal/iPhone migration. It's a long process, during which I often mourn that FileMaker gave us the pathetic Bento rather than extending FileMaker to handle OS X data stores.

A list (aka "tabular") or Agenda view of all events (appointments, tasks) would sure help -- but Apple removed that feature in 10.5. (I blame Apple's penchant for doing insanely stupid things like this for the tooth I broke yesterday.)

There is a workarounds ...

Macworld | Mac OS X Hints | View all events in 10.5’s iCal

While iCal in OS X 10.5 has some nice changes—default event alarms, for instance—there are other changes that weren’t so nice (the loss of the sidebar with its easy-to-use event info still bothers me a lot). Another not-so-welcome change lies in the ability to view all of your events (and/or to dos) in a nice list view. In the 10.4 version of iCal, clicking a list-view-like button on the lower right of the iCal window would bring up a pane showing all your events. That button—and seemingly, the ability to see all your events—is gone in the 10.5 version of iCal.

However, there’s a strange workaround that will create a similar view—why it works, however, isn’t clear to me. To see a list of all your events and to dos, simply type a period (.) in the Search box at the top right of the iCal window.

A single double quote (") character also works.

You can also view iCal events using the Finder's cover flow feature, but that's not a terribly useful feature. It is good to remember that kind:ical will find all iCal events.

From the search/list view you can delete events or select and move them to a specific calendar.

PS. Operations performed on multiple items from the search view are exquisitely slow. They bring my PPC machine to a standstill. It helps to kill the 'mds' (spotlight) process.

Update: After an extended bout of iCal editing I killed my PPC session in a unique fashion. The screen blacked out. I had to hard cycle. There are ugly bugs in iCal!

MobileMe, Microsoft Outlook, Exchange, iTunes and yes, sync Hell

I thought I might finally have a use for MobileMe. I thought I might be able to use it to get some calendar information from work Outlook/Exchange to MobileMe to iCal to my iPhone.

Hah.

You know how this goes. With the last release of MobileMe for Windows Apple disabled calendar synchronization when Exchange is in the mix:

MobileMe Control Panel: Calendars is dimmed, cannot be selected for syncing in Windows:

.... Outlook is installed but connected to a Microsoft Exchange Server, and MobileMe Control Panel 1.2 or later is installed. If Outlook is connected to Exchange, Calendar syncing with MobileMe is not available. For more information about MobileMe and Exchange syncing, see this article...

There's no explanation of why this was disabled in MobileMe 1.2, but I suspect bidirectional MobileMe sync was trashing Exchange calendars [1]. We've heard rumor that Apple is having a dreadful time getting Exchange support working with 10.6; so it's not surprising that a sync setup involving Exchange 2003/2007 <-> Outlook 2003/2007 <-> MobileMe might be umm ... problematic.

Apple should have expected that; synchronization is Hell.

Most confusingly (yes, synchronization is Hell) Apple claims that Contact sync is also forbidden when MobileMe is involved...

MobileMe Control Panel for Windows 1.2 or later will automatically turn off syncing with Outlook for you if you had it setup previously. This text appear when it detects that you are using Outlook with an Exchange Server:

"Syncing of contacts and calendars with Microsoft Outlook is not available while Microsoft Outlook is configured to use Microsoft Exchange Server. You may still directly access your data from Exchange over the air using your iPhone or iPod touch."

You will still be able to sync your contacts with Windows Contacts (on Windows Vista) or Windows Address Book (on Windows XP), as well as with Yahoo or Google contacts, per usual.

When I looked I saw that Contacts sync was not grayed out, but maybe that's sync to Windows Address Book (which should be empty though there's a possibility of some brain blowing reflection from Outlook Contacts).

Apple's kb article mentions using Exchange ActiveSync to get Exchange data on the iPhone, but that's a diabolical trick. We already know that will wipe all personal data from the iPhone -- unless you sync personal data from OS X to MobileMe and MobileMe data to the iPhone.

If your head isn't exploding you're not paying attention. Did I mention synchronization is hell?

Ok, but what about the old iPod-style iPhone Calendar synchronization via iTunes and a USB cable? (Taking MobileMe out of the picture entirely, in case you missed that) ...

... If you are not able to use Exchange ActiveSync, but would like to sync your Outlook data to your iPhone/iPod touch while using Exchange, you can sync your iPhone/iPod touch through iTunes over a USB cable. Note that if you sync an iPhone/iPod touch this way, you will not be able to sync your iPhone/iPod touch over-the-air with MobileMe.

You see, you can sync an iPhone with one of:

1. iTunes to Outlook (w/ or w/o Exchange) via USB cable (then Outlook cannot sync to MobileMe)
2. iTunes to iCal which can in turn sync to MobileMe (OS X only) via USB cable
   
3. MobileMe
4. Exchange Server via ActiveSync
5. MobileMe and Exchange Server via ActiveSync
   

But what about synching one iPhone to iTunes to iCal at home and iTunes to Outlook at work via the USB cable? Although one person reported a solution using Entourage, I'll stick with my understanding that this is strictly impossible.

Which leaves Outlook to Google calendar to Missing Sync to iCal to iPhone via USB cable at home. (Don't even think of making this anything but unidirectional.)

If you understood that last sentence, I'm afraid of you now. If your head just exploded please join the club.

I wonder how things work with the gPhone (Google Android)?

[1] I'm not insane. I would never enable bidirectional sync in this setting, I was looking for unidirectional sync. I imagine Apple felt it would be tacky.

Update 11/3/08: The last option worked.