Apple

A day with iTunes Match

November 15, 2011

Overall iTunes Match has been worth it. There are some very interesting anomalies.

In some cases Match fails to match songs on an album for inexplicable reasons. Several albums of early 80's genres were matched for all but one song. Though the album had been ripped and encoded in a single shot something prevented these songs from being matched.

An even more interesting case is this album of Franz Danzi Concertos:
iTunes Match screenshot

Note that Match found 6 of the 7 tracks and uploaded just one. However this album is not available in the US iTunes Music Store (not sure if it's available elsewhere). The third track is available as a part of another collection but the other tracks are not available. Yet with Match I can (and have on another computer) update these tracks to a better encoded version of the tracks.

Short iOS 5 wish list

June 5, 2011

Tomorrow is the day for the much anticipated keynote for Apple's World Wide Developer conference. Unlike past keynotes this one has a hint of an agenda that has been published by Apple.

I've seen a number of good write-ups with some hopes for iOS 5 and what folks are hoping for. My hopes are a bit simpler than most of these. I have two things that would make a world of difference for iOS 5.

Item number one is cloud-sync. It's time we move past the Palm OS technology of the 1990's and move into the age of the internet and start being able to meaningfully sync iOS devices wirelessly.

Item number two is to add the ability for Safari and other apps to access photos for upload. Until apps can universally and easily access photos and upload them to websites the photo capture and storage facilities of iOS are little more than toys. It's time some equity comes to the iPad and make it possible to do as much for photos as one can do with Garage Band.

iPad's greatest flaw

March 19, 2011

A post on Dave Winer's blog today reminded me that I've been meaning to write about the big flaw in the iPad. Actually it is a flaw in iOS but I notice it most on the iPad.

First a little background. I've had an iPad for as long as they've been around and eagerly stood in line for the iPad 2's new cameras. More than the first iPad the iPad 2 is a transformative device. It is comfortable to hold in bed to read, it has an amazing cover that just works and it's a bright white color instead of the heavy black. (How the color affects the perception of weight is another topic for another day.)

As awesome as the device is for me. It comes with a horrible flaw. This first came to light the very night I picked it up. After the headache of convincing my credit card issuer that yes it really was me staying in a hotel and buying an iPad at an Apple store I met a friend and we headed out for dinner. Being a Drupalcon dinner there were plenty of tech folks. Since the line for Chicago pizza was longer than the line for the iPad 2 we had plenty of time to talk. Eventually I succumbed to peer pressure and opened the box.

While peeling away the shrink wrap on the box (even the box is slightly smaller than the previous iPad) thoughts of taking a few pictures of the group with the new iPad came to mind. With a creative group of smart people what could we do with this new technology while waiting for a dinner with a week's caloric intake? And then all at once it happened.

Boise Apple store opens with no front

September 12, 2010

The Apple Store in Boise is now open. Judging by the crowd a half hour before closing on Sunday, the second day the store was open, it looks to be doing a booming business. Lots of blue-shirts too so it seemed that while there was a crowd nobody was leaving with questions unanswered.

More interesting is the lack of any storefront. This picture is a Newark store which is similar but the Boise store lacks even the two panels of glass at the sides. There is no front display and the first thing customers encounter are helpful Apple employees and tables of product.

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Boise is getting an Apple Store

August 29, 2010

Two years ago I wrote about Boise needing an Apple Store. Since then plans for the store, even the whole shopping center, where the Apple Store was expected to go went off the rails. The land, the Whole Foods that never got built, and the whole shopping center remains an irrigated field on at the corner of Eagle and Fairview.

The good news for the Boise Mac User's group all all others who would love to see an Apple store is that soon one will be open. The location has changed but the iconic white apple on a black background can be seen at the Town Square Mall.

If the rumors are correct Saturday, September 11th, 2010 will be the opening day for the store. On Saturday several members of the Boise Mac User's group gathered for a photo outside the shop. Unable to resist a peak in the open door it appears things are moving along nicely as the store already looks very much like an Apple store on the inside.

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Failure to order

July 27, 2010

This morning a fresh batch of technology devices landed at the Apple store. This included the magic trackpad and a slick, energy efficient battery charger. Who can resist?

Plus I had a couple of gift cards around that had small balances and Apple is good about allowing multiple cards on a single order. Well sort of. So everything went well and the order went in this morning. This afternoon, however, the word came there was a problem.

When you order at Apple online they run a $1 pre-authorization for your card to make sure it's good. When they did this with the gift card it's available $7 balance was reduced to $6 so when they tried to run it for $7 later the charge failed. Oy!

Getting iPhone mail working from outside Mail.app on iOS4

July 24, 2010

This past week has been rather quiet but not in the way I'd hoped. Normally when I'm on the road as I was this week I'd get a series of photos and videos of the various things going on at home. While FaceTime is great and we had some great calls the videos and photos weren't coming.

As it turns out this isn't some issue with a lack of good intentions. In fact my wife was certain she'd sent them. Indeed there on her iPhone was an outbox full of messages to family members waiting for the last week to be sent.

It also turns out that she's far from alone in having these issues. And before Apple feels the need to post videos of other phones failing in the same way, yes there are other phones having similar problems that aren't running iOS4 or made by Apple.

At the same time my phone is having no issues sending photos and videos from the photo gallery. So I started to compare the differences between the two phones.

Apple won't return stolen iPhone hoopla

January 4, 2010

Late last week Consumerist ran a report about a stolen iPhone that was being sent back to Apple for repair. The report comes from the owner of the phone who laments the lack of assistance from Apple.

In running the story the Consumerist writer opines:

Also, if there's anything to learn from this it might be that you should follow through with filing a police report if you're ever robbed, as that might give you the leverage you need to get a company to help you. Possibly not with Apple, though.

However this is quite a stretch. The whole problem here stems from the original author's failure to file a police report. This is explained in the original letter:

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Follow the money

August 5, 2009

The FCC's call for information on why the Google Voice iPhone app was withdrawn is going to uncover some interesting details. First up AT&T responded with a carefully crafted statement that amounts to "we don't do that". What wasn't said, however, is what control AT&T contractually holds over Apple's process.

Let's back up a minute and look at who stands to gain from this. If the iPhone supports a VoIP application who stands to lose? AT&T. Apple will still sell iPhones and iPods to these customers with their VoIP apps. In fact in many cases Apple may well sell Apps to them as well. Even if the particular app is free trends show iPhone users will buy plenty of other applications to make up for it. So Apple gains nothing and in fact loses quite a bit by having these apps rejected. AT&T on the other hand doesn't get the same black-eye and gets to think it's protecting it's dwindling cellular voice market.

Trials and time machine

April 17, 2009

Twenty-four hours in it appears I now have a disk migration working. Usually it's a simple task. Unpack the machine and fire up Migration Assistant after going off to make and drink a few cups of coffee and presto the new machine is up and running.

Well that worked for the first many dozens of processors in the collection. This time, however it was not to be so simple. Each time Migration Assistant would run it would exit with the same error message.