iPhone syndrome

MaxBurn

MaxBurn

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Mercutio said:
The ipad I was messing with wouldn't let me do a single damned thing with it until I plugged it in to a computer with itunes on it. It just came up with a graphic showing a picture of the data cable and an arrow pointing to the word "itunes."

If that's changed recently, it's for the best, but I couldn't figure out a way to put .cbr files on my ipad without itunes involvement regardless.
Click to expand...

Everything iCloud was added in ios5. It made the devices computer free and now out of the box you get a welcome screen and screens setting things up. What you described was the experience 4.x and lower, yes that sucked.

Santilli said:
I have tried installing itunes once. It lasted about 5 minutes, and was uninstalled.

My girlfriend has an ipad, and ipod. My understanding is you can only do one install of
itunes, on one computer, and must use that computer for loading the ipod?

This was what I was told when I suggested she bring the software over and install it on
a computer in my house, so I could help her with it.

Is this true?

I found the software pretty offensive, and useless for me.

I hate having quicktime on my computers, and won't install any of appl's update software, either.
Click to expand...


In theory you can move the iTunes library between machines on a portable drive to accomplish what you wanted to do but even that is hard because it isn't self contained. I posted the steps a couple times over on hocp and macrumors forums, it is a little more than people realize to get that done.
http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1038249851&postcount=13

http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1038250686&postcount=16

Itunes isn't really pleasant but honestly it is a lot more than a media player, it is a complete management application to sync apple devices with files you didn't get via the apple ecosystem. Now because they don't want to allow file sharing between friends they do limit a lot of things you can do so limiting you to one computer makes sense for the hoops they had to jump through to make the whole experience possible while still bowing to media company restrictions.

IMO apple needs to make the devices more manageable themselves with some shared memory apps can get at. iOS5 was a big step in the right direction, hopefully they continue it and eliminate the whole need for iTunes media management.
 
Santilli

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HMMM.

So if you change computers, they want you to unregister the computer, delete all your files, and start fresh on a new computer?

What happens with a hard drive failure?
 
MaxBurn

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If you were going to move between two computers a lot you could just leave two authorized. I think you get up to five. I see people on macrumors that leave the iTunes library and media files on a network share which works but you need to be careful about not mounting it twice, iTunes doesn't like that.

When I wiped windows and learned about the shortcomings of iTunes and portability I lost my phones configuration also. Basically what it meant is I had to organize all my apps on the home screen again and any data in the apps that wasn't stored elsewhere was gone. All the apps and purchases had to be redownloaded and reinstalled on the phone again. I had my media files which were on D: with all other important data but the library files were on C: and I didn't know that and lost them. It was a bitch.

There might have possibly been a way around wiping and redownloading everything but iTunes certainly wasn't helping with that. Rather than troubleshoot that I got the phone back on its feet and spent a little time figuring out how to do a correct and complete backup.

I am not sure if or how ios5 has addressed that situation. I guess you can backup to iCloud and skip the iTunes backup. Then you are only syncing data and not the phone configuration?
 
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time

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How bad is the data isolation on iOS? For example, can you download a Word document from a website, save it to local storage, then open it with a 3rd party word processor app? And in reverse?
 
Handruin

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time said:
How bad is the data isolation on iOS? For example, can you download a Word document from a website, save it to local storage, then open it with a 3rd party word processor app? And in reverse?
Click to expand...

I don't recall seeing a way to save a word document to local storage. I just tried opening a docx formatted doc and it opens, but the only two options I can do with it are to print it or open in Evernote. I don't imagine printing it would be much fun unless you have a full Apple environment that somehow magically supports this and Evernote is nice, but I don't know what benefit you get for opening it in Evernote other than to synchronize it with other platforms running Evernote. I don't know how to try the reverse way you've inquired about.
 
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time

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The scenario I was envisaging is that you download a document from the web so you can view it more than once. Ideally, you would be able to make edits and then upload the updated document to the web.

So what you're saying is, no?

Can you use SMB to connect to a server and edit documents that way?
 
MaxBurn

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It's really bad.

Safari has no download so if you run into say a zip file that link is simply disabled and greyed out. This is one thing that the jailbreak community improves on, adds a download manager and local file storage access, of course you have to jailbreak to get that.

But in safari if it is something that the phone can open natively like a pdf (or a docx? never tried that) it will download open and view and print that fine, BUT no other apps can see that file and it is cleared the minute you close that browser tab like any other web cache.

Without jail breaking you can get any one of a number of apps to help the situation, like atomic browser which has a download manager and file storage that you can get to via the drag drop file section in iTunes. BUT because all apps are sandboxed none of the other apps on the phone can see what you downloaded!

The phone natively doesn't have SMB that I have found.

Goodreader (iPad only) has a bunch of document viewers but I don't remember if it has much on the editing side. Primarily it focuses on getting files in and out of the device via all protocols it can, web, iTunes drag drop, SMB, FTP, etc. I shoved my cars entire pdf service manual in this app and it is a couple hundred pdf files stored in a zip with file structure and it was good at handling that.

So really if you wanted to connect to a server download and edit something you would need ONE app that did all of the above, the iOS operating system isn't helping the developer out at all here, instead is actively working against them with this sandboxing. The developer would have to create the full suite of network access components, local file storage AND the editing application all in one. Also if this one dev did a really good job at the access stuff but the editor sucks or is non existent, but this other app had a really good editor the two can't see each other at all and you are SOL.
 
MaxBurn

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Dropbox is awesome but still a workaround.

There was a pretty big bug with ios5 and cleaning out cached application data. Relevant to the above because these apps that were storing things on the device might have the OS come in and delete the info right from under it. Fortunately apple realized this is a huge problem with both no local sandboxed file storage AND no pooled storage, they were basically saying apps can't store data locally which is way too far. Fixed in 5.0.1 now.

http://www.marco.org/2011/10/13/ios5-caches-cleaning

http://www.cultofmac.com/128220/apple-introduces-solution-for-cleaned-app-data-in-ios-5-0-1/
 
Mercutio

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I think something that would make certain aspects of my life easier is a web based iOS mock-up. I got motivate to go look and I'm kind of surprised that there isn't one out there already.
 
MaxBurn

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Closest I have ever seen. I think for legal reasons we will never see anything more than this. There was another one I can't find now that had the slide, home and power buttons do things but otherwise did less than this does in showing websites.

http://iphone4simulator.com/

Apple has an ios simulator in xcode for testing. From the developer grumbling I hear it isn't the greatest. Developers with difficult applications actually have four or five devices for testing for different platforms or ios versions. Apple does not care at all about prior releases of ios when something new comes out so if you want to test under older versions you have to have the device to test with. I think I even heard you can get official shsh signing on a registered testing device for older ios versions than current to help out with this process. All for $99/year.

https://developer.apple.com/library...n.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40007959-CH9-SW1

Keeping a year or two old ipod touch around is likely the closest you would get.
 
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At first I have to say that I'm not an Apple Fan- I don't have an iPhone. I worked with macbooks and I think they are ok, but I wasn't overwhelmed. I think the products are overprices and not worth so much money. But each to their own! :) I'm not judging anyone by owning this or that phone. It's just a matter of taste!
 
MaxBurn

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I am shocked they didn't have something like this natively years ago. Given all the sandboxing and security on iOS that is. I just thought I never saw or couldn't find the setting.

http://www.idownloadblog.com/2012/02/08/contactprivacy/

This in light of all the path and Facebook app news uploading the whole users address book without even asking.

This should turn into the same sort of news item that the location data thing was, will it?
 
Mercutio

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Every time I've spoken to anyone about it, I've come away thinking that people have NO IDEA what they're giving up by using Facebook. I'm not surprised at all to find that to be the case. I guess you should feel fortunate that you can do anything at all about it, though I suspect at this point that putting privacy back into mobile devices is a bit like getting toothpaste back in the tube.
 
MaxBurn

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Then they get surprised when similar things like path etc does the same.

The other thing is these apps are uploading this all in the clear, no security at all.
 
mubs

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I think I'll buy a couple of Nokia Symbian phones while they're still available. Darn good phones, do everything I need. At least I can put off the day when I have to parade naked in front of the world.
 
Mercutio

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Still no mainstream press regarding Address book security in iOS. You're right Maxburn: This is getting pretty ridiculous.
 
MaxBurn

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I think it made slashdot also. Not sure about boingboing. I don't understand why they get a pass on this being something that should clearly be fixed and is apples problem to control when there was clear absurdity with location data response which really wasn't a big deal and the factory labor relations which have nothing to do with apple.

On the other hand yesterday was one month from the release of 5.1b3, which is a long time between releases for betas. They might have stopped release mid stride and be working on it.
 
Howell

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Mubs, If you need help keeping yourself from parading naked in front of the world I'm sure you would find some donors.

ZING!
 
MaxBurn

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Mercutio

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I have a user who swears he isn't getting calendar and contact syncing on his iphone with a free Google apps account, but email is fine. Is that part of the deal for Gapps or do I need to move him to a paid account?
 
MaxBurn

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I do google calendar sync for free, is that what you are referring to? I don't know anything about the google apps thing, don't use them.
 
Mercutio

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I think that you have to have a paid account to sync calendar and contacts on the iphone. That's what I told him, anyway. Whatever. I don't care. Somebody douchey enough to demand calendar and contact syncing for no job-related reason just because they have an ithing can afford to pay the extra $50.
 
MaxBurn

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It works both way for free in my experience. There is the regular way specifically called out in the iPhone setup as gmail or you could ignore that and set it up as exchange which is far superior as you get push which is what I am doing. I have google calendar sync installed on my work computer which gets outlook to gmail calendar, and then the iPhone syncs to that via exchange. New stuff syncs both ways really well.

http://support.google.com/mobile/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=138740


Oh, and there is a gmail app now too. Don't know if that does calendar and contacts though, I don't use it.
 
Howell

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I just set up a regular gmail account and sync'd a contact back to the server. Make sure the user is choosing to set up as an exchange connection and not a google mail connection to get an active sync type connection.
 
Mercutio

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It may work that way for regular gmail but not for Google Apps. Or this guy might be a retard. He's in another state and I really wouldn't care except that he's whined enough that his employer started whining too.
 
Howell

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He needs to choose the exchange type connection as max and I have said. I already had a free Gapps connection set up and syncing. I have now confirmed the a basic gmail account will also work simultaneously.
 
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