Filed under: Features, iTunes, Ask TUAW, MacBook Air, Snow Leopard
Ask TUAW: Syncing notes, iLife '09, iTunes downloads, keychains and more
Welcome back to Ask TUAW, our weekly Mac troubleshooting Q&A column. This week we've got questions about syncing notes, iLife '09, iTunes downloads, the importance of keychains and more.As always, your suggestions and questions are welcome. Questions for next week should be left in the comments. When asking a question please include which machine you're running and which version of Mac OS X (we'll assume you're running Leopard on an Intel Mac if you don't specify). And now, on to the questions.
Scott asks
When I sync my iphone (3.0.1) with my Mac (10.5.8) and have "sync notes" checked in iTunes, I cannot find my notes synced anywhere in Mail.app - including under "Notes"...what am I missing?
To sync 'Notes' first make sure you have your iPhone connected to your Mac with iTunes open. Then, be sure to have "sync notes" checked in iTunes. Also, be sure to check "Sync Notes" in the MobleMe Sync options in System Preferences.
Then, sync your iPhone as normal. After that, check in Apple's Mail program under "Reminders" to see if the notes appear. You need to click on the little triangle to show the contents of Reminders. If they don't appear, close Mail and open it again. Also, restart your iPhone completely before trying another sync.
Also, keep in mind Notes sync works only via USB and not over the air. If you are not seeing notes appear, be sure you sync your iPhone via USB with your Mac or they won't appear at all. If the notes still don't appear in Apple Mail, it might be time to give a call to Apple tech support because at that point the problem may be something larger than the scope of what this column can answer.
Evan asks
I bought a new MacBook Pro last month, which came installed with Leopard and iLife '09. My purchase was within Apple's "Up-to-Date" program timeline, so I was able to order a copy of Snow Leopard for $9.95. I know Snow Leopard doesn't come with iLife '09 but considering my new computer already comes with iLife '09, I'm not going to have to re-buy iLife, am I?
The good news is that you already have iLife '09 so you won't have to buy it again. Installing Snow Leopard will in no way do anything to your existing install of iLife. The Snow Leopard box set is for people who want to upgrade to Snow Leopard and who have also not previously upgraded to iLife '09.
mok asks
How can I stop iTunes from downloading SD material when I've bought HD content? I am able to suspend the SD version downloading, however there is NO option anywhere for me to get rid of it. If I delete it from the download queue, it goes away, until I start downloading something else from the iTunes store. Then it comes back, and starts downloading again. There seems to be no way to stop it.
Unfortunately, this is a feature of ITunes and not a bug so there's no way of stopping it. When you purchase HD content in ITunes you are entitled to get the SD version as well so it will download even if you don't want it. You can pause it but it will resume again later.
The only way to permanently delete it from your download que, at least for the moment, is to contact iTunes tech support and have them remove it from your download que on their end.
Other than contacting Apple, you will have to end up doing what I do: download both versions and then delete the ones I don't want.
eyezberg asks
Hello, I'm about to switch to an MBP and was wondering what those Keychains are and why one would back them up?
The Keychain is a very important file which stores user names, passwords and other information so you don't have to remember them every time you want to do something requiring a user name or password. When moving from one machine to another its a great idea to also move your keychain from one machine to another. That way, you won't have to manually enter and save all your email, website and other user names and passwords again on the new machine.
Fortunately, if you use Apple's Migration Assistant to move from your old Mac to your new one the keychain will be brought along with the migration so you won't have to manually copy it to the new machine. As for backing up the keychain, you would want to do that for the same reason you want to back up anything else on your Mac: for safety and so if something bad happens you have quick access to your data and the ability to restore it so its not lost forever.
Tim asks
I recently upgraded from a black MacBook to a 13" MBP. I had iWork '09 preinstalled. I used Migration Assist. to move my data, and it did basically what you said--it did not overwrite the preinstalled iWork. However, now I have a copy of iWork '08 & a copy of '09 in my apps folder. Can I use something like AppCleaner to remove '08 without borking '09?
You don't need to do anything special to remove iWork '08. Just drag the entire iWork '08 folder to the trash and empty it. Then, enjoy iWork '09.
Romain asks
I'm planning to buy a 5-licenses family pack for Snow Leopard for my iMac and MacBook. My girlfriend has a MacBook Air, the first model. As her concerns are mainly about performance, I'm wondering if you think it will be worth upgrading for her. She will not benefit from OpenCL, so I'm just trying to evaluate if she will gain or lose performance when upgrading?
This is a question that's come up before and my answer remains the same. Snow Leopard will work just fine on the MacBook Air and you will get many of the benefits of it including the 64 bit architecture and resultant speed increase from that. If your girlfriend finds using the Macbook Air a pleasant experience at the moment with Leopard, upgrading to Snow Leopard will in no way mitigate that experience. In fact, it should improve it, at least slightly.
If you're already getting the family pack, you may as well be a good guy and upgrade her MacBook Air for her. She may not notice much difference in overall performance, but it certainly won't hurt to do it. Plus, its the nice thing to do.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Rafe H. said 10:11PM on 8-26-2009
"Installing Snow Leopard will in no way do anything to your existing install of iLife."
Unless we do an Erase and Install. Can we do that with the upgrade Snow Leopard? I sure hope so.
Reply
dagamer43 said 10:20PM on 8-26-2009
Erase and Install is available, just not as visible as previous installs. And don't worry, Snow Leopard does not require Leopard to be installed. There are no "upgrade" discs.
The Mac OS X Boxset with Snow Leopard exists to get Tiger users to use the latest software, because I doubt that iLife '06 which came with Tiger Macs was tested against Snow Leopard.
axel.golden said 11:58PM on 8-26-2009
i thoguht you needed to have leopard installed to install snow leopard.
Heimbachae said 7:35AM on 8-27-2009
SL is going to be my first upgrade for my good old white bodied macbook (mid 08). Will doing an erase and install from scratch be an option when I chuck the disc in?? If so, I think I should start moving all music/docs/pics to an external asap???
Andre said 10:19PM on 8-26-2009
The note synching is buggy. I also had the same problem. After a few times it started working, but with two notes, only one was synching. Eventually it just started working.
Reply
Adam Payne said 10:20PM on 8-26-2009
Question for next week:
I just bought my wife a digital photo frame that reads from a USB drive or memory card. Rather than spend time choosing photos for it to display, we'd like random pictures from our iPhoto library.
What I would like is something similar to the "Autofill" that iTunes uses for iPod Shuffles: a random selection of pictures from iPhoto that would be copied to the USB drive.
Obviously this isn't a feature of iPhoto, but is there a 3rd party app or Applescript that will do something similar?
Thanks
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Bryan said 10:50PM on 8-26-2009
Regarding the notes sync, we ran into the same situation when syncing my wife's iPhone the first time after upgrading it to 3.0, the notes weren't syncing either. Try this workaround - create a note within mail.app on the mac first. Once you have that first note created, sync again and you may find the iPhone notes sync across to mail.app.
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Jason Martin said 11:11PM on 8-26-2009
My problem with notes syncing is that if I modify a note on my iPhone, it asks me if I want to sync notes EVERY time. If I don't notice the dialogue box and click it, it holds up the whole syncing progress. I can't figure out a way to tell it to sync every time, thereby not requiring me to tell it to sync each time. The "Sync Notes" box is checked in iTunes. What else do I need to do?
Reply
Bryan said 2:13PM on 8-27-2009
Mr. Martin, I used to have the same aggravating problem. TUAW to the rescue:
http://www.tuaw.com/2009/06/22/notes-in-iphone-os-3-0-getting-rid-of-that-syncing-feeling/
Hope that helps!
smshap said 11:19PM on 8-26-2009
How can I prevent duplicate entries in iCal and in Calendar on my iPod Touch? It seems every time I enter a date on iCal , I get two entries on the iPod Touch. I 'm syncing via Mobile Me as well as with iTunes.
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John.B said 1:03AM on 8-27-2009
I was under the impression you should either sync your iPhone/Touch with MobileMe *or* iTunes, but not both.
Dave said 11:18PM on 8-26-2009
As far as passwords and Keychain goes, I've always been wary, no matter how secure, of password apps (even by Apple), or that I might accidentally forget to back them up. I created a way to keep your passwords in Address Book. Here's how it works:
1. Create four or five words you like and two strings of numbers (that are unique).
For example, words could be as follows:
- Apple
- Elephant
- London
- Sudoku
- Zaphod
And two favorite numbers could be as follows (notice there are no overlapping numbers):
- 271
- 9438
2. Mix and match to create passwords as needed, always separating the words by a semi-colon (;) as follows:
- London;Apple271
- Sudoku;Zaphod9438
- (If you need a short password) Elephant271
3. In Address Book or wherever you keep your contacts, create a new contact for the website or contact and write only the first letter or number of each segment of the password followed by a dash. For example:
Website: Gmail.com
Login: EdwardSmith@gmail.com
PW: L—A—2
The password above would be London;Apple271. It's almost impossible for anyone else to figure out, particularly since there's a semi-colon in the middle, but incredibly easy for you to remember at a glance in a non-secured app like Address Book.
Finishing up with the other two examples above:
Sudoku;Zaphod9438 would become S—Z—9
and Elephant 271 would be E—2
Don't use more than five words and two sets of numbers or you might forget what they were. The idea here is to keep the words and numbers memorized so you only have to look up the order they are strung together in each separate password.
- Ender
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Rafe H. said 11:29PM on 8-26-2009
This is good. I like to "jumble" my one password in the following way. Let's say my password in Apple, which I've typed about 1 million times and can do it from motor memory.
To jumble it up I just shift my fingers on the keyboard one key up or down or left or right, or whatever, maybe two keys even. Here's one key to right:
S[[;r
Here's one to the right and one up:
W--p4
Get's better with longer words, of course. And motor memory is required, of course.
ppeacok said 1:18AM on 8-28-2009
Thank you for a most excellent contribution. I've been working on the implementation of a similar scheme myself. I would like to use a utility like 1Password, but then when one travels there is the issue of having secure access to it's database.
Again, thanks for the ideas.
PierreB said 11:55PM on 8-26-2009
An advantage of updating the MacBook Air to Snow Leopard is that it will free up some space on the typically small hard drive of the computer (up to 7 GB).
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phantomhelix said 1:12AM on 8-27-2009
The reason iTunes downloads the SD versions is so you can put it on your iPod or iPhone, because they can't play the HD versions
with DRM protected movies and TV shows from iTunes you can NOT click on the HD version and "Create an SD version"
So if you delete the SD version or have apple remove it from your que you will have to re-buy the SD version in order to put it on your ipod or iPhone.
What i do is allow the SD versions to download and then i select them apart from the HD versions and use iTunes backup feature to store them on discs instead of leaving them in my regular library.
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Ted said 3:58AM on 8-27-2009
Question about Apple's Up-to-Date program: I just ordered the 10.6 update for my older mini; my sister just bought a new MacBook Pro without 10.6. Can I (of course I can, but should I?) use my copy of 10.6 to upgrade her MacBook so she doesn't have to order the upgrade kit? The terms of the program says she's entitled to the upgrade.
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mentalsticks said 4:07AM on 8-27-2009
I'd say that's fine - morally speaking, at least. don't ask me about the law. The $9.95 or whatever that Apple charges is supposed to be for shipping and handling only - SnoLeop itself is supposed to be free. What better way to help the environment by saving packaging materials and fuel and making life easier on those poor Cupertinans than to DIY?
macman said 8:25AM on 8-27-2009
The 10.6 Upgrade is a different license than the 10.6 Up-to-Date.
If you bought the Upgrade. She would have to buy the Up-to-Date
Unless you bought the Upgrade Family Pack, and she lives in the same household (which is the license restriction on the family pack)
If you bought multiple new computers, you can buy one Up-To-Date and request the Right To Copy for the other computer.
The Up-to-Date form: http://www.apple.com/macosx/uptodate/
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jw.smith26 said 9:55AM on 8-27-2009
I need some help with calendar syncing across Google Calendar, iCal and my iPhone. I have three calendars set up on Google, all of which sync to my iCal without any problems, different coloured tabs and all intact. When it comes to syncing with my iPhone though, only my original 'native' calendar ends up on the handset. All three calendars are set to sync, but only the one goes over. Is this a common problem? Is there a way to get all three calendars syncing properly?
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