Category : geekery

Sometimes, the ability for iTunes to sync with your iPad, iPhone, or other iOS devices, will simply vanish, and nothing you do seems to solve the problem. The solution may be counter-intuitive, but comes back to the first rule of tech support:

“Did you try turning it off and on?”

There I was, working away, when I noticed the Wi-Fi indicator on my Mac’s menubar suddenly doing the searching for a signal animation. It found the basestation again, and all seemed fine – but then I noticed both my iOS devices had disappeared from iTunes. Odd, I thought, but not without precedent. Sometimes this happens, and switching the Mac’s Wi-Fi on and off will fix the problem.

Alas, this time it didn’t.

Plugging them in via USB and everything worked fine – both devices had the necessary check mark for Sync via Wi-Fi, but as soon as they were unplugged, nothing.

Going through the process of elimination of what worked:

• The Mac still had network access to the internet via Wi-Fi.
• The iOS devices still had access to the internet via Wi-Fi.
• My fileserver / storage app on iOS could still be reached by the Mac.
• Airdrop still worked between my Mac and iPad.

Most perplexing – in all respects, all the devices seemed to be able to do everything over Wi-Fi except see each other for iTunes Wi-Fi sync.

Here’s the list of the things I tried:

• Complete shutdown / restart of Mac and all iOS devices.
• Switching all devices from DHCP to fixed IP addresses.
• Running the latest Yosemite security patch, and updating iTunes to the latest version (total shot in the dark).
• Sacrificing a goat.
• Restoring iTunes .itl files to versions prior to the problem manifesting.

After wasting about 3 hours on trying to solve this, eventually, in desperation, I rebooted the modem, which is also the Wi-Fi basestation.

Bingo! Problem solved.

So, it seems that somehow, part of the modem’s software which allows for service discovery specific to iTunes Wi-Fi sync had failed. This failure only effected those specific functions, allowing everything else on Wi-Fi to continue working, which threw suspicion over on to the Mac where iTunes was running.

If this article was of use, a donation would help support my projects.

There’s an idea spreading around the Mac-using world at the moment that Apple should abandon iTunes, and start again from scratch with separate apps handling its various abilities.

There’s one problem with this which gives me pause.

Every change Apple has made to iTunes since version 10, has made the product worse. What has made it worse, is not the overloading of features, but the mindset behind the design of the new features.

UI elements no longer have tooltips. Podcasts have been screwed up, reoriented around streaming and breaking functionality for the download-and-keep model. Lets not forget the disastrous iTunes 11.2 “upgrade” which introduced a new “saved” podcasts feature, which allowed you to protect individual episodes from auto-deletion – and which the upgrade process told you would be applied to ALL of your previously downloaded podcast episodes. That function was faulty, and since iTunes had auto delete after listening defaulted to on, upto half the episodes in many of my stored podcasts disappeared in an instant. Not in the trash, no undo, just gone.

Can’t you just re-download them?

That presumes two things, firstly that bandwidth is free and uncapped, and secondly, that all podcasts keep every episode in their feed forever. Many don’t. Some of my subscriptions have gone offline entirely. The point is, user data is sacrosanct, and deleting it without an explicit command from a user, with an “are you sure” dialog is the greatest sin a piece of software can commit.

This is a symptom of a part of the larger problem Apple has, those who are in charge of the direction of its products are possessed of such immense bandwidth privilege, they seem incapable of designing products for an offline reality. The sheer insanity of using a server on one side of the world, to move a document between two devices a foot apart, or that two devices which can be physically cabled together, can’t share calendar reminders without an internet connection, is hard for me to wrap my head around.

So, given that all the things which are bad about iTunes, are post-version-10 changes to the product, what makes anyone think that an all-new music solution would be anything other than a reflection (and likely a magnification) of the philosophy which created all these ruinous changes?

What’s wrong with iTunes, are the new parts of iTunes, not the presence of what is increasingly becoming “legacy” functionality.

It’s time for a bit of recreational Kremlinology regarding Apple’s strategies.

When Intel and Apple brought the Thunderbolt interface into the world, there were a lot of interesting possibilities created. Thunderbolt being essentially the PCI bus on a wire, many peripheral solutions that were previously done with internal cards, could now be created as breakout boxes, which could serve both desktop and laptop users.

Since Thunderbolt is capable of carrying all of the other peripheral busses, one great solution it enabled was Apple’s Thunderbolt display, which could act as a peripheral hub for a laptop. You plug power into the display, and then the display has an upstream cable which branches into thunderbolt, and Magsafe power for the laptop. So with that one cable, your laptop effectively becomes a desktop (and your laptop’s power adapter stays in your travel bag).

My 68 year old mother, who is an accountant, uses this solution. She has a light, compact, 13″ Macbook Air, with which she travels interstate every quarter to work with clients. In her home office she has the big display, keyboard, mouse etc. On the road, the system is light & compact, at home it has screen space for her MYOB Windows VMs, remote desktop sessions with client computers etc.

The new Macbook isn’t set up to do his. It’s only external display options are HDMI and VGA, and with no Thunderbolt due to its sole USB3-C port, arguably, it never will.

It remains to be seen whether this is a repeat of the goof that was the original 13″ Aluminium Macbook (which dropped the firewire of its polycarbonate incarnation, only to regain it in the next revision), or whether this is a new paradigm of less versatile Macs, which have a narrower but deeper usability. By forgoing all the ports that make a laptop able to be both a portable, and desktop, Apple have made a computer that is arguably better when it’s being a portable.

The question is whether this will make its way into the rest of the laptop lineup. If so, I think we can probably say that the paradigm that Apple is heading towards, is this: People who need both desktop and laptop usage scenarios, should be buying a desktop and a laptop, and then using Continuity to move their work state between devices. The net result of more device sales for Apple is obviously just a happy coincidence.

One of the problems I’ve had using Apple’s (now end-of-lifed) Aperture photography software, is that it doesn’t make changes to an original RAW file. Everything changed within it is done using versions – essentially metadata – so that you can have a dozen different variants of a file, but only ever have one taking up space on disk.

It’s a great idea, except when your original has a problem, like for example the camera has recorded orientation information that you don’t want applied. Aperture provides no way to alter the RAW file. You can create a rotated version in Aperture, but exporting the RAW will output the original un-rotated edition.

The solution is to use Nikon’s own ViewNX software. It’s ugly as sin, not at all Mac-like, but when you rotate a RAW file in it, the file on disk is rotated, while staying as a RAW.

Then, you have to reimport the image as a new file, and delete the old version. Simply replacing the old one with the rotated version in Aperture’s library won’t show up as having been changed when you re-launch Aperture.

With the update to iOS 8, Apple obsolesced the iOS version of iPhoto. Notwithstanding that iPhoto was a paid product, which is made unusable without warning, the replacement has certain issues.

The replacement for iPhoto is an expanded set of capabilities for the Photos app. What it doesn’t have, however, is the ability to view EXIF data for the images, so if you’re using the iPad to triage images in the field, you can’t see any of the technical details of your shots – no aperture, iso, shutter speed or anything. Worse still, when you try to edit images…

Photos can’t perform more than a single edit on an image without it pixelating like this.

These add to the commonly held view that things at Apple are starting to go off the rails, at a systemic, company-wide level. Within Apple’s software efforts, new features are being brought to market before they’re thoroughly ready. More importantly, old working solutions are removed from users’ systems before their replacements are up to the task.

So my current phone, an iPhone 3GS which I bought outright in 2009, has been getting a little long in the tooth. I’ve been thinking about options for replacement, and had pondered trying to get an old stock iPhone 5S through a 3rd party retailer, since they’re still available in a 64gb version. The iPhone 5S models Apple sells since the iPhone 6 release, are 16 & 32gb only.

So, I went to the Apple store to check out the feel of the current lineup. In short, neither of them are particularly nice.

The iPhone 5S feels cheap and hollow. It’s too light for its apparent volume. While the rectangular design is pretty, it’s an unpleasant object to hold in your hand.

The iPhone 6 is a completely different experience. It’s heavier, having what feels like the correct weight for its size, or rather, the correct feeling of density for its size. The screen is tremendous, and looks more real and less like a screen than the 5s, I suspect because the panel is closer to the surface of the glass. While the curved back and front edges feel fantastic in the hands, the simple fact is that the phone is too big. In order to hold it in a way that’s comfortable for reaching the home button, so much of the phone cantilevers out over the top of your hand, that you never feel it’s safe unless you’re gripping onto it. Contrast that with my 3GS:

 Here I can sit the phone in my hand, and use it without any need to physically hold it in place, the weight and shape of the phone keep it in place.

Added to this, the glassy-smooth surface of the iPhone 6 simply feels too slippery. Combined with the projecting into space cantilever, every second of holding it resulted in buttock-clenching terror.

The only thing I’ve held that felt less secure in my hand, was a live, wriggling fish.

Now, I could, and probably would, get a leather or silicone skin if I was going to buy this phone. That would alleviate the slipperiness, and ensure that the camera lens wasn’t projecting out into space from the back of the phone – which is another mark against the iPhone 6. However, it would make the phone even bigger.

So, I think I’m going to sit out this round of phones, yet again, and stay with my 3GS. Perhaps when Apple makes a device with an iPhone 5S (or smaller) sized screen, in an iPhone 6 denisity and shape, and gives it 64gb of storage, I’ll look into buying again.

If this article was of use, a donation would help support my projects.

Opening disclaimer: I was provided with a “keeper” review unit by Adonit, and Mobile Zap Australia. Since this is a review of a handwriting-oriented device, try reading it in the original, handwritten form of the images below, but please note the edit in the typed version.

The Jot Script is the first of the new “pixelpoint” styluses from Adonit – the maker of my current favourite stylus – the Jot Touch 4.0.

It’s important to bear in mind that this device is primarily designed to be used with Evernote’s “Penultimate” software, and unlike the Jot Touch, it’s primarily a writing stylus. As you can see so far, it’s pretty accurate at capturing my godawful handwriting, which would put the average doctor’s scrawl to shame. The point being that despite how unreadable it may be to others, it’s perfectly readable to me.

Zoom View

Here is where we get to Penultimate’s real strength “zoom mode”. In this mode the screen zooms in and scrolls under the pen in direct relation to how fast you lay down new letters. The faster you write, the faster the page scrolls under the pen. This means you can slowly progress your pen across the page, and just hold your pen up off the surface for a second or two and let the program just drift a space in under the pen.

As you can see from this page as compared to the previous page, the text is far cleaner and more readable. What’s most interesting about this interactive design is that you can see the non-zoomed view in the background, greyed out so as to not distractfrom what you’re writing, but it keeps you aware of how far down the page you’ve progressed as you write.

All in all, it’s a pretty brilliant solution to the handwriting dilemma on the iPad, while avoiding the Newton’s trap of handwriting recognition.

The Pen Itself

While not feeling quite as sturdy as the Jot touch 4.0, it’s still sturdier than any of the pens offered by Wacom for their Intuous / Cintique (sic) tablets. The machined Aluminium barrel meets a plastic centre section where the on / off switch then transitions to a plastic grip area,

Important Edit: I just ran the grip area over my teeth (yes weird I know), and realised it’s actually the same metal as the barrel – the texturing in the surface had confused me as to what the material was – it feels quite different to the smooth metal of the barrel. This more or less negates any criticism of the product’s sturdiness compared to the Jot Touch.

and down to a metal tip. It feels lighter, and plasticer than than the Jot Touch, which is unsurprising, given its lower cost. Possibly my only major criticism is the choice to go with a AAA replaceable battery, rather than the internal rechargeable of the Jot Touch. But then again, these are the sacrifices that are inevitably made to bring a product in within a certain budget. My hope would be that the new Jot Touch with Pixelpoint can fulfil all the tasks the script currently fills, enabling users to carry just a single pen.

It should be noted that I’m left-handed, and that may haveand effect on the performance of the product. But as you can see from the past few lines the pen is quite capable of running writing, for those who refuse to print.

Conclusion

What the Jot Script provides is a fantastic environment for handwritten note taking that can be faster than a keyboard for quick – err, jotting of ideas. It has a major strength that text and drawing can be integrated thusly: (note look at the final gallery image)

One thing to watch out for is that drawing smooth curves can result in stepping as you can see here. But again this seems to not have any effect on handwriting.

As you can see in the top left corner, this is largely a result of the speed at which the lines are drawn. Fast avoids the stepping.

This is a device which does what it claims to do, and shows off the potential of the new generation of fine-point styluses Adonit is moving towards.

If this article was of use, a donation would help support my projects.

How do you ensure the iBooks library image is readable, when the typography of your cover is too small in icon view?

The answer to that is actually really simple, but has a quirk that can trip up a publisher, because the behaviour of files downloaded from the iBooks / iTunes store differs from how they work when loaded directly through iTunes or iBooks (formerly Book Proofer).

Solution first, then quirk afterwards.

By default, iBooks uses the file listed as the cover image in your package.opf file to generate the icon:

<item id="cover" href="images/cover.jpg" media-type="image/jpeg" properties="cover-image"/>

That image is the one you create optimised to be seen as a tiny icon in your iBooks library, which in icon view has no text labels (the origin of this problem).

The image optimised for full screen viewing and placed within your cover html page can then be listed separately:

<item id="front-cover" href="images/outside_front.jpg" media-type="image/jpeg"></item>

When you load this EPUB into iBooks, the image tagged as having the “cover-image” property will be used to create the icon.

When submitting your files via iTunes Producer, you have a cover image imagewell, and Apple then uses that to create the image of your book in the iTunes & iBooks stores, as well as the iTunes Preview website. It also uses that image to create the icon you see in the icon view of your iBooks library.

So, if you try to use your “big art” version of the cover to be the hero image of your book within iTunes / iBooks / iTunes Preview, when someone downloads your book, that’s the version of the cover image that’ll be used for the icon view in the Library. Importantly, that image will override the image you’ve hard-coded into your EPUB to be the cover image.

So, the solution in the end, is to design your icon view art so that it looks OK when presented as the hero image of your book in iTunes / iBooks / iTunes Preview, and remember that the “Preview” tag will obscure the top right corner when a preview is downloaded – hence my putting the author name on the left in the examples above.

If this article was of use, a donation would help support my projects.

Well, after all my problems with Aperture’s book printing, Apple has now announced that Aperture is being end-of-lifed. This brings with it conflicting emotions.

Aperture was developed in a time when the general Mac OS was somewhat more primitive than it is now. The capabilities demonstrated in the WWDC 2014 videos show that quite a lot of Aperture’s abilities have been migrated into the OS as a whole, and Aperture is to be replaced with a (lighter weight) iCloud-focussed Photos app. One of the themes of WWDC has been that applications are now highly plugin-able. One of Aperture’s great weaknesses was that third party filters and effects weren’t non-destructive. So if you wanted to apply a border to a photo, it had to be flattened into a TIFF file (an extra 100+mb for a whole image vs an insignificant addition of metadata to the original RAW file), and the border applied to it – negating the purpose of shooting in RAW.

The non-destructive plugin-oriented paradigm Apple unveiled at WWDC leaves me hopeful that even if Photos is a stripped down product from Apple, whatever is lost will be able to be replaced by third party plugins, which won’t require this stupid flatten-to-tiff workflow we have currently.

My biggest fear, is that the manual management facility – the ability to arbitrarily arrange projects with folders, subfolders etc will be lost. It’s a feature Aperture has, but which iPhoto does not, even when they share the same library. Tethering and fine-grained output options could potentially be replaced by third party plugins, but the representation of the library itself – the core functionality of the app is different between Apple’s two current photography apps, I would be surprised if that could be altered.

Right now, Aperture is a little under $90. If Photos is free, and the abilities of Aperture today can be aded as plugins for less than that, it could end up being a net win. If not, there’s app packages from Corel, DXO, and even Adobe if you’re a masochist.

After yesterday’s post on problems with a photobook produced and printed through Apple’s Aperture software, I thought I’d conduct a more thorough test. The conditions were setting up the same image as I’d used in Aperture, in Adobe InDesign, and Apple’s pages. The image was set up at the same physical size on the page, and then the page was output using various quality settings.

As can be seen, the basic problem is that Aperture is doing something in the PDF which puts white fringing on the black lines, which destroys them optically. In places in the book, the white fringing is more prominent than the black lines.

Recipes:

• Aperture
  • The Print Proof when ordering a book.
• InDesign CS5 Export to PDF
  • High Quality Print
  • Blurb print on demand books plugin quality
  • Smallest File Size
• Pages Export to PDF
  • Good
  • Better
  • Best

Each pdf was then opened in Preview, the same area was zoomed to the same size on screen, and a screenshot of the window taken. Images were then opened in Photoshop CS5 and Saved for Web at 100% size with jpeg compression set to 100 / Maximum.