moebius recursive

Finally had a chance to try out the Genius function in iTunes. In a word: unimpressed.

Here is Apple’s breathless description of Genius Sidebar:

While you reacquaint yourself with the music you already own, let Genius introduce you to new music you’ll love. As you select songs in your library, the Genius sidebar displays songs from the iTunes Store that go great with it. The Genius sidebar won’t recommend songs already in your library, and you can preview and buy recommended songs directly from the sidebar.

In my experience, not quite. Granted my rather eclectic set of music in iTunes gives a wide berth to what passes for American pop music, it is not like it is all way-out exotic stuff. Genius seems to think so. For I would say better than half of the music tracks that I clicked on, Genius came back with ‘I got nothin’, but here is the tired old crap that everyone else is listening to…‘ displaying the top selling tracks and albums in the iTunes store. Great, not interested in being homogenized like the rest of the herd.

It also frequently falls into the trap that Amazon recommendations does, that of assuming that you are a moron. For example, if you buy a CD by, say, David Bowie, Amazon proceeds to recommend every single CD that David Bowie has ever made, whether the style of it is even close to the original CD. It’s as if Amazon (and Apple) are saying: ‘You found that first CD, but your probably not smart enough to find all the other stuff by the same artist by using our search function, so here they are for you, nitwit‘. Not helpful at all.

The Genius Playlist function does a slightly better job than the sidebar, but I still get plenty of “Genius is unavailable for the song “.

I suppose it can only get better as more and more info gets fed into Apple’s hungry servers over time. We shall see…

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apple, genius, itunes, music

Over two years ago, I posted about the idea of marrying an accelerometer and the iPod to be able to shuffle iPod tunes and otherwise control it. I guess Apple thought it was such a good idea that they stole it and implemented it in the new iPods announced today.

So where is my money, Apple?

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apple, ideas, ingenuity, innovation, ipod

I find the rampant speculation over the presumed announcement of a new iPhone at WWDC tomorrow to be a bit much. Particularly since most of the ‘new’ features have existed in Nokia phones (like the N95) for years. GPS? 3G? HSDPA? Video conferencing? New? No, available on the Nokia N95 for a while now.

I think the iPhone is largely fueled by the ‘me to’ set. The ones who couldn’t understand why I bought one of the first iPods (’why would you need to carry around that much music?’) but slowly succumbed when the iPod became ‘cool’. Brilliant marketing by Apple. Now they have a captive market waiting for the iPhone so that they don’t miss out on ‘the next cool thing’.

Don’t get me wrong, I have been a fan (and user) of Apple products for a long time. It’s just that the iPhone isn’t really compelling for me largely because I got used to the robust features of the Nokia like of smart phones. When my trusty 6620 was stolen, I replaced it with an N75. This was about 6 months before the iPhone launched. I loved to point out that (outside of the gimmicky iPhone interface) my N75 did everything that the iPhone did (and in many ways better). Plus I could download and use a rich set of Symbian and Java based applications. I could pair the N75 with a tiny Bluetooth-based GPS to get better location info in Google and Nokia Maps applications.

After a year I had an opportunity to buy a fully unlocked and warranted N95 8GB on Amazon for a great price. I jumped on it. One of the first comments I got from my iPhone toting friends were ‘I see you got a new phone and why isn’t it an iPhone?’ and ‘you know there is a new iPhone coming out, why didn’t you wait to buy one of those?’ Because I wanted a real smartphone; heck with the N95 its more like a mobile multimedia computer. I could move all the apps over from my N95, download a few that take advantage of the accelerometer in the N95 and upgrade to take advantage of the more powerful capabilities of the N95.

Sorry, Apple. When it comes to mobile computing, I am more about function and flexibility rather than fashion.

Technorati Tags:
apple, cellphones, gadgets, iphone, mobile, n75, n95, nokia, nseries, symbian

Only 7 days left to take advantage of the aptly named Mac Heist where you can get about half a grand of quality Mac software for $49USD. It that isn’t cool enough, a chunk of the proceeds go to charity (you can even pick which ones you would like it to go to). I already have my bundle and am loving it. Heck, I almost paid retail for Wingnuts 2 last weekend, now I essentially get it for pennies on the dollar.

If you don’t make it this year, definitely check it out next year as it only seems to keep getting bigger and better.

Technorati Tags:
apple, mac, osx, software, macheist, cheap

I guess the new MacBook Air is cute and optimized for, uh, thin. Otherwise, I think it is overpriced and under-featured. Thin is nice, but I can’t ever think of a time when I though, “I can’t use this darn laptop, it’s just too thick!”. And the non-user-replaceable battery is a joke.

Now a pen-based tablet (ok, it can have multi-touch, too) in a slightly smaller form factor, running full OS X; THAT would be cool and useful. MacBook Air? No so much.

Technorati Tags:
apple, dubious, mac, macbookair

I am becoming convinced that I got a real lemon from Apple a few years back when I purchased an iMac from the online Apple store. I am beginning to wonder if the poor reliability that I have experienced has something to do with timing. I managed to buy a G5-based Mac about a month and a half before Apple announced the switch to Intel. Was it the case that Apple were willing to let quality slide as they were running out their back stock of G5-based systems?

Here is the history of this particular iMac:

It was delivered to me with a defective DVD drive. The drive would read/burn CDs and read DVDs. Burning DVDs resulted in ‘buffer under-run’ errors. I actually had the tech on the other end of the phone attempt a dump and run on me, by suggesting that I re-install the operating system and see if that fixed the problem. Moron. I made the point that if the OS was factory installed, tested and burned in properly, my re-installing it wasn’t going to make a difference — it was clearly a hardware issue. Finally went through Apple’s ‘depot’ replacement process where they express ship the part to me and I send back the defective part in a pre-paid mailer. Worked like a charm. DVD issue fixed.

Within a few months, the system started shutting down at random. Once again, one of the bright sparks on the Apple support line wanted me to re-install the OS to fix this issue (were these guys former Microsoft support techs?). After working through the moron ranks I finally got to someone who elliptically admitted that this was ‘a known issue’ and that I should take the system into the nearest Apple store for a fix. The guy at the Genius bar looked at the make of the iMac and said ‘let me guess, it started randomly shutting down, right?’. About 20 minutes later, he popped out of the back room with the repaired system. When I asked about the root cause, he muttered something about ‘logic board’ and ’sensor’ and kept telling me that there was no charge for the repair. Right. Not exactly confidence inspiring, but at least it was operable again.

The Leopard upgrade killed the system. Life was good until I attempted the seemingly simple task of upgrading the OS to Leopard. This went disastrously wrong. Read about it here and here. In the course of fixing this ‘install media’ issue, Apple replaced the DVD drive (again!), the hard drive and finally the Apple installed system RAM.

Less than two months later, the new hard drive fails. This was a mystery. One minute it was running the next minute it blanked the screen and kicked the fan on full. Attempts to reboot the system all ended with the iMac displaying the ‘I can’t find a drive to boot off of’ flashing icon. Booting off of the install DVD and running Disk Utility confirmed that the internal drive could not be seen. Because I have an Apple Care extended warranty on this system (thank goodness!) they opted to send a tech out to the house to replace the drive. Five days later(!) he showed up and replaced the drive. Unfortunately, he had no clue what to do next. I showed him how to partition the drive and re-install the OS and made him stay until the install completed successfully (having experienced the previous shenanigans with the Leopard install). All was well and the system is back up and running. Again.

Until next time. In some ways, its bad that that is my attitude. Even when I balance the horrible reliability of this iMac with the fact that I have a nearly eight year old iMac that is chugging right along, no issues. Ever. The other iMacs (some approaching 5 years old) also have had no issues. I would estimate that Apple has more than paid for the original purchase price of the system in parts and labor. I wish that they would just replace it the next time it fails (not likely). My Apple Care plan runs out next summer. I hope I won’t need it again, but based on history, I have my doubts.

Technorati Tags:
apple, defective, dubious, leopard, mac, osx, suckage, technology, support

Judging from install reports in the aftermath of the Leopard release last week it appears that Leopard is much more demanding on system hardware — in particular RAM. From comments left on this blog, Apple support forums and elsewhere dodgy RAM rather than install media appears to be one of the leading causes for the previously documented install failures.

This bears out my own experience. The Apple Store has had my non-Leopard-installing G5 for nearly a week. First, they were convinced that it was the hard drive; order a new one, replaced it and still couldn’t get an install. A call on Friday informed me that they now think it is the RAM (Apple, factory installed RAM, mind you) that is the issue. The new RAM is on order so it will be sometime next week before I find out whether that is the final glitch.

My question is: What is Leopard doing that is uncovering these RAM issues now? These issues are apparently errors/failures that 10.4.10 (and previous) didn’t seem to care about. Could it have something to do with 64-bit app support? Fundamental memory handling tweaks or changes? Will there ever be an in depth root-cause analysis that gets published by Apple?

Technorati Tags:
apple, suckage, leopard, upgrade, ram

Here is the next installment in my Leopard upgrade woes saga.

I spent most of Sunday morning searching around for any resolution on the Apple support site and the Internet in general. Found lots of people having the same problem, a few that had no problem at all, but nothing by way of solid solution. One thing that seemed to work for a few folks was to select an install option that only did a base install, no additional fonts, printer drivers, X11, etc. I thought if I could get at least that far it would suit my purposes. So I initiated this bare-bones install and it proceeds without a hitch. Just as I am about to declare victory (within 2 minutes of completion), I am rewarded with this gem:

The source media you are installing from is damaged.
Try installing from a different copy of the source media or contact the manufacturer for a replacement.

Again, this is so not what you want to see after the install program spent 45 minutes ‘validating’ that the install media was good before it initiated the install.

Right. So still a few hours before the AppleCare phone lines open, I thought of another way to test out the media. I put the G5 that I was trying to update into Firewire target mode (hold down T while the system is booting) and ran the install media from the Intel Duo that I had successfully updated on Friday. Of course this won’t work to produce a viable boot image on the G5, but it should tell me 1) can I complete another install on the G5 using the same media and 2) is there some hardware component on the G5 that is hampering the install. I am beginning to suspect the DVD drive or possibly the hard drive itself. However, running the most current version of Apple’s recommended diagnostic tool TechTool Deluxe repeatedly on the G5 showed no errors or warnings of any sort. The target mode install was successful, but as I stated previously, would not yield a bootable G5 because of the cross architecture install (Intel->PPC). I am now more confident that the media is not the issue.

After killing time trying various options until the AppleCare support line opened, it was time to open another call on my existing case with Apple. After sitting on hold for 47 minutes (noted from the call timer on my phone) I finally get a live person. I gave him my case number and he went away for about 8 minutes to read the case notes to date. Then he comes back on and it faltering English, reads back the notes to me and asks me if they are correct. Of course they are. When I ask what the next step was he put me on hold again for 4 minutes, came back on the line and asked me if this was something to do with installing Leopard(!). Sigh. Yes. Well, then, I would need to speak with a product specialist. I then get dumped into another call queue. Where I sit for another 48 minutes without even so much as a ‘call volumes are high’ message. At one hour on hold, I grab the other phone and call back in to AppleCare on line 2. After 36 minutes on hold, someone answers on line 2 (still nothing on the specialist queue). They review my case notes and ask what the product specialist advised. I told them that I didn’t know because I am still still on hold now for just shy of 2 hours waiting for a product specialist. I request that this case be escalated because this is now the fifth time I have called. I am told ‘there is nothing that can be done’. I ask for a supervisor and am told that is not possible either. So this is what you get for premium support?

After three hours and 12 minutes on hold a ’specialist’ answers the line. She (yet again) reads the case notes back to me and asks a few questions. Then she wants all of the serial numbers off of the spindle of the DVD disc, product numbers and other details off of the box. I suspect part of this was to try to determine if I was using some kind of bootleg install media. At this point she proclaims that it is probably the install media. I remind her of the test that I had conducted and the successful install I had on the Intel box. Silence on the other end of the phone. I even pointed out to her that the DVD drives were the same base unit (PIONEER DVD-RW) with different firmware. She then asks me to go into system profiler and tell her what the DVD drive specs where. Sigh. I reminded her that I had just given her that information literally 10 seconds ago. I am then instructed to go to the nearest Apple store and give them the case number and they will give me a new set of media (ie she is not investigating the drive angle at all). I ask what I need to take with me to the store (a 30 minute drive) the G5? the install disc? serial numbers? No, I am told, you just need the case number.

On to the Apple store in the mall. I walk to the back of the store to the Genius Bar. No one behind the bar dares make eye contact. I see three employees standing around shooting the breeze, so I approach the group. One of them asks if I need anything. I explain my situation, reference the case number and that I was sent here to get replacement install media for Leopard. He wrinkles his nose, stares at his shoes and says ‘we don’t do that here’. WTF! After I press him, clearly losing my patience, he goes back to the Genius Bar and talk to some peachfuzz, who glances up at me slightly, shrugs his shoulders and the other guy motions me over. Starts asking me questions about when and where I bought my G5. I cut him off and try to focus him on the fact that AppleCare support sent me here to get new media because they think it is the cause of the install failure (and now dead Mac). Oh, you want a copy of Leopard? We can get you one, if you give us the old media back. WTF! I asked explicitly about this and was told that I didn’t need to bring the old media.

Sensing my growing frustration he offers to have me speak with the manager. She tells me (prophetically) ‘service and sales are different organizations, we can’t give you anything without getting the old media first’. I explain that AppleCare assured me that I didn’t need to return the media and that if I buy a second copy it leaves them open to refusing to accept it as a return because it would have been opened. She offers ‘but you’ll have a case number’. I point out that I have a case number now and it does seem to be buying me much. Blink. Blink blink. Nothing, she just stares at me.

I tell both of them, that I have the G5 in the car — can I just bring it in and see if the new disc installs (so we can eliminate that canard in the support process)? Uh, yes, if I buy a copy of Leopard because ’service doesn’t have their own copy’. What! Why would I buy one when I was supposed to get a replacement for free. Her logic was: I could buy it and if the install worked I could return it and if it didn’t work, then I could return it. I pointed out that if the end result was that I was going to return it, why did I have to buy it to begin with? Apparently, she was so desperate to get credit for a sale she would stoop to hatching such a farcical scheme. She was saved from certain death by the guy who I originally talked to. He said jumped in and offered ‘Look, let me talk with the guys in the back and see what we can do’. Meanwhile the ‘manager’ is just standing there, saying nothing, doing nothing. Blink. Blink.

I haul the G5 in from the car, through the mall, back to the Bar. I sit for about 15 minutes, then they finally get to me in the ’standby’ queue. The three names before me were apparently no-shows. So the guy behind the Bar starts asking me about the issue. But wait; here comes the guy who was the third name on the list. While he is still three feet away from the counter, he pulls his iPhone out of his pocket and launches it in a clean arch in front of him, clattering to a stop on the bar top in front of him. Bar guy cheerily says, ‘I guess I’ll deal with you both at the same time…’ iPhone boy sneers at him ‘No, finish what you are doing so you can focus on my issue, this is the third f**king time I have been here…’ Bar guy suggests that iPhone boy talk to the manager (blink, blink) and goes off to wrangle her into what is shaping up to be at least her second near-death experience of the day.

Bar guy returns to me and I cover what the issue is, give him the case number and reiterate that I am here because AppleCare thinks the issue is the install media. After he hears the parts about the successful installs on the Intel box and the Firewire target install, he just shakes his head and says ‘its not the install media’. He tells me, ‘we will install from the service copy of Leopard that we have — you don’t have to buy another copy’ as he sweeps the Leopard retail box (that the manager had thoughtfully left for me) off the counter. Hmm, ’service copy’ — didn’t Blinky just tell me they didn’t even have one of those? Liar.

Initial diagnostics appear to point to the volume layout on the disc. He tells me that they can ’see bits and pieces of all of the install attempts that I had made and that was probably what was causing the problem. WTF! In the course of trying to get the install to work, I had re-partitioned the drive several times. It anything was left directory-wise after that, I would be amazed. Anyway, they think they have the directory and partition sorted out and they are going to do the install of Leopard. An hour or so later we return and are told it will take another 45 minutes or so for the install to wrap up. Unfortunately, we need to leave to pick up my daughter. As much as I would like to take the G5 home, I am out of time. I make arrangements to pick it up first thing on Monday morning.

Before we even get home, the Apple store had left a message saying that they had found some other hardware issues and need to order parts (disc drive among them). Might be until Wednesday until the unit is ready. From 45 minutes to 3 days is quite a variation in estimate. In any case, it sounds like they are on to something. Hopefully, I have a working, upgraded Leopard-toting G5 sometime this week. So the Apple store manager was right, sales and service are different — sale’s only concern is making a buck, service is there to keep the customer happy. I am waiting for my day to be happy about Apple customer service.

Technorati Tags:
apple, leopard, mac, osx, suckage, upgrade

I have just spent a very frustrating 8 hours trying to upgrade an iMac that was purchase just 3 short months before the shift to Intel processors. My discovery is, it won’t upgrade, it won’t Archive and Install and it won’t Erase and Install on PowerPC hardware very reliably.

The puzzling thing is, the install was nearly flawlessly on my recent vintage dual processor Mac. When I attempted the same on a recent vintage PPC, it has been hours of frustration. Apparently, the Apple support robots are programmed to tell you that you must Archive and Install, rather than upgrade. Note: I will post a verbatim dialogue with Apple support on this topic in the near future — it does not reflect well on Apple’s outsourced support.

I don’t understand how the install can spend 45 minutes validating the install media and then tell me within 2 minutes of trying the actual install that:

The installer could not validate the contents of the ‘base system’ package. Contact software manufacturer for assistance.

Uh, that’s you Apple. I also love that, even though I have an Applecare protection plan on the system in question, when I call support I get a message that basically states that Apple can’t deal with the call volume of their current cluster f**k, try again later. Click! That’s what I get for buying a ‘premium’ support plan?

I suspect that this is something to do with poor QA on the non-Intel install packages. I will attempt another update on an Intel-based system tomorrow. If that works, I will be convinced that non-Intel install media is suspect and all should exercise necessary caution.

Apple have managed to go from 7-8 years of near flawless OS upgrades to a Microsoft grade f**kup. Steve Jobs, please focus on your base and don’t sacrifice the quality of the core OS for the iPhone. I have basically bricked one of my iMacs with no relief in sight. I don’t anticipate that Apple will get off their asses until Monday to float some damage control on this one. Sad.

Technorati Tags:
apple, suckage, leopard, upgrade

I have a few initial observations about the new Mac OS X release 10.5 “Leopard”:

It takes an unbelievably long time to “validate the install DVD”. In my case it was over 45 minutes on a dual processor Intel box. Overall the install took over two hours to complete.

It takes a long time to boot up after the install and with no status messages or displays. Be patient, it will eventually boot up. And don’t panic that the dock doesn’t show up for a few minutes after your desktop.

So far, I haven’t found anything that Leopard has broken. I tried to be diligent about installing all of the application updates before running the apps for the first time. That seems to have worked.

Sherlock is gone. It apparently gets deleted as part of the installation. I don’t recall reading anything about this ‘feature’. If you have the developer documentation installed and perform a Spotlight search for Sherlock there is “Legacy Document” notice plastered on the top of the Sherlock index.html doc that proclaims “Important: Sherlock is unsupported in Mac OS X v10.5 and later”. Most all references to it have been removed from the apple.com web site. It’s a shame, I found that utility very useful.

Cosmetically, I am not wild about the color gradient on the title bar and the cheesy 3D effect on the dock makes it difficult to see what applications are active if you have a lot of applications on the doc. I think it would have made more sense to give the doc icon a contrasting ‘halo’ to show that it was active rather than a low contrast tiny pip of a ‘reflection’ in front of a running app. It is also difficult to determine where dock apps stop and where minimized apps begin — the lane marker takes more time than it should to pick out in a crowded dock.

I like the spaces implementation as I am one to open piles of windows when I am working. Spaces makes it much easier to manage than Expose. Cover View in finder is still a ‘meh’ gratuitous eye candy thing for me at the moment.

My cheap Logitech 3 button USB mouse glitched after the system went to sleep. That is when woke the Mac up, moving the mouse actually caused Dashboard to activate while the mouse pointer remained solidly fixed in place. Unplugging and re-plugging the mouse’s USB connector revived it, though.

So far, so good.

Technorati Tags:
apple, mac, osx, usability, leopard, sherlock

It comes as no surprise that Duke’s network issues were ultimately found to lie with Cisco and not with the Apple iPhone. After all, if this was a general issue with the iPhone, every open wifi connection in San Francisco (and other me-too gadget locales) would have been crashing just like Duke’s.

Other than applying a patch from Cisco, the root-cause remains a bit murky:

“Cisco has provided a fix that has been applied to Duke’s network and the problem has not occurred since,” the statement read. Cisco did not describe what the source of the problem was. Late on June 20, Duke released a statement elaborating on the problem and how it was resolved. “The reality is that a particular set of conditions made the Duke wireless network experience some minor and temporary disruptions in service,” said Tracy Futhey, the university’s chief information officer, in a statement. “Those conditions involve our deployment of a very large Cisco-based wireless network that supports multiple network protocols. Cisco worked closely with Duke and Apple to identify the source of this problem, which was caused by a Cisco-based network issue,” the statement said.

Sounds like one of those political non-apologies where ‘mistakes have been made’ but no admission of guilt or responsibility is offered.

Technorati Tags:
apple, iphone, ddos, cisco, chaos, iDDOS

Apparently Apple didn’t tell the world about it’s handy iDDOS feature of the iPhone; places like Duke University had to find out about it for themselves.

The built-in 802.11b/g adapters on several iPhones periodically flood sections of the Durham, N.C. school’s pervasive wireless LAN with MAC address requests, temporarily knocking out anywhere from a dozen to 30 wireless access points at a time. Campus network staff are talking with Cisco, the main WLAN provider, and have opened a help desk ticket with Apple. But so far, the precise cause of the problem remains unknown.

That’s because the misbehaving iPhones flood the access points with up to 18,000 address requests per second, nearly 10Mbps of bandwidth, and monopolizing the AP’s airtime.

Stellar. I suppose for added comic effect, you could ‘pronounce’ iDDOS like adios…

Technorati Tags:
apple, iphone, ddos, cisco, chaos, iDDOS

While much attention has been paid to whether or not Apple will open the iPhone to development I think that a more fundamental question has been missed in the process — why are Steve Jobs and Apple afraid of opening the iPhone to third-party developers? Is it because they have a sense that the underlying OS is not terribly stable? How many times have you heard Jobs use the example ‘…well, when you install other apps the phone might crash’. Is it because there is not really a robust developer framework that includes exception handling underneath? What is the reason for their reticence?

I contrast to Nokia (and other phone manufacturers) approach of allowing, neigh, encouraging third-party development on their Symbian-based smartphones. Granted, Symbian is not perfect but it does provide a rich and relatively stable environment for the development of everything from games to productivity apps on mobile phones. An those are just the ‘native’ apps, there are a large number of Java-based apps available for those devices as well. No word on Java on the iPhone as of yet.

With the Apple WWDC revelation cum stopgap announcement that third-party development will be allowed on the iPhone, albeit thin applications that have their UI on the phone and heavy lifting is done off-phone via (presumably) web service calls of some sort. If truly limited to ‘Web 2.0 standards’ [sic] for iPhone app development, the applications will likely have very limited access to the device itself for integrating with the address book, camera and other built-in functions. To some, Apple’s stance on iPhone development will be taken as validation of thin-client/rich-client/services-based development. To others, it will just seem a cop out.

It will be interesting to see how this evolves and whether it will ultimately provide a satisfactory development and deployment environment for non-Apple applications and services. Of course, the resolution of that question won’t keep Apple from selling truckloads of iPhones on 29 June.

Technorati Tags:
apple, iphone, symbian, nokia, mobile, development

Last night I (manually) downloaded iTunes 7.2 aka iTunes Plus as it was not showing up in Software Update. Not much to see, other than the ‘new’ DRM-free music being on offer.

What I did notice was that 90% of the music that I searched for came back as ‘not found’ in the store — including stuff that I had purchased from iTunes in the past. Granted, the majority of the music was not mainstream/pop, but, still, it appears to expose a huge gap in iTunes offerings. Perhaps it was just a search engine malfunction. Time will tell.

Technorati Tags:
apple, itunes, itunesplus, music

I just discovered a nifty little trick for uploading pictures to Zooomr if you are using Aperture (or iPhoto). You can drag and drop photos directly from Aperture onto jUploader and click the upload button. jUploader will then upload the full size image from Aperture. Maybe this is obvious to others, but I was pleased to find that I didn’t have to export to jpeg from Aperture first to use jUploader.

One side effect of this for me, is that I will be uploading a lot more of my stuff to Zooomr as it has just become so much easier.

Technorati Tags:
webtools, photography, zooomr, aperture, iphoto

Friday evening saw the crash of my iTunes library (and me basically spending the weekend trying to recovery from it). I have been running iTunes since, well, there was iTunes (I started with OS X 10.0.0). This meant that I had 5+ years of play counts, ratings, playlists, etc built up that were basically lost in the crash.

I’m not even sure what caused the crash. I was listening to my iTunes library while ripping a new CD I had just purchased. The only out of the ordinary thing was that the Software Update dialog had popped up telling me about the new security update. About five seconds later, I was presented with a ‘iTunes has quit unexpectedly’ message. Then the fun began. I restarted iTunes, only to be told the my iTunes library was damaged and that the file was being renamed with ‘damaged’ appended to it. This seems a rather purposeless thing to do, because I have yet to find a tool that will allow you to recover your damaged library or even analyze it. However, the file it should have made a backup of is the ‘iTunes Music Library.xml’ file. It turns out that you can recover from a library crash if you have an intact copy of the .xml file.

Assuming that you have a good copy of the XML file, you can recover by moving the XML file to another directory, deleting the binary iTunes Library file and starting iTunes. You will notice that iTunes is empty — don’t panic, simply go to file, import and point it at your saved copy of the XML file. All of your play counts, ratings etc will be restored. IF you have a good copy of the XML file.

As luck would have it, my XML file (which was around 29MB), was replaced with a nice fresh one that was around 8K, so basically I was screwed. As I have about 100 GB of music (yes, it’s all legal, trying to find storage for all the CDs is a pain) I had a big task in front of me to recreate playlist and reassign music to the playlists.

You can bet that that the next thing that I did was setup an automatic process to make a copy of the precious iTunes Library XML file and tuck it in several safe places. What a great time to have the time machine feature that will be available in Leopard!

Oh, and Apple, you might consider having iTunes make its own backup copy of the XML file, especially when a crash is involved. Having a copy of the binary library file is useless for recovery, whereas the XML file is vital. Think about it.

Technorati Tags:
suckage, apple, mac, itunes

If you are a Mac user that takes advantage of both iPhoto and gMail, you might want to check out the iPhoto2Gmail plugin that is now available. Haven’t tried it out myself, might give it a spin this weekend.

technorati tags: iphoto, gmail, mac, apple, photography

I thought that this posting had some interesting musings on OpenDoc in particular and what makes a technology succeed or fail in general.

technorati tags: opendoc, software, development, ideas

Apple’s big pre-photokina announcement today was the release (later this week) of a new version of their Aperture photo software. There are some significant new features. One of the features I am looking forward to is the addition of a plugin API to allow extensions to Aperture. Several companies have already produced export plugins for 1.5 including Flickr and istockphoto.

I just started dabbling with Aperture about a month ago and love how easy it is to get things organized and sorted out when dealing with a virtual pile of files. I really appreciate the fact that unlike iPhoto it does keep full copies of files around whenever you make a simple change to an image. In fact, with the release of 1.5, I can see moving to Aperture as my primary photo organization software.

technorati tags: apple, aperture, flickr, plugin, photography

Considering my previous rants posts regarding the Newton, this article on cnet UK is all the more vindicating. The gist of the article is that a new ‘innovative’ MS-based Samsung portable computer can’t compare to the capabilities of a ten year old Newton. In fact, the article goes on to point out numerous times how the Samsung appears to be a very close copy of the Newton on several features.

I can only imagine the hotness that was the Newton tuned up with a high res color screen, built in Wi-Fi, and all the other modern conveniences in my hand today.

technorati tags: apple, newton, pda, umpc, gadgets