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A nasty little iTunes/iOS bug may be causing media sync issues

November 18th update: My sync issues returned, but due to a different cause this time. Details in this post.

After complaining to Tim Cook, and separately starting a (now closed) support ticket, it appears that my iOS/iTunes sync nightmare has finally come to an end!

I have not seen a progress bar that busy since the day I brought my iPhone 6 back home. Whatever I tried, iTunes simply would not sync everything in my library. In the end, the problem turned out to be as simple—but as deadly—as this:

In the current version of iTunes/iOS, there's a bug that only appears when you have duplicates of purchased songs. When encountered, a duplicate of a purchased song will (almost always) cause iTunes to silently stop syncing.

This is a known-to-Apple issue, and it will be fixed in a forthcoming update. I'm fairly certain it's an iTunes bug, but as Apple didn't clearly state which it was, I'm calling it iTunes/iOS. Either way, until it's fixed, it's a really bad bug.

Here's what happens: If you have duplicates of purchased songs, iTunes simply silently stops syncing when it hits one of those duplicates. From your perspective, it will look like everything is working—iTunes never throws an error, and it proceeds through all six (or seven or whatever) steps of the sync process, as seen in the status window of iTunes.

But behind the scenes, nothing is happening—at least, nothing relative to syncing your files. As seen by my troubles, this can be incredibly frustrating and hard to fix.

Continue reading to see how I was able to finally (with Apple's help) get my devices syncing again—the tricky part is finding all the duplicates, because they're not all obvious. Also note that if you are not having sync issues, I wouldn't worry about duplicates—no need to endanger what's already working well!

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I asked Tim Cook for tech support…and you should, too!

Those following me on Twitter this weekend will have noticed that my (lovely, stunning, amazing, I am keeping it) iPhone 6 is not playing nicely with iTunes. I've invested over 10 hours—in one day—just trying to get music and movies onto my iPhone.

Frustrated as hell, I decided ask Tim Cook for some tech help, not that I have much hope of any sort of reply. Emails to his address, however, are apparently all read by someone. For those having similar issues, I think it may be useful to also send your feedback in Tim's direction; his email address (not a secret, published in many places) is tcook at Apple's domain. Perhaps if there are enough voices providing feedback in high places (not that Tim reads these himself), we might see some action.

Further update: I have now done two full system restores. I did the second just before bed last night, and let the iPhone sync overnight. On wake, everything worked! So then I added in a few more movies, and—of course—they failed to sync. So now I'm back where I started, oh so many hours ago.

Anyway, For the curious, here's the tech support request I sent to Tim yesterday.

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Get more printer from your printer

This morning, Macworld posted The trick to finding the right printer driver for your Mac, by Ted Landau. I starting reading it, mainly because I find most anything Ted writes to be worth reading. But I didn't think I had a printing problem.

After reading the article, though, I took a look at the print drivers for my laser and inkjet printers (both HP models). I found that, sure enough, both were set to use AirPrint instead of the HP drivers. Using the article's how-to, I switched them to the HP drivers.

So what does that get me? Much greater control over both printers, as seen in these before-and-after shots of the print options available in the Print dialog.

While I don't need access to these options very often, it is quite useful to have them directly accessible from the Print dialog. So if you've got an AirPrint-capable printer, but are printing to it from a Mac, give Ted's article a read and then check out how your Mac is set to print to that printer (or printers).



Check the status of the online Apple Store

We're only hours away from today's Apple event. So millions of people are now preparing themselves, practicing their Command-R keystrokes, so they can reload the online Apple Store page as quickly as possible.

Me? I'm letting my computer do the work. I wrote a shell script (which uses the handy terminal-notifier Ruby gem) and cron to keep an eye on the store, and notify me when it's back online.

Caution: I am not a programmer by trade. I know just enough about shell scripts to be dangerous. Typically this is only to myself, but as I'm publishing this one, it's potentially dangerous (or at least inefficient) to others. Proceed at your own risk.

My script checks the store about every three seconds, and does absolutely nothing if the store is still down. If it's up, it uses the aforementioned terminal-notifier app to send an OS X notification:


I click the notification, and bingo, I'm in the store.
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Search the iTunes Store from anywhere

This morning, I wanted to send someone an iTunes App Store search URL, so that when they clicked it, they'd see the list of matching apps in the iTunes App Store. There's no apparent easy way to do this within iTunes, but after much futzing about, I figured out how to structure a URL that will open to to the search results screen in the iTunes App Store.

Because Apple has separated iPhone apps and iPod apps in the store, there are actually two separate URLs, one for each type of app. The iPad version of the URL is:

itms://search.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSearch.woa/wa/advancedSearch?entity=iPadSoftware&free=0&genreIndex=1&media=software&restrict=false&softwareTerm=TERMS+TO+SEARCH+FOR&submit=seeAllLockups

And for the iPhone, it's identical except for the entity bit:

itms://search.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSearch.woa/wa/advancedSearch?entity=software&free=0&genreIndex=1&media=software&restrict=false&softwareTerm=TERMS+TO+SEARCH+FOR&submit=seeAllLockups

Hopefully obviously, replace TERMS+TO+SEARCH+FOR with the keywords you want to use for the search, separating words with the plus sign. You can then use the URL for whatever you like: send it to someone, add it to your bookmarks bar, whatever. When clicked, the search will run and the results will open directly in the iTunes App Store for either iPad or iPhone apps.

For example, iPad Apps related to the word foobar, or iPhone apps about hopping frogs.

You can further customize the URL to find anything you want—not just apps, and using additional criteria—within any of the various areas of the App Store. Read on for the details on how to do that.

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The strangest business meeting of my career

Back in mid-1993, I was working as a Financial Analyst for Apple in Cupertino; I'd been there for a few years, and had recently taken on a new role with a group called Software Dispatch. Software Dispatch was a new business, launched in those halcyon pre-Internet days, to distribute software on CD-ROM. And not just Apple software, but software from many different developers—there were over 80 signed up for the inaugural CD-ROM. (The official press release is an interesting read.)

On the CD-ROM, users would find encrypted versions of each app, along with a demo version they could use to try before they bought (see, Apple, you can sell software with trial versions!). If the user liked what they saw, they'd call a 1-800 number, pay with a credit card, and be given a decryption key to unlock their software.

But what made the business really unique for Apple in 1993 was that Software Dispatch was planned for Windows machines, too. I still remember how odd it was to see Windows machines on developers' desks when I walked through our area—there just weren't many visible Windows machines on the Apple campus at that time. While Apple had little trouble signing up Mac software vendors for the CD-ROM venture, it was different on the Windows side. And that's what led to the strangest business meeting of my career…

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Apple’s Q2 2014: A graphical look

I've been tracking and updating Apple's financial results for many years, and have a number of charts that I update each quarter. I don't do much with them, other than stare at some of the numbers in amazement, but they do show some very interesting trends.

If you like numbers (really big numbers) and trends and graphs, perhaps you'll find these of interest, too. There are 10 charts in all; click on the first one at right to start the pop-up slideshow. (You can expand images within the slideshow by clicking the icon at the top right of the window. Note that some of these are really wide!)

Here's what you'll see, in order: Sales Mix for the "Big Four" products; overall revenue and profits by same quarter by year; iPad, iPhone, iPod and Mac units sold by same quarter by year; and those same four categories by year.

I'll post updated versions each quarter, and like this time, without any financial analysis: lots of people get paid money to discuss and guess on that subject; I just enjoy looking at the numbers.



On the effect of stock splits

As a finance guy by training, I've always been fascinated by stock splits, such as the incredibly-rare seven for one split Apple announced yesterday. First off, just how rare is a seven-for-one split? Incredibly rare; since 1980, there have been only three splits bigger than that; all were ten-for-one splits.

By the books in Finance, a stock split adds no value to a person's shares, because it's simply a redivision of their current holdings. Consider someone holding 100 shares of Apple at yesterday's closing price of $524.75 per share:

  • Pre split: 100 shares * $524.75/share = $52,475.00 value
  • Post split: 700 shares * $74.9643/share = $52,475.00 value

The Finance books look at that, and say "no change in value, ergo, a stock split has no intrinsic worth." And they're right; there's been no change in value for any investor's holdings. But studies done over the years have shown that stock splits do have a positive impact on investor's holdings:

A 1996 study by David Ikenberry of Rice University measured the short and long-term performance of stock splits. His research included all the 1,275 companies whose stock split 2-for-1 between 1975 and 1990. Mr. Ikenberry compared the split stocks to a control group of stocks for similar-sized companies in similar sectors that had not split. His results were startling. The split stock group performed 8% better than the control group after one year, and 16% better after three years.

Why might that be? I'm sure the studies have detailed financial models to back up their findings, but to me, it boils down to two things…

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The Apple tax Apple laws Apple are Apple the Apple problem

Sorry for the bizarre headline, but I wanted to make sure I got the proper clickbait, er, SEO, er clickwhoring, er, credit for the following insightful observation. Which is this:

This anti-Apple tax article is full of the stupid

The author, one Lisa Sanders, states that she's now boycotting Apple due to their tax avoidance strategy:

Apple, it’s over. I’m breaking up with you. Because of your tax-ducking ways, I won’t buy another phone or computer or tablet or even song from you.

I hope Lisa is just as willing to give up products from Microsoft—I guess she's going to Linux?—which sheltered over $60 billion dollars in 2012, more than Apple's $54 billion that year. And she better not buy that Linux box from Dell, which sheltered $16 billion in 2012. And she better not use MySQL on that machine, because Oracle sheltered $21 billion. Also, no Western Digital hard drives ($5 billion). Oh, and those shoes? Better lose the Nikes, as they sheltered $6 billion. Credit cards? Citigroup ($36 billion), Bank of America ($19 billion), and JPMorgan Chase ($22 billion) are out; I guess Lisa is going cash-only.

All of the above data was found within 30 seconds of starting to search the web; the source for the numbers is Which Fortune 500 Companies Are Sheltering Income in Overseas Tax Havens? by the Citizens for Tax Justice.

Yes, Apple shelters taxes. Yes, it's very good at it. Yes, it sucks that they aren't paying their fair share. But the reality is that nobody in the Fortune 500 is paying their fair share. Why? Because they owe it to their shareholders not to do so. Lisa almost got that with her mention of Rand Paul:

At last year’s Senate hearings, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky said that it would be malpractice for Apple to pay a penny more than the minimum its accountants say it owes.

That's exactly it, but not just for Apple, but for any publicly-held company. Just when I'm thinking she's going to get it, she…goes 100% the wrong direction:

Perhaps Paul feels that the company’s fiduciary obligation outweighs its obligation to help support the nation that made and continues to make its profitable activity possible.

That's how he feels because he's correct: The company's fiduciary obligation comes first, at least when compared to "voluntarily paying more tax than required." Companies like Apple already benefit the country to a tremendous degree. How? By employing people and paying them good wages. Those wages are taxed. The things people buy with those wages are taxed. Add up all those impacts, and Apple (and the others) are definitely helping the economy.

Any public Fortune 500 company is tasked with returning maximum value to its shareholders; that's why the list of abusers is so long and deep. Any company not taking advantage of legal tax reduction strategies isn't maximizing wealth for shareholders.

The problem isn't the companies, it's the tax law.

If we want to fix the problem, we need to fix the law that's allowing the behaviors. Period. Boycotting Apple because they're very good at taking advantage of legal loopholes isn't going to make them pay more in taxes. Change the law, though, and Apple (and everyone else) will do so, because none of these companies are willing to break the law to lower their tax bills.



Do Dropbox droppers do due diligence?

Apparently Dropping Drobpox is a thing now, because Condoleeza Rice has been named to the board of directors. I'm aware of at least two prominent people (Chris Breen and Mark Frauenfelder) who have publicly discussed their Dropbox departures, and I assume there are many more.

First, I admire these folks' convictions and follow-through on those convictions. For me, Dropbox is too ingrained in what I do to make such a switch. Additionally, I don't believe someone sitting on the Board of Directors of a company is reason enough to change my practices relative to that company's products.

However, for those who feel strongly about Ms. Rice, I assume they'd want to avoid any companies that have directors with similar backgrounds, right? In order to make such decisions, they need to do due diligence on any company whose products they might like to use.

To ease that task, I put together a brief list, based strictly on companies having board members involved in the military-industrial complex, and who may have been active in the same timeframe as Condoleeza Rice.

The first entry in the list may be somewhat surprising…

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