Monthly Archives: July 2008

iPhone’s iPod Time Scrubber

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In iTunes, while holding the iPhone in portrait mode, tap the middle of the album art. A time-scrubber widget will show up right below the song title, allowing you to jump to a certain point in the current song.
This is really handy for audiobooks and podcasts, but the longer the song/podcast, the less precise the 1-inch scrubber is.

I wonder why they gave up on the scrollwheel?

Update August 2009:

Apple addressed the problem with precision in the scrubber in the iPhone 3.0 system update.

Once you see the scrubber, touch and hold your finger on the scrubber, and move your finger down the screen — the farther away from the scrubber you hold your finger, the slower you will fast-forward or rewind. They also gave a “rewind 30 seconds” button that is niftiness, too. Well done!

“Backing up iPhone” taking forever? Reset iSync!

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Update 9/14/2008:

Backup speed was addressed in iPhone software version 2.1. Launch iTunes, dock your iPhone, and click “Check for Update”.

And now back to the original article:

I was surprised to see my brand-new iPhone 3G taking more than 15 minutes to synchronize with iTunes. It would get “stuck” in “Backing up iPhone…”

It looks like there are two reasons why the backup process takes longer — iTunes backing up newly-installed applications, and MobileMe/iSync database cruftiness. Expect sync’ing to take a while if you’ve installed new applications. If you haven’t installed new applications, you should try resetting the iSync database.

It’s pretty simple:

  1. Close iTunes.
  2. Start iSync
  3. Click iSync > Preferences.
  4. Click “Reset Sync History…

The next time you sync with iTunes, the “Backing up” step should be dramatically shorter.

Another interesting solution involves Vacuuming your syncdb. If you’ve got MacPorts installed, it’s easy:

sudo port install sqlite3
sqlite3 \
  ~/Library/Application\ Support/SyncServices/Local/data.syncdb\
  vacuum

MobileMe Family Pack looks like an “individual” subscription

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I just signed up for MobileMe and bought the family pack — when I activated the account, though, it looked like I had an “individual” subscription, not a “family” subscription.

Their terminology is pretty confusing to the casual observer.

If you buy a “Family Pack”, you’re really buying one “individual” account as well as four “family” accounts. The account that you activate MobileMe with will be the “individual” account that has the 20GB of storage (so choose the username carefully).

To activate the family accounts, first click the account tab (the far right button), then click “Account Options.” You’ll see this:

There’s several scary red things saying stuff is going to expire, and credit card billing information missing. You’re supposed to intuit that the tiny “(Set Up Account…)” link is what you’re supposed to click to add your 4 family accounts:

This experience was not pleasant. Nebulous terminology mixed with user experience mistakes will cost Apple a lot of support calls and emails.

50,000 photos in iPhoto on a shared laptop and external drive

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I’ve got over 100GiB of photos (JPEG and RAW) taken over the years, and they don’t comfortably fit on a laptop. The laptop is also shared by everyone in my family, each with their own account, so what to do?

I found out that if you hold down the option key when you start iPhoto it asks for the location of your iPhoto Library — so that takes care of the first problem — just plug in a big external hard drive and you’re set.

There’s one glitch to having the photos on an external drive, though — Time Machine ignores exernal drives by default. Go into System Preferences… > Time Machine. Click “Options”. You’ll see your external drive in the “Do not back up:” list. Click the external drive holding your photos, then click the minus button.

The next problem is how to share the library with others. That’s described quite well by a Mac OS X Hint. Note that the following assumes you’ve named your external hard drive “Photos”.

Step 1: Enable ACLs:

sudo fsaclctl -p /Volumes/Photos -e

Step 2: Add the people that can use iPhoto. Replace “USERNAME” with the short login name of the people that you want to be able to use iPhoto:

sudo chmod +a "USERNAME allow read,write,delete,list,search,add_file,add_subdirectory,delete_child,file_inherit,directory_inherit" \
  /Volumes/Photos/iPhoto\ Library

Creating a group account, subscribing the users to that group, and letting group have read/write/execute to the directory should work, but the umask may not be 775. It’s something to check if this doesn’t keep working.