iOS Backup and the Cloud: Problems with Restore

After the 5.1.1 update my son's iPhone developed a crash habit. One photo in particular triggered an immediate restart on editing. Perhaps an iOS bug, maybe another problem. I did a full Restore, which means a backup then wipe then reinstall then restore. That didn't fix the bug, so we deleted the problem image.

That's not what I'm writing about though. During the Restore cycle we ran into some newer limitations with iOS backup. These included:

• His Pocket God Comics, which are in-app purchases, were not backed up - contrary to Apple's iOS backup document. We were able to re-download them from within the Pocket God app; but that process appeared to rely on Pocket God and its Cloud servers.
• His video podcasts vanished. We sync through iTunes though, not the Cloud, and they were still in iTunes and could be restored. Some of them aren't available from the Cloud any more.

I don't think there are any workarounds for these problems. Apple could fix this; in the Jobs era it's the kind of thing that tended to get his peripatetic attention. I doubt they will, but I'd be happy to be wrong.

My only recommendation is to distrust the Cloud, and avoid in-app purchases whenever possible. If you are using something that's Cloud dependent you don't own it -- and you don't even rent it. At best you have a fuzzy claim to occasional use that might be revoked at any time.

Mac: how to make a server photo screen saver work

I wanted to share a common set of screen saver slide show images across 3 of our Macs. First I put them an old G5 with abundant storage. It seemed to work, but if there was any interruption of our wifi network other machines couldn't reconnect. (Disregard the marketing. Wifi is much slower and much less reliable than wired.)

So I put them on our Time Capsule NAS share. That worked, but if a client logged out or a machine restarted the share wasn't remounted.

Sigh. OS X Networking is reliably disappointing. I remember network shares being more reliable in 10.3, and that using a share shortcut mounted the share. Certainly shares worked better in MacOS Classic (albeit a lot more slowly).

What seems to help is mounting the share on startup by adding it to one or more user's login items. After this the screen saver image slide show survives a restart.

(There are ways to mount drives on boot for all users with vifs.app editing of etc/fstab, but it looks risky to me and I read reports of "finder problems".)

iOS In App Purchases - they're not backed up

I restored an iPhone from backup -- and discovered at least In-App Purchases don't restore automatically.

I'm now downloading the set from within the app.

It's a pain to do this across all "In App" purchases. I'm surprised there aren't more complaints about the in-app purchasing system; to me it's a big regression from the original App Store model.

Windows 7: Changing network location after initial connection

I have compared Lion to Vista, but that's really an overstatement. As bad as Lion is, it's better than Win 7 which is better than Vista.

Today's Win 7 problem has to do with Win 7's well intended network location security. When you first connect to a WiFi network Win 7 asks you to choose a network location. If you choose Public some network tools won't work -- including my corporate RSA IE toolbar.

After you connect, however, it's not obvious how to switch from Public to Work. The secret is to

• Go to Control Panel:Network and Internet:Network and Sharing Center
• Click on the hyperlink-like text that says "Public"
• In the new window choose Work or other trusted network

Spammers have found a hole in Blogger's comment system

I'm used to getting comment spam with embedded links. Often the spam appears benign, but the links go to bad places.

This one was different however:

I agree. The organization and departments like FDA or BFAD should check the contents of these toothpaste products. This will ensure its safety to the people. Aside from that, other chemicals in the toothpaste formulation should also be checked. According to my dentist, Ron ******, some products may contain melamine which can cause severe damage to the brain. I hope that they will be able to resolve this kind of issue.

It sounds spammy, but it is somewhat related to my blog post and it didn't display with an inline link in Google's Comment review. It even linked to a Blogger profile.

So I approved it. Blogger emailed me a copy and then I saw it had a link. It was spam of course. (I think BFAD has something to do with "Black Friday" sales deals?)

The post was crafted so the link didn't display in the Blogger Comments review UI, but it did display once the post was approved. The senders even invested in a spambot (human or silicon).

Obviously a high class operation! I wonder how long it will take Google to close this loophole. In general their Blogger spam filtering is excellent; most spam isn't even presented to me for review.

iPhoto to Aperture: Summary and managing the Event/Album problem

Apple's Aperture photo management software was a mistake.

I don't know what they were thinking, or where it came from. Obviously it was intended to be a "professional" alternative to iPhoto, but someone (Jobs?) never thought through how customers would move from one to the other. Migrating complex data between fundamentally dissimilar applications is an impossible problem.

Apple's customers wanted iPhoto Pro, instead we got Aperture 1.0.

Apple must know they made a bad mistake. Over the past three years they've been trying to turn iPhoto into Aperture-lite, and Aperture into iPhoto Pro. Despite the marketing claims, they're not there yet. They may never arrive -- it's almost impossible to change an application's fundamental behavior without producing a smoldering wreck.

Eight weeks after starting down this road I recommend waiting for Aperture 4...

iPhoto to Aperture: My experience: Apple Support Communities

... Several weeks ago I migrated three iPhoto Libraries from iPhoto 8 to Aperture 3.23. (In limited testing iPhoto 9 migration appeared to have similar results).  

.... if you are a demanding sort, wait for Aperture 4.1 and iPhoto 10.x.   My migration process was fraught with traps and errors that resulted in loss of 'metadata' (image descriptions, etc). Video migration was particularly problematic. I spent many, hours experimenting and testing. I had to repeat the imports several times to find the best path.

Some data loss cannot be avoided; Aperture does not store iPhoto Event or Album descriptions. Keyword consolidation is a tedious process.   At the end of the road Aperture gives me many new features, scalability, and a (relative) confidence that I'm committed to an application with a demanding and technical user base.  

On the other hand, I miss iPhoto's many clever features for managing Events/Rolls. Aperture is taking me back to the days of Albums...

It's too late for me though. I've paid the price and made the transition. 

Most of the transition that is. I'm still trying to work around edge issues. Consider the "Event" to "Project" migration.

The two concepts have quite a bit in common. Each photo belongs to exactly one "Event" (iPhoto) or Project (Aperture). Photos can be moved from one Event to another. By contrast, a single photo can appear in multiple Albums.

Even so, there are significant differences. Over the last few years Apple added a lot of clever workflow and UI affordances to Events. They became so easy to work with I came to use Events for many things I'd done with Albums. I went back in time and reworked older Events to fit the new model.

After the migration however, most of those conveniences are gone. Aperture "Projects" are only superficially "Event-like". They'e relatively awkward to work with. I'm back to using Albums again, and I'm looking for an AppleScript method to turn hundreds of Events into Albums.

I'm sure I'll work around a lot of the issues. I wish, however, that Apple had created a true iPhoto Pro rather than go down the Aperture road. I wonder if, in the Cook era, Apple will finally introduce iPhoto Pro, and quietly retire Aperture.

See also

• Gordon's Tech: iPhoto 8 to Aperture 3.23: Migration notes 3/2012
• Gordon's Tech: iPhoto to Aperture migration: movie support is weak in Aperture, but missing thumbnails are no longer a problem 3/2012
• Gordon's Notes: Lessons in Software: Aperture 3 and iPhoto 11 10/2010
• Gordon's Tech: Aperture Projects descriptions and iPhoto Event descriptions - what happens on iPhoto migration? 12/2010

Update: I did work around the issue -- in an illuminating way. In iPhoto Events and Albums live in separate UI views. In Aperture both can be contained in Folders. So I mix my Events and Albums now.

MobileMe to iCloud - Is Apple getting nervous?

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

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

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

Yech.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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