iPhone 4 bug with smart album sync

Apple - Support - Discussions - iPhone 4 Won't Sync Smart Photo Album.

I've confirmed this one. It's broken in iOS 4.01 with iPhone 4.

We'll have to wait for a fix.

AT&T will data block a phone - but this disables MMS messaging

In the process of picking up my new iPhone [1] I asked (again) about blocking a user's data services. Today the store AT&T rep more or less confirmed this anonymous comment on a June post:

Gordon's Notes: AT&T’s secret Nov 2009 mobile contract change – Elegant Evil

... you can have AT&T put a data block on any phone. I have one on one of my blackberries. And it's something they do routinely, in fact on my bill it's explicitly called out as a line item. Call them again, and tell them to put a data block on, and they should do it ....

The catch (you knew there was one?) is that the data service block also disables MMS messaging -- even if that is covered by an unlimited texting plan. It does not impact SMS messaging.

I also asked again about AT&T's policies on adding data plans to "smart phones" connected to AT&T's network. I've asked about this previously and gotten conflicting responses:

• AT&T’s secret Nov 2009 mobile contract change – Elegant Evil
• AT&T Contracts, Terms of Service and Plan Terms – observations of interest

This time I got yet another response - a very bad one.

I'm going to put up yet another post on this topic, including some AT&T policy language that's not publicly available. I'll update this post with a link when the new material is out.

[1] I can kill bars by touching any part of the antenna. I used to tune TVs by waving my hands; I think it's a sign of alien possession. I suspect a lot of the antenna problems are actually user-specific.

Apple accounts: never truly deleted, so keep your old password

My mother used to have one of our family MobileMe account, but I wasn't using it well. So I removed it.

When I gave her an iPad I realized I could create an account on one of my machines and use it to control her calendar and contacts via MobileMe. So I added her back using her old username.

When I did that I was asked for her old password. I still had it in my pw database, so I reinstated it. All of her old contact information was still online. Nothing had been deleted.

I had a similar experience with an old .mac account of mine. When I went to MobileMe I couldn't use my old discontinued .mac username -- because I'd misplaced the password. If I still had it I wonder if I'd have found my old .mac data still intact.

I don't know if, outside of a family account, terminating the account truly removes data. I do know that doesn't happen inside a family account. I also know that you never want to lose your MobileMe password even after you stop renewing. You'll need it if you ever want to resurrect an old user name. Apple doesn't reuse them.

Grandma's iPad - A user guide and review

I gave my 80 yo half-blind wheelchair bound arthritic mother her iPad.

She loves it. She's fascinated by it, her main complaint is that she loses track of time playing with it. She's using the Facebook.app (iPhone, double sized -- which is a feature, see below) to follow me and she composed her first email since her macular degeneration progressed.

She manages to drop it into conversations. The amazement and envy of a young supermarket employee is priceless.

As with her 2007 Mac Mini, which is increasingly hard for her to operate, I've written up a user guide for Grandma's Accessible iPad.

Very quickly (for time is short!) here are some related observations in bullet form:

• Games are a a good way to learn basic motions. She likes Solitaire, I paid a few dollars for an ad-free product.
• Ad-supported products are NOT elder-friendly. They're too unpredictable and confusing.
• Her devices are enrolled in MobileMe, one of our family accounts. I have a "GrandMa" user account on my laptop that syncs with that MobileMe account. That lets me remotely manager her contacts and calendar from my laptop. I'd use "Back to my Mac" from that laptop but I didn't have time to make it work with her ISP (currently blocks needed ports).
• Old-fashioned desktop-oriented web apps are the most accessible apps because they zoom very nicely. Mobile web apps are the least accessible low vision apps because they don't scale at all (pinch expand doesn't work) and they don't even have configurable fonts.
• Web apps that require authentication are a REAL problem. She absolutely cannot manage passwords. (Almost nobody can, really.)
• iPhone apps with retina-displays support set to double size are PERFECT for her. Very large UI, very simple UI.
• The more "features" in the OS the more troublesome. There's nothing in iOS 4 that is good for her -- it's just more complex (multitasking, "folders", etc). More features means more "traps" -- unexpected behaviors. (Like the "wiggles" if you rest a digit on an icon, but at least I could explain that.)
• It's really annoying that Apple made "zoom" (a very weak feature) incompatible with VoiceOver. They should at least use a rotor gesture for the VoiceOver screen blank feature so the triple finger tap could zoom.
• Apple's Mail.app is very hard to use with low vision. She has to pull out a magnifying glass (which is a feature of the iPad, they don't work well with desktop screens). Apple's font scaling only shows up in the message, nowhere else. It's really not a very user-friendly app.

See also these related posts (first 4 are iPad, 5th is OS X desktop):

• Accessible iPad - the best apps are web apps
• iPad user guide: accessibility and more
• iPad for low vision elderly
• Amazon Kindle for iPad - Accessibility fail
• OS X accessibility - radio shortcuts, shortcut cleanup, voice over and magnify
• OS X and Mac Mini tutorial and configuration guide - low vision elderly

What's wrong with Google Maps?

There's something weird going on with Google Maps. Twice on our family trip, once in Canada and once in the US, Google gave us very scenic but impractical directions. They were quite different from prior directions for identical routes. There were no road closures to explain the choices.

No, we weren't choosing the bicycle route.

It's as though Google's routing algorithms are mixing up bicycle and auto travel.

Weird. I assume it's transient, but it's very annoying.

PS. In a separate bug, Google has Sault Ste Marie Michigan and Sault Ste Marie Ontario merged as one location in their database. Any searches on Michigan locations get Ontario results.

Sync Hell: MobileMe contact sync bug - does Apple care?

Every few weeks, I run across an Apple bug so egregious that I can only conclude nobody there cares.

The MobileMe contact sync bug is one of those. As best I can tell only the first, last and perhaps company strings are used to match contacts when synchronizing. So if a contact has only an email address, then the match is on an empty string (null key). This produces many-to-many combinatorials, email addresses that grow with each sync until every empty name contact has every other empty name email.

This is an incompetent design. The responsible engineer and product managers should hand their head in shame.

iTunes 9.2 app update bug: The information on this page is outdated

There are a lot of suggested fixes on this page, but only one of them is good ...

Apple - Support - Discussions - Application update all Information ...

Does anyone know of a solution for the 'The information on this page is outdated. Click OK to refresh the page. If you have available updates after refreshing, click Download All Free Updates' message?

I open iTunes the go to the app store and click Download All Free Updates. It always gives me the message that the page is outdated, I have to click OK then it refreshes the page with the exact same app updates and I have to click Download All Free Updates again for it to continue.

This happens every time I have new app updates whether I launch iTunes or every time the iMac goes to sleep and I open iTunes when it was already running.

"Rangeshooter" had the simplest, safest tip. It worked for me. Quit iTunes, restart, try again to install. He suggests its related to iTunes running when a machine goes to sleep.

Other tips involved reinstalling iTunes, deleting apps, etc. They were much more invasive.

I've seen this error message in the past related to an old app, and deleting and reinstalling that app did the trick. This time it looks like a different problem.

Now we see how long it takes Apple to fix this. I've seen some of their bugs last for years.

Update 7/14/10: From Josh Bancroft via Comments, another fix:

After you get the "this page is outdated" error, click on your email address in the upper right corner, to access your iTunes account. It will prompt you for your password. Once you're on your account page, click Done, and you should be back at the "My App Updates" page. Now, updating all of your apps should work.

Thanks! This makes the bug sound like a DRM issue.

Update 7/25/10: Fixed in an iTunes update.

Retrospect Professional 8 backup of VMware VM corrupt on restore

I've been using Retrospect Professional 8 to backup a Windows 7 machine. That machine has VMware VM running.

There have been no backup errors.

Recently I had to do a restore of the VM. All seemed fine. The size was right. When I ran it, however, the VM was corrupt.

The VM is made up of many large files. I think Retrospect backed some up at different times, depending on metadata changes, file locked, etc. Normally that would be fine, but they all had to be the same version for the VM to work.

Fortunately I had a completely separate manual all-at-once backup done when VMWare was turned off. It was a few days old, but we didn't lose anything significant. Sometimes paranoia is a good strategy.

A cautionary tale! Virtual machine backup is tricky.

Curious OS X bug with audio CDs - missing track names on most machines

I have a CD-R containing music that, when inserted in a 10.5.8 machine shows track names. When I insert the same CD in a 10.6 and a different 10.5.8 machine I don't see the track names.

The machine that shows the track names is running iTunes 9.1 and is very old. The machines that don't show them are running 9.2.

It's 100% repeatable. I think it's either a bug with the new iTunes or something to do with old hardware.

Very strange.

Grandma's iPad stand

I wanted a stand so Grandma's iPad could show family photos while it charges.

I picked up the plastic frame shown here for $6 from a local hardware store. The iPad is in the $25 Griffin case (yes, it blocks the rotation lock, the power switch is beneath a tab so I just push on the tab) folded back on itself. The power cord plugs into the right side.



It works well. It's easy to add and remove the iPad without removing the case.

Accessible iPad - the best apps are web apps

I'm getting to the end of configuring Grandma's iPad, but I'll call out one finding early.

For someone with low vision, Safari is the killer app. It has full screen reader support, and you can expand many (but not all) web pages with a pinch expand (spread apart).

This isn't true of all standalone apps.  For example, the pretty but limited NYT Editors' Choice for iPad doesn't seem to work with the screen reader and you can't change the small font. The NYT web site though, is a pleasure to navigate using Safari.

Alas, not all web sites are Safari zoom friendly. The iPad optimized Gmail site can't be zoomed, so it ends up being relatively inaccessible.

As I configure her device I'm adding several web sites that are pinch-zoom friendly. Ironically, these have to be generic sites. iPad optimized sites are much less low vision friendly.

iPhone OS Calendar deletes Exchange server recurring appointments if you delete an instance

Mind blowing bug that's been around since 2008 ... Apple's Potemkin iOS exchange support - the problem with being a peripheral customer.

MarsEdit 3 - you're no Windows Live Writer

I bought MarsEdit 3. After a couple of months of use I'd give it a B+. It's much better than anything else on OS X for publishing to Blogger, but it's a weak shadow of Microsoft's (abandoned) Windows Live Writer (Win only).

The image handling is particularly weak. On the other hand the bugs aren't too awful and the customer support is superb. I'd love to see Red Sweater study WLW and emulate as many features as possible.

The real competitor on OS X is Google's own web based editor. If Google were to put their A team on blogger I think MarsEdit would get squashed. They're not going to do that though, and the current team can't even get paragraphs working. So there's an opening for MarsEdit. I hope they squeeze through ...

Update 8/7/10: I threw MarsEdit off my drive after it produced a complete hash of a post. It looked fine in MarsEdit's wysiwyg editor, but it was a mess in Blogger. I had to fire up an XP VN and use Windows Live Writer to repair the damage. Using a rich text editor as a proxy for a true HTML editor is a bad idea.

Apple’s antenna calculations, iMac and Dell capacitors, and the Anandtech iPhone review

When I wrote that it's best to buy an iPhone in September, I didn't know of the antenna and proximity sensor malfunctions.

Since then we've learned that iPhone 4 has problems with its proximity sensor; it fails to turn off the screen when it's held by a caller's face, so it's easy to accidentally disconnect. We've also learned of an antenna design issue.

The antenna problem was thoroughly discussed in one of the best iPhone reviews (see also: Gruber, Pogue, Ars)

Apple's iPhone 4: Thoroughly Reviewed - AnandTech

... The main downside to the iPhone 4 is the obvious lapse in Apple's engineering judgment. The fact that Apple didn't have the foresight to coat the stainless steel antenna band with even a fraction of an ounce worth of non-conductive material either tells us that Apple doesn't care or that it simply doesn't test thoroughly enough. The latter is a message we've seen a few times before with OS X issues, the iPhone 4 simply reinforces it. At the bare minimum Apple should give away its bumper case with every iPhone 4 sold. The best scenario is for Apple to coat the antenna and replace all existing phones with a revised model.The ideal situation is very costly for Apple but it is the right thing to do. Plus it's not like Apple doesn't have the resources to take care of its customers....

The reviewer has an engineering background (the description of the camera sensor technology is the best I've seen) and he hacked a way to measure the iPhone 4's antenna performance. Turns out that the iPhone "bars" display is almost meaningless -- anything less than 4-5 bars is a very marginal signal. Apple isn't the only company to cheat this way.

More importantly, there is a real problem with Apple's antenna design. On average it's mostly better than the iPhone 3G/3GS antenna, but to get the best results you need a case, like Apple's $30 bumper covers, to keep fingers away from antenna junctions.

The Anand team speculates that Apple goofed up on design or testing, or that they don't care. I doubt it.

I am sure Apple engineers knew about this problem. Maybe it was always a known problem, or maybe there was supposed to be a coating applied that ended up being unavailable. Most likely a problem came up not far from the release date, otherwise I think Apple would have come up with a fix of some kind.

Apple's management tried the phone, looked at the analyses, and decided to launch without a mitigation strategy. Maybe they'd been studying the Dell Way. Maybe they figured most people buy a case, most of the rest are in areas with non-marginal coverage, and AT&T customers are used to dropped calls.

They might have gotten away with it, just as they got away with blown Nichicon capacitors in the G5 iMac or the loose video cable in my i5 iMac, but the problem turned out to be even worse than they'd expected. It went viral.

Apple's still trying to tough it out, following a service script ...

1. Keep all of the positioning statements in the BN handy – your tone when delivering this information is important…

2. Do not perform warranty service. Use the positioning above for any customer questions or concerns…

4. … ONLY escalate if the issue exists when the phone is not held AND you cannot resolve it.

5. We ARE NOT appeasing customers with free bumpers – DON’T promise a free bumper to customers.

The pressure is building though, so I think Apple will do something to appease us. I think they'd be fine if they offered to sell the bumpers with an iPhone for $10 instead of $30, and give a $20 App Store voucher to current i4 owners. (They may not have enough bumpers to go around though.) Really the phone should ship with the bumpers, but they don't look so good in demos.

By the time I buy in September, I expect Apple will have fixes for the antenna and proximity sensor bugs. Honestly, September is the time to buy.

Dreamhost - apparently the kickbacks work

I moved all of my web hosting services and most of my domain registrations to Dreamhost* a year ago (a few are with Google Apps hosting partners). This was a reasonably complex process that you can read about on Gordon's tech (dreamhost tag - look at the start).

I've been very pleased with them. I'm sure there must be cheaper ISPs and hosting services, but they have caused me no pain at all.

Today I went to pay a $10 registry fee -- and I discovered I had almost $200 in credits on my account. Evidently the kickback scheme works. I assume these come from a post I did a year ago ....

Gordon's Tech: Dreamhost - registrar and hosting - still like 'em:

... Last August, after years of moderate dissatisfaction with my domain registration and site hosting arrangements, I signed up with Dreamhost.

I've been quite satisfied with them as a hosting service and even happier with their registrar services; you can see this from posts over the past six months. I was disappointed with their weak implementation of webdav services, but that's been a minor problem. Of course you need some geek genes to work with them, but less so than most alternatives.

If you want to keep things simple, DreamHost is a better Google Apps partner than Google -- especially now that Google is trying to hide the free stuff.

Dreamhost offers members kickbacks to facilitate recruitment. So you need to take my recommendation with more saline than usual, but if you independently decide to sign up you can use my promo code of KATEVA (our dog) and get $50 off your 1st year fee (and I get a kickback if you pay up). Be sure to check out other promo code deals however, the one on their home page looks remarkably good....

Evidently some people used the "KATEVA" code. This link is supposed to do the same thing.

I've configured my promo code to give 50% off the first year of use. This means I get $47 for a new customer instead of $97. I think by promo code standard this is a pretty competitive deal, but do look around for better deals.

I'm a complainer at heart, so Dreamhost is doing pretty well to go unmentioned.

* Founded by Harvey Mudd grads. I went to the tech school up the road and we respected that brand. It's an employee owned company ...

--My Google Reader Shared items (feed)