I fired up iTunes the other day and realized that my iPad hadn’t backed up in almost a month. I wondered how could this be since I have WiFi sync enabled and I have both devices on the same WiFi network. Then it dawned upon me that I probably haven’t had both my computer awake and iTunes open while the iPad was connected to power long enough for this to happen automatically. I initiated a manual sync right then and there and it got me to thinking that it’s probably time for Apple to separate out iOS device management from iTunes. I would backup the iPad to iCloud, but I don’t have enough free space on iCloud.
In the beginning…
When Apple created the iPod it made perfect sense to have it sync and be managed directly with iTunes. After all that’s where all your music was and pretty much all your entertainment that you downloaded from the iTunes store. However, does that still make sense today? Sure your music, movies, TV shows, podcasts, etc. are probably in iTunes and of course you want the ability to have this content on your iOS devices. However, your photos are in iPhoto, Aperture or a folder and you can sync those just fine. So why does the iOS management have to be in iTunes? I think it’s time that Apple create a dedicated iOS utility that would sync in the background at the OS level without requiring a dedicated App to be opened. Think about it like the Mac App Store. It’s a dedicated App just for managing your Mac Apps. Perhaps Apple could make an App Store App that would manage all Apps and devices. This could also end a lot of user confusion around music libraries, playlists, etc. when you have multiple users wanting to sync to the same computer, but with different photo, music, contacts, calendars and Apps. Perhaps iTunes could still manage the Apps, but the New iOS Utility would be configurable as to where to get the content from for each user and work across multiple user accounts of the same computer.
Here’s a test for my theory
If you think things are just fine the way they are, ask yourself this question. If Apple was building the first iOS device today AND it wasn’t an evolution of the iPod, would it be managed via iTunes? I’m going to guess that the answer would be no. They would make a slick new App for their slick new device.
Perhaps it just time for an iTunes overhaul
Maybe iTunes is the right App, but perhaps it’s iTunes itself that is starting to show its age. Maybe it’s time to tear down iTunes and build it back up from the ground up again. The name iTunes alone lets you know how old it is because back then it was just about music.
The Bottom Line
In any case I think it’s time Apple takes another look at the growing number of iOS users and ask the question, is iTunes the right first experience for those users to manage their new devices? Granted much of it’s moving to the cloud anyway and perhaps in a year or two you won’t really need iTunes to do anything to an iOS device anyway, but for now as long as backing up locally, system restoring and certain other functions can only be performed via iTunes, it would be nice to have a dedicated utility that is separate from iTunes sort of how there’s a separate AirPort Utility.
No one knows how hard it is to always make it to the MacGroup meetings more than me. I’ve been doing it for over 25 years and there have been times where I wished that there wasn’t a meeting today! However, life goes on and I do my best to make every meeting. However, if you can’t make it to the meetings there’s a cool way to watch the meeting replay on your iPad, iPhone or iPod touch via the MacGroup TV App. We’ve been podcasting our meetings for years now and they are available in iTunes. However, our dedicated App offers one stop shopping with a great interface. You can stream the meetings right to your device or mark them as favorites so that they are downloaded to watch offline. There’s also a social media tie end to share the content and follow us online.
Check out the MacGroup TV here on the
When the iTunes Store first opened it was pretty simple to understand the rules of “Authorization.” However, now with the App Store, Mac App Store, iTunes Match, Apple TV, etc. it can be really confusing. There are also different rules depending on the type of content in question. For example, if I bought a song back in the day when Apple used Digital Rights Management (DRM) aka “Protected”, then I was limited to only being able to play that song on up to 5 Authorized computers and an unlimited number of iPods. Luckily Apple no longer sells DRM’d tunes, so this problem/limit goes away for any new purchases of “music”. However, other content, such as movies is still DRM protected and therefore still has the same rules enforced.
Authorizing your Mac or PC to play your DRM protected iTunes content
You can have up to five authorized computers (Macintosh, Windows, or both) at a time. To play a purchased item on a sixth computer, you need to deauthorize another one (from that computer). An iPod, iPhone, iPad, or Apple TV doesn’t count as a computer. When you go to play this content on your computer you will be prompted to “Authorize” your computer to play the content. This basically means signing in with the SAME Apple ID that was used to buy the content. Let’s say one of your computer dies or you sold it and forgot to deauthorize it first. You have no way of selectively deauthorizing computers that you no longer have access to from iTunes. The only way to deauthorize those computers is to Deauthorize All of your computer from your iTunes account and then Authorize the ones you want Authorized again from each computer’s iTunes App.
Automatic Downloads and Re-downloading content
Apple now allows you to re-download more than just Apps. You can now re-download music, TV shows and some movies that you’ve purchased in the past. This is great because it means that you can download content directly to a device such as an iPad while you’re out and about without having to return to your computer. However, this comes at a price as you have a restriction on the number of devices that you can “Associate” with an Apple ID:
When you turn on Automatic Downloads or download past purchases on an iOS device or computer, your device or computer will be associated with your Apple ID. Your Apple ID can have up to 10 devices and computers (combined) associated with it. Each computer must also be authorized using the same Apple ID. Once a device or computer is associated with your Apple ID, you cannot associate that device or computer with another Apple ID for 90 days. You can view which devices or computers are currently associated, remove unused devices or computers, and see how long before they can be associated with a different Apple ID from the Account Information page in iTunes on your computer:
iTunes Match
I love iTunes match, but it also has limits:
When you add a computer or iOS device to iTunes Match, your computer or device will be associated to the Apple ID being used for iTunes Match. Your Apple ID can have up to 10 devices and computers (combined) associated with it. This means computers, iOS devices and Apple TVs. That means it will be a lot easier to hit this limit since it includes everything!
iTunes Match is limited to 25,000 songs.
iTunes Store purchases made with the same Apple ID being used for iTunes Match do not count towards the 25,000 song limit.
Unmatched content will be uploaded as is; upload time varies depending on the amounts uploaded and local network speeds.
Song files over 200 MB will not be uploaded to iCloud.
Songs containing DRM (Digital Rights Management) will not be matched or uploaded to iCloud unless your computer is authorized for playback of that content.
iOS Apps
Luckily the policy is a little more generous when it comes to Apps. There is no limit on the number of iOS devices that you can install the Apps you associated with your Apple ID. Also since the very beginning Apple allows you to delete and re-download iOS Apps. In other words once you own it, you own it for life. You can always re-download an App that you deleted or got wiped out due to a crash.
The Bottom Line
Luckily none of the above is a concern for your own content, content you ripped from CDs or movies from DVDs or iTunes Plus content. However, if you bought Protected content from the iTunes Store then you’ll have to play by the ever changing rules above. In Apple’s defense these rules were more than likely brought to us by the authors, labels, movie studios, etc. Heaven forbid that you have more than 5 computers or 10 devices! 
One of the less touted features of iOS 5 is the NEW Shortcuts Feature. I’m a fan of TextExpander on my Mac and even TextExpander on my iDevices, but on iDevices TextExpander only works in Apps that directly support it. However, since “Shortcuts” is built-in to iOS that means that it works everywhere and in any App. The concept is simple. You can create Shortcuts that allow you to key in a few letters, but expand into full sentences. For example, if I receive a SMS message while in the car I don’t wan’t to have totype a long response. I have a shortcut setup so that if I type “drv” it expands to “I’m driving now. Will respond as soon as I can.” Granted you shouldn’t txt and drive under any circumstance, but If I have a second to respond while I pull over I’d rather do it with 3 characters instead of having to compose a long message. However, it’s not just for texting. You can use these shortcuts for kinds of things including email and other Apps. I get asked for things like my photography rates all the time and perhaps the address to my studio. I have shortcuts for those. If someone is making a Starbucks run and they want to know what I want I can just key in “shl” for Grande Skinny Hazelnut Latte”.
You can create your own shortcuts by going to Settings, General and Keyboard. Just tap Add New Shortcut… to create the ones you want. Be sure not to use abbreviations for actual words. For example, “drv” instead of “dri” because I wouldn’t otherwise type a word with those letters and I don’t want shortcuts popping in for normal things that I’d type during the course of my correspondence.
Give Shortcuts a try. It’s built-in!
TextExpander has been around for years. I knew about it but never really took the time to check it out. Recently I got the iOS App – TextExpander Touch. Like my love for 1Password, I started using TextExpander on my iPhone and then figured it would be great to also have it on my Mac. Recently TextExpander for Mac was on sale and I couldn’t pass up that deal.
What is TextExpander?
TextExpander allows you to create shortcuts that expand out to the full text that you type on a regular basis. For example, let’s take “MacGroup-Detroit, Inc.” I type that all the time in email, web forms, word processing apps and graphic design apps. With TextExpander I setup a shortcut called “mgd” and now whenever I type “mgd”, it expands to “MacGroup-Detroit, Inc.” It’s not just for simple one liners either. TextExpander can expand a typed shortcut to full paragraphs of formatted text as well. This is great for instant access to your price lists, directions to your location and just about anything else you can think of.
Besides being able to expand basic text, formatted text, text with images and current date/time, TextExpander also has a cool “Fill In” feature. This is where you can create a snippet of text that when it expands it will have fields for you to key in the relevant info for that particular text. I didn’t realize how much I would use this feature until I setup one. Now I’m using it all the time.
Syncs with Dropbox
Like I said, I started with TextExpander Touch and I had already started creating some snippets on my iPhone and iPad. Of course when I got the Mac version I wanted to use those same snippets. The good news here is that TextExpander for Mac and TextExpander Touch all sync with Dropbox. If you create or edit a snippet in one place you’ll have it on all your other devices too.
How does it work with iOS Devices?
While TextExpander is pretty universal with your Apps on your Mac, it’s limited to the Apps that support it on iOS. Here’s a complete list of supported iOS Apps that work with TextExpander Touch. While the built-in iOS Mail App and Message App don’t support TextExpander Touch, you can create new email messages and SMS messages directly within the TextExpander Touch App so that you can take advantage of your snippets
iOS 5 promisses to bring similar functionality to the OS itself. This will be handy as it will be supported in the built-in apps, but like most built-in features it won’t be as robust ast TextExpander Touch. It will be great to have both!
You can get TextExpander for Mac for $34.99 here from the 
You can get TextExpander Touch for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch for $4.99 here from the 
A while back I wrote about a solution to allow you to print from your iOS devices to your printer, even if your current printer doesn't have native AirPrint Support. While FingerPrint (the App I wrote about back then) worked, it didn't work with every printer and not in every case. There was a print to your hard drive PDF workaround, but I've long since forgotten about all that. There were some readers of that post that suggested I take a look at Printopia and you guys were right. I've been using Printopia ever since and it just works!
Easy setup
Printopia installs as a System Preference on your Mac. I installed it on my Mac OS X Server since that Mac is always on and it's been running ever since. I don't even think about it. It shows up on my network to all my iOS devices including iPad, iPhone and iPod touch. I can print directly to the printer or send it to my Dropbox account as a PDF.
Some of the commenters even suggested a free way to do with an Apple Script instead of paying for any of these apps and while FREE is good, you get what you pay for. The free option only works on Snow Leopard whereas Printopia runs on Leopard (Mac OS 10.5), Power PC Macs as well as Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6). You also get more options with Printopia like printing to your Dropbox or to a folder on your Mac. Yes it supports multiple printers too.
I don't print very often, but when I do I just print. I don't think about it. Printopia works!
You can learn more and download a free trial here.
Digital content supplier Zinio has a lot of flaming unhappy customers right now. For the past week or more Zinio.com customers had no access to their digital content.
The Zinio.com website and Zinio Reader apps have been completely unavailable and/or erratic for days now, almost a week. On the Zinio website, customers seeking information, were greeted with only a static image indicating that Zinio was offline. No other information.
Zinio.com is up and running more steadily now, and the Zinio Reader apps are working better, but frustration still looms high for some customers, and especially for those who still have gotten no relief from the inability to acess their digital content.
For starters, there was no information whatsoever listed on this static page to inform customers of what was going on, or when the site would be back online. No redirect, no email to contact. Nada.
Only days later did any info seem to come to light, on the Ziniophile blog. The said problem: "An outage at one of our data centers."
Customers understand that things can go wrong, and we customers understand that issues and problems may take time to resolve; even longer than we may like. But only by searching online for a couple of days was I able to find out anything at all on this problem. I was initially concerned with my computer Zinio app, but when a total of three devices showed the same problem, I knew it was something amiss on Zinio's end.
These days, It's completely unacceptable for companies not to proactively communicate issues of this magnitude with the customers they want patience and understanding from. And for the most part, customers will be understanding.
And, I'm pretty sure that the staff over at Zinio is working long and hard to resolve the problems that they find themselves knee deep in. But I think they got on the communication to customers part a little late.
I'd like to take this opportunity to wish Steve Jobs a Happy Birthday. And, to add good vibes out into the universe for his recovery.
Like millions of others, I have been touched by or benefited from Steve Jobs' vision, commitment to his ideas and tenacity.
My Mac and Apple devices have brought me great joy over the years. The iPod literally lit up my life. It has brought a world of music to my ears that I never imagined, yet alone, thought possible. In the old iPod commercials where you see the persons shadow dancing while they actually may be just sitting, standing or walking…oh, yeah, that's me.
Some devices have enhanced my life greater than I could have imagined and some have even changed it altogether. I wasn't even into computers. I took a look at a, funny-looking, Macintosh 128K computer, and wondered, "What will that thing ever do for me?" Two years later I was doing CAD drawings, yes CAD, on a Macintosh SE. It was a clinic in scrolling, but, I have been a Mac lover ever since.
So just like the light bulb, the automobile, the telephone; my computer of choice is happily, just as ingrained in my day to day existence. The saying still applies, "I love my Mac."
So, thank you Mr. Jobs, Happy Birthday, and wishing you the best of health.
CH
:::
The 1st iPod was introduced in 2001. Yes that was 10 years ago. It was revolutionary in many respects. Although the original model included a Firewire cable and was Mac Only, Apple followed up with the now standard iPod "dock connector" model in 2003. The dock connector has been great and widely adopted by peripheral and car manufacturers. While the dock connector is cool, I ask the question do we really need to plug in a cable to sync our iOS devices today?
Let's lose the cable!
Of course Apple still makes iPods that don't have built-in WiFi. These low cost models obviously need some way of connecting to your computer to sync the media. For those models the sync cable still makes sense. However, for iOS devices that have WiFi (the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad) I wonder why we still "need" to plug in a cable to sync media? Don't get me wrong, given a choice I'll gladly plug in a cable when I have several gigabytes of data to sync to a new device over doing it via WiFi any day. Yet that doesn't mean that I should have to plug in a cable for day to day syncing.
- Apple TV streams Gigabytes of Movies Wirelessly
- MacBooks, iMacs, Mac mini's, etc all can backup Terabytes of data Wirelessly
- iTunes allows Home Sharing via WiFi
- iOS devices can download Gigabytes of data/media direclty from the iTunes store via WiFi
Still waiting for my dream to come true
I remember having a day dream when I got my first car with an iPod connection built-in that some day I would pull into my garage, reach into my glove compartment and press a sync button on my iPod (or iPhone) and my device would connect to my computer in the house and sync the latest playlists, podcasts, etc. via WiFi. I'm still waiting for that dream to come true and technically there is no reason why it shouldn't be a reality today. My iOS devices have WiFi. Apple already allows you to download gigabytes of data (movies and apps) from iTunes via WiFi directly to these devices . Why not allow us to do it from iTunes to iOS device? Hey, it's 2011: I shouldn't even have to press a sync button. The device iOS device should just auto sync (via a preference) when I enter my WiFi zone!
FAQ
Whenever I bring this up to my gadget buddies, someone always has a "but what about ______" objection. I can usually shoot these down pretty easily so let's go through the common ones.
Q. Isn't WiFi too slow?
A. Yes and no. I'm not saying that you shouldn't be able to use a cable if you want to. I'm just saying that we should have the option to do it wirelessly. Also remember that Apple already lets you download gigabytes of data directly to your iOS device via the internet. My Navigon App weighs in at 1.52GBs and I can download it direclty to my iPhone today from the App Store via WiFi.
Q. What if you were doing a OS update via WiFi and your connection died or battery died?
A. OK, what happens today if you accidently unplug the cable during an update? In other words there are problems that can happen today even with the cable. If Apple were truly worried about this they could require you to use the cable for OS updates or provide the same warnings they do today when updating a MacBook/MacBook Pro when you're not plugged into to power. Lastly Apple could do it more like they do it on the Mac. Let the iOS update download first to the device before installing. If the download/sync were interupted then there would be no harm.
Q. Users would complain that syncing takes too long.
A. Yep, they probably would. Apple could easily pop up an alert stating that syncing more than XXX amount of data may take a while over WiFi. Let me make that choice and of course disable the alert.
The Bottom Line
Beyond the first sync of all your media onto your iOS device, there is little reason that you shouldn't be able to sync via WiFi from that point on. Apple let's me backup my entire 500GB MacBook Pro drive via WiFi to a Time Capsule. Yes, it takes HOURS, but they allow it and even sell devices to do allow you to do it. If I wanted it to go faster I could always plug in an Ethernet cable. Syncing a WiFi enabled iOS device via WiFi wouldn't take nearly as long even if the device were empty. Apple can we please lose the cable? It's 2011!
Do you tire of looking for a Wi-Fi hotspot to connect your iPod Touch?
It's 2011 already…
Surfing the Internet shouldn't be so hard to do no matter what the device or where you are.
But, that's just my opinion.
And possibly the opinion of Sprint as well.
Or maybe just a smart move to step into the iDevice craze.
Sprint is aiming to make your iPod Touch, a Wi-Fi device, into a 3G device, in a round about way, with the "ZTE Peel™."
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