iPhone work/home synchronization and dual machine sync - not impossible

I wrote a few weeks ago that the iPhone was unlikely to support work/home calendar integration. I previously wrote that you can't sync via the USB cable to two different machines.

Wrong on both counts.

First Alan Faichney tells me he follows this routine:

the [home] iTunes machine is the "primary" machine and gets to do the backup. The route I use to synchronise uses Entourage:

• Exchange Server

• <- work network ->

• Entourage on laptop

• <- laptop sync services ->

• iCal on laptop

• <- USB / iTunes sync ->

• iPhone

The whole Entourage calendar is synched to a single iCal calendar (called "Entourage"!) It means that iCal can't see Outlook categories (Groupcal tried to do this better on Tiger, but it always ended in tears for me), but it does mean that you can keep personal iCal / iPhone calendars out of Exchange Server.

I'm pretty sure I don't follow Alan's setup completely, but it seems the secret is using iCal between the iPhone and Entourage.

So that tells us what's possible if you hack the loopholes, but David Pogue's iPhone Tips and Tricks tells us that Apple has a supported framework for work/home synchronization and an approved method for synchronizing at multiple machines. (Yes, I bought the book. I hate to pay $25 for a computer book, but Pogue had me with these tips. It's a beautiful book and he has the deep knowledge.)

First of all, if you set iTunes to only do manual sync (no auto sync), then you can configure it to sync some things at one machine, and different things at another machine. It can do the backup at home, for example. You probably can't safely sync the same items at two machines however. So this is good for syncing iTunes at home and for what Alan does, but it doesn't get you to easy work/home calendar unification.

To get work/home integration you must abandon the old world of physical connections for calendar and contacts synchronization. Yes, Apple has a vision, and it doesn't involve the USB cable.

The iPhone has a concept of wireless calendar (and contact) providers. So you can have one provider that's MobileMe (personal data) and one that's Exchange server. Both can coexist. I haven't tried this yet myself, but I will research it.

When you go this route I don't think you can sync your iPhone with iCal any longer -- the world of physical cable based synchronization is gone. On the other hand iCal will sync (hourly) with MobileMe, and iCal will sync via Spanning Sync with Google Calendar, so if you're feeling very brave I suppose iCal might bridge gCal and MobileMe, and MobileMe will bridge to the iPhone, which can also connect to exchange server ...

What's the chance of that all working?

Seems low, but the fact that there is some path to work/home calendar sync is heartening.

Now if MobileMe would introduce calendar sharing/subscription or a connection to gCal, or if Google introduces an MobileMe like calendar service for the iPhone ...

Update 11/2/08: North221 has a good comment explaining how Entourage enables selective sync, but it's pretty much read only. I have a later article on work home calendar sync using Google Calendar and Spanning Sync.

Permissions bug in OS X 10.5 - unable to update applications

I hate OS X permissions problems.

There were enough of them before Apple introduced ACLs in 10.4 alongside UNIX permissions. The dual parallel systems hasn't made things any easier.

Evil apps, like just about anything that Adobe makes or anything that uses a VISE installer, are prone to wreck permissions. Rumor has it that using "apply to enclosed items" changes to the Application and Utilities folders can have unexpected consequences.

To add injury to insult, running "Repair Permissions" from the OS X disk utility app never seems to fix anything. (I think that's a Potemkin application).

So, I had a permissions problem. Again.
Since upgrading to 10.5, when I try to update applications by dropping new versions into my (all user) Applications folder I get this message -- despite entering my admin credentials on request: "The operation cannot be completed because you do not have sufficient privileges for some of the items."

The target application will be partly removed at this point. I have to delete it (no problems) and then drop the new one on.

A minor annoyance, but aggravating.

I figured I'd have to fix it sooner or later, but today my daughter complained that her evil Flash using kid sites were crashing. Time to update Adobe's little OS X virus, aka Flash. Except I was getting Access denied errors from the evil VISE (of course) installer. I'd already tried repairing permissions, so I knew I had to do more.

Others had run into the same problem: Apple - Support - Discussions - The operation cannot be completed - you .... VK (level 4!) advised (modified slightly here):

... sounds like you have incorrect permissions and ACLs on your Applications folder.

Run the following terminal commands from an admin account ... copy and paste the commands into a terminal window.

sudo chown -R root:admin /Applications
(This will reset the ownership on /Applications to system defaults.)

You'll have to enter your admin password when its requested. You won't see anything when you enter it. These tasks can take a few minutes to complete, so just wait -- there's no progress dialog. Depending how long execution takes you may need to reenter your password. Wait for the prompt to return before entering commands.

next

sudo chmod -R g+w,+X /Applications
(this should set unix permissions correctly)

next

sudo chmod -RN /Applications
(this will delete all ACLs from everything in /Applications)

next

sudo chmod +a "everyone deny delete" /Applications /Applications/Utilities
(this will put the necessary ACLs back where they belong)

I tried installing the latest version of Onyx to see if it had a bundled fix, but it didn't. So, with some reluctance, I followed the above.

I then did a safe boot restart, then a regular restart, and then I ran repair permissions from Disk Utility. DU didn't like the settings VK recommended -- it changed many of them. I'm not sure who's right here, because an evil app can mess up the permissions database (Ex. an Adobe product) and repair permissions might be getting bad advice.

After that I run Adobe's Flash Installer (drag it from the DMG file to run it). It still gave me access errors, but I was pretty sure I'd removed all Flash stuff by hand. I suspect Adobe's Flash uninstaller is old.

I tried the Flash 9 for Intell installer again (drag it from DMG file to run) and this time I didn't get any privilege warnings.

So now I'll see how my next app update goes. Next step is probably a clean install.

Non-geeks don't have a chance with this stuff - or bad design?

1. Having both ACLs and BSD permissions at the same time is just asking for trouble.
2. It's wrong that badly behaved installers should be able to wreck permissions. (Apple should at least put up a warning ... something like ... "this ill-bred Adobe product is going to wreck your system, we recommend Aperture instead ..."
3. Repair permissions ought to work better than it does. It shouldn't be getting its settings from a corruptible source.

Update 11/20/08: Some better fixes have been discovered.

Update 9/16/10: The official fix.

Sync with MobileMe - how to control the direction of the initial sync

The MobileMe help file was useless, but this Apple forum post has the answer. In this case the configuration will overwrite iCal with MobileMe data, but you can invert the direction at step 6.

Apple - Support - Discussions - Help overwriting iCal with Cloud ...

1) Open MobileMe Preferences, and click on the 'Sync' tab.
2) Ensure that 'Synchronise with MobileMe' to 'Manual'
3) Click on 'Advanced...'
4) Click on 'Reset Sync Data...'
5) A window will appear, saying 'Replace: {All Sync Info}'. Use the list to change this to:
Replace: {Calendars}
6) Make sure that the animated arrow is flowing from the cloud to the mac. You can change its direction by clicking on the arrows underneath the image.
7) Click on replace.

I did this with the 10.4 .Mac preferences (after update, the name doesn't change) and it worked there.

It's not obvious how to do this for only one of the many sync options you have. I think if you switch to manual sync, then uncheck all but the item you want to sync uni-directionally, you can leave the other sync items untouched.

Google Chrome doesn't like Google Docs

It wasn't hard to see that Chrome doesn't like Google Docs. When I tried to highlight an entire spreadsheet row, the last column was missed. When I tried to copy and paste a row, the results were odd.

Then I pasted into a cell, selected text, and cleared formatting ...

Well, we knew it's early beta.

Still, I didn't expect it to blow up so quickly in Google's own backyard. This ain't subtle, the Chrome team must have know about the problem.

I've seen similar results, maybe a bit better, when I've used Safari on Google Apps. Safari and Chrome both use WebKit, in contrast Gecko browser (Camino, Firefox) work pretty well.

My guess is that there's some bad code in the Google Apps - spreadsheet and probably doc. So maybe the next step is to cleanup Google Apps -- which will help Safari.

At least this bug ain't hard to find!

ATPM's task and GTD app catalog now with iPhone info

ATPM 14.09 - Next Actions: Master List for September is a catalog of OS X apps for "getting things done" -- what we old timers new as a task list (plus).

Now it includes an 'iPhone Presence' indicator. It's a terrific list.

BTW, I'm still pretty happy with the combination of Toodledo (web site) and iPhone ToDo.app. Not cheap, but being able to work with tasks from any computer is worth something.

Picasa web album face tagging - not only fun

I didn't think my wife and her brother looked that much alike, but I can't argue with Google's face recognition algorithm. At a particular angle, in a particular light, there's a definite resemblance!

Yes, Picasa's facial recognition software is a grade 2 event ...

Gordon's Notes: Singularity alert: Picasa web album face tagging

... Yeah, we all knew it was coming, but it's creepy-cool anyway. Not quite goose bumps, but a grade 2 singularity event. (Grade 7 is when the Great God Google refers you to your soylent green processing station, Grade 1 is personalized search.)

So will Google link the faces to the appropriate Google Profile? You just know they've got that one on their social networking strategy. (So how do kids get their profiles? Is it like Confirmation?)

I love it. Now if there were only some way to sync the tags back to iPhoto ...

I'll report on my tech blog after I try it. I'm sure the servers will be smoking tonight, so it'll take a few days. (Update: yeah, it's pegged. Stuck at 44% of faces.)..

It took a day or so, but a lot of faces are recognized. The tagging UI is excellent. I was joking about the Google Profile, but I wasn't far off. Google matches tags against one's Gmail contacts and attaches email addresses in the tags.

Now we need to sync the tags back to iPhoto. This really needs to be in the next version of everyone's photo management software.

Privacy? Hah. That's strictly for the impoverished and the ultra-rich.

CroCari: the future of OS X browsers

With the release of Chrome for Windows, all OS X geeks think the same thoughts:

1. Safari/web kit should be replaced with Chrome/web kit.
2. The Camino engineers are best able to integrate Chrome with OS X

So this is very good news.

Daring Fireball Linked List: Pinkerton

Mike Pinkerton, long-time Mac web browser developer, and one of the leaders behind the Gecko-based Camino, is also involved in Google’s efforts to create a Mac browser based on Chromium.

Chrome + Camino + Safari = CroCari.