iWant: Automatic Sync for iPods, iPhones and iPads

My friend Doug Adams, who runs Doug’s AppleScripts for iTunes sent me an e-mail yesterday asking if there’s any way to have an iPod sync with iTunes automatically. He has one old device connected to a dock that he uses as a clock radio. It made me realize just how useful auto-syncing would be.

Not everyone needs this. Doug wants his podcasts to update, and it’s true that unless you listen to podcasts, or download content frequently (such as, for example, an iTunes season pass to the Daily Show), you won’t need daily syncing. But for some of us, it would save a step. Instead of having to go to iTunes to sync a device, there should be a setting whereby you choose periodic auto-syncing. You should be able to choose days and times; for example, you might want to sync every day at, say, 7 am, before you head off to work, but on the weekends, you might not want to sync at all, or, perhaps, later in the day.

This would be easy to implement: it would happen on the iTunes side, not on the iOS device. iTunes would simply have a daemon that checks for the next scheduled sync and runs it when that time comes, if the computer is on (or the next time the computer is on). If the iOS device is not found, then it stops and waits for the next time.

Note: Doug is looking into whether he can script this. So I hope to be able to update this article soon with a solution to this problem. This wouldn’t work directly with iTunes, but would probably use an AppleScript to set up and activate.

Update: here’s Doug’s solution.

Help Me Choose an iPhone Case/Protector

I just got my first iPhone. Yes, I know I’m late to the party, but I didn’t need one, and it was too expensive. I was living in a village in the mountains, and as I work at home, I rarely had use for a cell phone. But I’ve moved to a larger town, and changed my personal situation, as it were, and it would be practical for me to have a good phone. Also, since the French ISP Free introduced an unlimited iPhone plan for €20 (only €16 for Internet customers, which I am), I decided to go for it.

While I’m not worried about scratching the screen, I am worried about dropping the phone, and I think I need either a simple case or silicon protector. I’ll be checking some local stores to see what they have, but in the meantime, I’d welcome any recommendations. Given where I live – a smallish city in the French Alps – there aren’t a lot of options. There are phone stores that have some cases, but the selection is very limited.

And, if you’re a vendor who makes iPhone cases, feel free to contact me (there’s an e-mail link in the sidebar to the right). I’d be happy to mention any cases I receive that I like.

Follow-up: So I ended up getting a Speck Candyshell, which I got cheap on Amazon.fr (€8). It is exactly what I wanted. It fits well, isn’t bulky, and looks like it offers excellent protection. I would have bought the Otterbox Commuter, but it is quite expensive here in France, and the company’s shipping prices from the US are outrageous.

SafariDAVClient Sucks Up RAM and Does Nothing Useful

It’s enough that Safari itself sometimes uses a huge amount of RAM, along with the WebProcess process, but another Safari-related process, SafariDAVClient is an even bigger memory hog. Currently, on my Mac mini which has 8 GB RAM, it is using 1.36 GB real memory. (Screenshot taken from a display provided by iStat Menus.) I have seen this process go well over 2 GB, yet it does nothing useful.

It is supposed to be used to sync bookmarks via iCloud, but in my case, the syncing doesn’t occur. I’ve tried turning off and on bookmark syncing to no avail, and have gotten to the point where I transfer my Safari bookmarks file from my Mac mini to my MacBook Air from time to time. It’s even worse with my iOS devices, as bookmarks simply won’t sync to them at all.

I guess I should simply turn off bookmark syncing, as it seems to be a total failure. Unless any of my readers have a trick to get it to work…

Hear Me Discuss iTunes on the MacVoices Podcast

To correspond with the release of my Take Control of iTunes 10: The FAQ, Second Edition, I sat down (virtually) with Chuck Joiner and talked about iTunes and music on the MacVoices podcast. It’s just under an hour, and you can listen here.

Update: Bad Tracks from iTunes Match: Who Do You Complain To?

A number of people have found that iTunes Match sometimes matches incorrect tracks; not that the songs are wrong, but that the versions might be wrong. This seems to happen especially with music that has been remastered. iTunes may match either an original or remastered track, and the user who matched the track may have tho one that iTunes doesn’t have. This can be a problem, if, say, you prefer an original album over a remastered version, or vice versa.

But I today I found, for the first time, a bad track coming from iTunes Match, one with an audible problem. It’s one of an excellent set of Bill Evans recordings, The Last Waltz, from the summer of 1980, just before his death, made at the Keystone Korner; the song is Your Story, While iTunes matched these tracks, I was listening to some of this music today, and found a bad track. There’s a gap of about a half-second at one point in the track. Looking at it with Rogue Amoeba’s Fission, you can clearly see the missing chunk of music:

If this happens, you’re basically screwed. Who can you complain to? Contact the iTunes Store? I doubt anything will happen. The only way to have a good copy of the track is to take your original and make sure it stays in your library; if you ever have to download it again, you’ll get the track with the gap. It’s worth noting that this track is not available on the iTunes Store. This makes me wonder exactly how they match such tracks; do they match them to tracks that other people have uploaded?

I don’t expect this will happen a lot, but the fact that it happens at all shows the weakness of this system. iTunes Match clearly needs an option for tracks that you don’t want matched, ones that you want uploaded, because the matched version may not be the same as yours.

Has anyone else found matched tracks that have similar problems?

(As an aside: if you like Bill Evans, there are two box sets of this run at the Keystone Korner, in San Francisco, between August 31 and September 8, 1980. The Last Waltz is music from the first sets, and Consecration has tracks from the second sets. Just a week before his death, Evans was playing some of his finest performances. These two box sets, together with Turn Out the Stars, recorded at the Village Vanguard in June, 1980, comprise 22 discs of astounding piano music.)

Update: my son came across a bad track today. It’s a match of Philip Glass’s Witchita Vortex Sutra, from the Minimal Piano Collection box set. There are clicks throughout the track, with one big dropout at 4:25:

Just Updated: Take Control of iTunes 10: The FAQ, Second Edition

My ebook, Take Control of iTunes 10: The FAQ was a best-selling compendium of tips, tricks and explanations about how to use iTunes to wrangle your digital media collection. More than a year has gone by since its release, and, even though Apple didn’t up the version number by an integer, iTunes has undergone enough changes to warrant a thorough update to this book.

Take Control Books has just released Take Control of iTunes 10: The FAQ, Second Edition. To quote a TidBITS article presenting the book:

Since iTunes 10 originally came out, Apple has revamped its approach to online media, bringing us such new features as iCloud and iTunes Match. This book answers the many questions that users have about these features, including a new chapter dedicated to the Cloud.

At 173 pages for the PDF edition (page counts aren’t relevant to ePub and Kindle versions), there are more than 30 pages of new content in this second edition. Priced at $15 (with special upgrade prices for owners of the first edition), this book helps you appreciate and understand the process of bringing media into iTunes, tagging it, adding album artwork, and organizing it into playlists.

Once you’ve become an import specialist and tagging genius, you can enjoy your music, movies, audiobooks, and ebooks, and more without hassles when it’s time to find a particular item or when you want to do something special like sync a select subset of music to your iPod, create a party playlist, identify music you haven’t heard in a while, listen to the chapters in an audiobook in the proper order, or get the most out of iTunes in the Cloud features, including iTunes Match.

So, if you want to be an iTunes power user, get a copy now – in PDF, ePub or Kindle format, or any combination of the above – from Take Control Books.

The iTunes Guy – That’s Me

Over at Macworld, we’ve just introduced Ask the iTunes Guy. This occasional column will take readers’ questions and explain how to do what you want with iTunes. I’m the iTunes Guy, and I’ll be answering questions over the coming months. So far, response has been well above what we expected, and we have dozens of great questions, so look for a first column with your questions and my answers soon.

DVD Notes: Downton Abbey

I’ve never been especially interested in “period dramas,” but I heard about Downton Abbey, and thought I’d check it out. The first two seasons have already been broadcast in the UK, and are available on DVD. In the US, the second season is starting today on PBS.

This is a series about a quintessential British country manor. The house looks huge, even though you only see a handful of rooms in the show. There is an aristocratic family, headed by the Earl of Grantham, a surprisingly liberal aristocrat. He has an American wife, and three daughters. Downstairs are the servants, an interesting crew of footman, maids and cooks. Much of the story involves the relations between the two groups, as well as the romantic doings of the sisters.

Yes, this is an upscale soap opera, not my usual type of TV. But from the very first episode, I was drawn into the wonderful writing (coming close to Aaron Sorkin’s work) and the excellent acting of the entire cast. I didn’t know many of the actors, but one who stands out is the venerable Maggie Smith who gets a large number of bon mots, as the Dowager Countess and the Earl’s mother. There is quite a large cast for a series, allowing for a number of story lines to take place concurrently, yet you never get a feeling that there’s too much going on.

The series manages to be extremely interesting throughout, without slipping into overt soap opera situations, and factors in the events of the time. Beginning in 1912, the day after the sinking of the Titanic, it goes on through World War I, which has a major role in the series.

It’s important to not watch the US versions of the first season. The seven one-hour episodes were, for some reason, cut down to four 90-minute episodes for the US. You can see a number of different versions here on Amazon.com, with both the US versions and UK versions available. Or you can get them for much less from Amazon UK.

It’s worth noting that after the end of season 2 there is a 90-minute episode called Christmas at Downton Abbey. The title suggests that it’s just some kind of Christmas story, but it’s actually the season finale, and you simply must see it after watching all of season 2.

I was surprised to be so attracted to this series, but the quality of the writing and acting is well above average. Even if you don’t usually care for this sort of thing, I’d recommend checking it out. You may, like me, become an immediate convert.