LifeRacker

Fixing iCloud bookmark syncing issues

March 8, 2012 By anderson Leave a Comment

After updating to iOS 5.1 yesterday, I noticed that my bookmarks weren’t syncing.

I noticed that other people were posting about Safari Bookmarks not Syncing (example here).

I found the best solution to fix the bookmar syncing issues here.

In a nutshell:

1) On your Mac, go to system settings, select iCloud, and disable bookmark syncing.

2) On your iPhone or iPad, do the same. Confirm that you want to delete all bookmarks on your mobile device.

3) Wait 3-5 minutes. Then go to your Mac and enable Bookmark syncing via iCloud again. (Confirm merging of bookmarks if asked)

4) Wait 3-5 minutes, then go to your mobile device and enable Safari bookmark syncing via iCloud as well.

This should fix any issues.

Filed Under: Apple, iCloud, iOS 5, iPad, iPhone, MacBook Pro

Bookmark syncing on Mac, iPhone and iPad

March 8, 2012 By anderson Leave a Comment

On my Mac, I use Chrome as my main browser. The solution I found to sync my bookmarks across iPad, iPhone and laptop or desktop is the following:

1) I created an account with Xmarks

2) I downloaded their app for Mac OS and Chrome, installed them and logged them into my account.

3) I enabled the bookmark syncing option on my iCloud settings, on the Mac, iPhone as well as iPad.

4) I treat Chrome as my bookmark HQ. Whatever I bookmark there is pushed via Xmarks to Safari, and via iCloud to my iPhone and iPad.

5) If I bookmark something on my iPhone or iPad, it gets pushed via iCloud back to Safari and via Xmarks to Chrome.

Sounds complicated but works smoothly.

Let me know if you need help setting your multi device syncing up.

Filed Under: iCloud, iPad, iPhone, MacBook Pro

iPhoto shows black screen (can’t visualize iPhoto pictures)

October 21, 2011 By anderson Leave a Comment

(For the actual solution beyond the typical 3 suggestions that are out there on the web, go to the bottom of this post)

So, for a while a problem has been bugging me in iPhoto. It probably began when I updated from iPhoto ’09 to iPhoto ’11. Basically, I can see the thumbnails of my pictures, but when double clicking to visualize them, or when trying to edit a picture, or when doing a slideshow, the picture would not show. I would just see a black or dark background. No pictures showing in iPhoto.

I checked the source files and they were all there, without problems. So I knew I was fine and had no reason to worry about my picture library, except that I couldn’t visualize them within iPhoto.

Well, today I decided to take a few minutes and get this sorted, once and for all. A quick search with Google brought up several forum posts about this issue. Like this one (some humor going on here as well), and this one. In this particular post, user Terence Devlin provides two good solutions. On this forum post user Old Toad provides three solutions and also an additional tip that I haven’t tried out yet, but that might work as well to remedy future iPhoto database corruption.

THE SOLUTION?

Basically, the issue is that the iPhoto library got corrupted for some reason. Maybe during an upgrade of iPhoto, maybe during an update of the database after uploading pictures, maybe because of any issues with the iPhoto app itself. In any case, the best solution is probably the third one (the first one did not fix my issues, and the second one would cost something so I didn’t try it):

1) Launch your iPhoto library while also pressing “Command” and “Option”at the same time, and follow the instructions to rebuild the library. Old Toad from above post suggests to select all options from the menu. (also described here on support.apple.com)

2) Purchase iPhoto Library Manager and rebuild the library.

3) Create a new iPhoto library and import your original files from your corrupted library, following these steps:

Backup your library, just in case
Open the iPhoto app, while holding the Option key
Select to create a new iPhoto library
Open your corrupted iPhoto library, by right clicking it and selecting “Show Package Contents”
Go to the folder called: “Masters” and move all content from there into the open iPhoto app window

You will have to sort and relabel your events, and any saved “Faces” will be gone, but at least your library will work again.

Let me know if any of the above helped you fix your iPhoto library, or if you have found a better solution.

Cheers!

————————-

UPDATE!

I shouted victory too soon, and the above did not work for me! So I had to dig further.

In the end, it was mbcfdude and his informative post that solved it for me! (thanks for going back to your orphaned post and for putting your solution there, mbcfdude!)

BOTTOM LINE:

If you run any external monitors with the Diamond BVU 195 USB graphics adapter, it won’t show the pictures in iPhoto EVER.

SOLUTION?

Simply close iPhoto, disconnect your USB connected external monitors, open iPhoto again and you’ll see your pictures just fine. (FYI, mini-dvi connected monitors will work just fine).

Filed Under: iPhoto

GarageBand Pitch change of a song

October 18, 2011 By anderson 2 Comments

Today I struggled with GarageBand, when I wanted to change the pitch of a song. I selected the song, clicked on the precision editor button, and while I was able to activate the Flex Time editing when clicking on “Follow Tempo & Pitch”, the actual pitch changer slide was greyed out.

After some googling, I came across a few options, including this and this solution here, which is based on an older post from 2005 about GarageBand 2. Basically the trick is to press Control, Option and G, so that the color of your audio file changes from orange to purple, thus allowing you to edit the pitch. Doing this actually removed greyed out pitch slider to being solid color, but I was still prevented from changing the pitch (any moving of the fader reset back to 0). Apparently since GarageBand ’11 this solution no longer works.

So here’s the solution I found:

1) Select the track

2) Click on “Edit view” to the right (see picture below)

3) Choose an empty audio effect slot and choose AUPitch from the Audio Unit Effects list.

4) Click on the image/icon to reveal the AUPitch settings, and adjust the pitch by changing the value of the pitch knob.

Here’s a great blog post with some more info about AUPitch. But the main jist is that 100 cents represents a half step. So, for example, to change the key from C do D, you would change the pitch by +200 cents.

Filed Under: Audio Processing, GarageBand

Address book contacts duplicated with iCloud

October 17, 2011 By anderson 15 Comments

It seems that these days my main blog posts evolve around the iPhone, iOS 5 and the iCloud. I’ll be working on some audio and music projects in the coming weeks and maybe I’ll stumble upon something that’ll bring some variety to this blog.

Today, when adding a .vcf card of a new contact to my address book, I noticed that all of my contacts where duplicated. I had run into this issue on my iPhone 3G, when iOS 3 stopped syncing with MobileMe and I had to sync directly via iTunes, but was surprised to see this happening with iCloud as well.

First, I tried the “find duplicate contacts” feature, to no avail.

Then I looked at my groups and noticed that I had a “On My Mac” category, and an “iCloud” category. When clicking on the “All on My Mac” group, my duplicate contacts disappeared. Clicking on “All Contacts” duplicate contacts showed again. And clicking on “All iCloud”, made the duplicates go away again. So I suspected that I probably had to delete all of my contacts “On My Mac”, and just stick to iCloud. To confirm that I did a quick Google research. Here’s what I found out:

On the Mac Observer forum, user Qualitech provided a good logical summary of what probably happened. I had to laugh though about this post. How on earth would a Senior Tech professional spend 90 minutes on this issue and still not solve it?

On MacRumors forum I also found a few different posts with frustrated or confused users, like this and this one. Same on Apple discussions, with people wondering about duplicate contacts. But it was this particular post that gave me confidence to experiment and finally solve my issue.

SOLUTIONS:

1. Only view one of your Adress books at a time, avoiding seeing duplicate contacts.

How? On the “Groups” view of the address book (click View Menu and select Groups, or click on the red bookmark with multiple “faces”on the actual address book), select only the “All iCloud” group, and you won’t see duplicate entries anymore. – The downside of this is that you still have two address books, with similar contacts in each, requiring you to pay attention to which one is your main one to keep up to date (the iCloud should be the main one, since it’s the one that syncs across devices).

2. Select the “All on My Mac” group, select all contacts that pertain to that group, and delete them. (Before doing so, make sure all of your contacts have synced to the iCloud group).

This takes care of the problem, and avoids any duplicate address book accounts. However it prevents the usage of the new Google address book syncing feature. Since it is not possible to sync the iCloud address book directly with Google address book, solution 1 might be an option for those who need it.

If the above solutions did not fix it for you, let me know and I can try and help you figure out a solution.

Filed Under: iCloud, iPhone

iPhone auto correction help

October 16, 2011 By anderson 2 Comments

While iOS 5 has no ideal solution for the possible embarrassment like the one to the left posted on smartphowned.com, it does have a somewhat hidden feature that could prove helpful.

If you go to your iPhone settings menu, and navigate to General>Keyboard, you will find at the bottom a prompt to add new shortcuts. Tyiping in the word or phrase will give you the ability to write those words that are usually auto corrected, or a shortcut for words you use regularly.

For a good laugh, visit damnyouautocorrect.com and smartphowned.com.

Filed Under: iOS 5, iPhone

Quirks I ran into with my new iPhone 4S

October 16, 2011 By anderson Leave a Comment

Here are the issues I ran into when setting up my new iPhone 4S that I received yesterday.

1. I cannot activate my phone

It took me basically 6 hours until I was finally able to activate my phone. It didn’t matter if I tried via iTunes or directly through the iPhone, the message I got was the following:

“Your activation is still pending. You will receive an email notification once your activation is complete. We’re sorry. There was a problem connecting to the server. Please try again later”

So I ventured out to Google. Besides finding some posts that referred to a similar problem back in 2007 and 2010, I also found also posts like this and this one, with people being equally frustrated about not being able to activate their iPhone 4S. Some people said that calling AT&T customer serviced@ 1-866-895-1099 solved the issue, others suggested going to the AT&T activation website. I tried both. The customer rep said it was an overload of servers, both with Apple and AT&T and that I should try later. The AT&T site didn’t work though, telling me that I needed to activate my phone via iTunes. By then I was skeptical about the magic solutions people were posting on the above forum threads, such as removing the SIM card to succesfully activate the phone (seriously?). So I decided to just wait and try later.

Several hours later, after a fun dinner out, I finally got through with the activation, on the phone itself.

2. My contacts won’t update via iCloud

After successfully setting up my iCloud account on my MacBook Pro as well as the iPhone 4S, i could not get my contacts to sync and display on the phone. I found a really nice tutorial on How to sync contacts with iCloud on iOS 5 but it didn’t solve my problem. This thread on the Apple forums didn’t help me either, although now it contains a post from ricsteinberger with the solution that also worked for me. Basically, I went to my iPhone iCloud settings, disabled contacts, let it delete my contacts, and then enabled them again. And voilá, it started to sync my contacts via iCloud.

3. iPhone cellular network not working

Today I spent a little more time with my new toy, I mean, phone. But when testing Siri for the first time, it (yes Apple actually calls Siri an “it”, not a “she”) told me it was having “having problems connecting to the network”. People at iPhone Hacks say it was a network wide problem. In my case I quickly found a solution here. Basically, go to your phone’s general settings and reset the network. That fixed it for me.

So far these were the only issues I had. And I’m very happy with the fast, slick and feature-rich iPhone 4S. Texting while driving is no longer an issue with Siri

Filed Under: iPhone

Apple product shipment

October 15, 2011 By anderson 1 Comment

Although I’m among the many who’s disappointed that the new iPhone is a 4S rather than an iPhone 5, there was no way my iPhone 3G would survive another another year. I was already running the old iOS (3.x) for performance reasons, but the 3G experience was just becoming unbearable.

Back in 2008, I actually stood in line for over 3 hours at the Apple store on the iPhone 3G release date (July 11th of 2008, I think). I also remember this guy cutting the line and getting his phone on the same day as well. This time I decided to order the phone online, on October 7th. And voilá, 7 days later on release day, the iPhone 4S was delivered to my door. Here’s the shipment progress history, from Shenzen China to my doorstep:

This is my second Apple product shipment experience. A few months back, I upgraded my 2009 MacBook Pro. Back then, I paid the 18 dollars expedited shipping charge, and was happily surprised about the how quickly my computer arrived from Shanghai. Definitely worth the 18 dollars!