Shortly before I received the latest extension notice I had cut the cord completely with MobilMe and stopped using  iDisk, the last MobileMe feature I was still using.

As I previously mentioned, I’d been trying out SugarSync as a potential iDisk replacement. The short version of the results is I won’t be keeping SugarSync past the trial either. It worked fine, with only a few minor quirks, but it just never worked itself into my daily workflow.

With Leopard Apple introduced the Sparse Bundle Disk Image format. The main reason was to allow Time Machine to efficiently back up these disk images by only backing up the changed data. I tried syncing a Sparse Bundle between two Macs using SugarSync but it didn’t work. The destination Mac just received a bunch of 8MB files.

I’ve moved on from SugarSync to Microsoft Live Mesh. Yea, makes no sense. They teased a Mac client a couple of weeks ago but it’s still Windows and Web only. Since it’s Windows only it’s obviously not a replacement for iDisk but it is intriguing and I like what I see so far. Of course, I’ve been using it for less than 48 hours. It’s still in the “Tech Preview” stage so there’s plenty of “coming soon” messages and some strange behavior in spots.

If all else fails, I can always fall back to ChronoSync to copy files from mac to mac.

I use iDisk to share files between my Macs and provide an adhoc backup. I have iDisk set to sync to the local hard drive. My disk usage is currently 1.7GB. SugarSync seems like a good replacement and works the same way I use iDisk but has added features. I just signed up for the 45 day trial. A 10GB plan which would handle my past iDisk usage is $2.50/mth ($25/yr). There are higher priced plans of course.

I use Yojimbo as an information manager and use .Mac to sync the data between my PCs. Even before the MobileMe fiasco I was looking at Evernote as a replacement for Yojimbo. For me, it’s proving to be a good replacement for Yojimbo with the added benefit of multi-platform support and web access. There’s a free version but I just went ahead and upgraded to the premium plan so with or without MobileMe Yojimbo was heading for retirement.

The lack of keychain syncing will also be a loss to me because I use 1Password to manage passwords and it uses keychain syncing to keep things in sync across my Macs. While I could copy the 1Password keychain file between Macs (or place it in a shared location) this wouldn’t be ideal since both Macs may have 1Password open at the sme time. So I figure I’ll lose 1Password sync.

I have a couple other apps that use .Mac to sync - TextExpander and Transmit. TextExpander is a typing shortcut utility and the lack of syncing will be a minor annoyance but not so much I’d look for an alternative. Transmit is FTP client and the syncing is used to sync favorites, not something I’ll miss.

I like the Safari bookmarks syncing and Safari was my Mac browser of choice until Firefox 3 came out. Now Firefox 3 is my default browser so the lack of Safari bookmark syncing isn’t a problem.

Calendar sync is nice but I mostly use the calendar on my iMac anyway. Same with the address book. I do like syncing preferences although there have been times that’s been a problem. I’ll just have to get used to having to configure apps on each mac again.

I don’t use Mail, .Mac Websites or the .Mac galleries so there’s no need for me to find replacements for those.

While I still have time (27 days) to change my mind, today I abandon MobileMe and spend my time getting it’s replacements going rather than continuing to fight with the service.

This morning my iMac received it’s update for MobileMe. During the upgrade my local iDisk as deleted (luckily a copy was made). Since the upgrade I’ve been unable to login to MobileMe through the preferences pane. It returns an “Unknown validation error”. Others in the forum report the same problem. While I do have the iDisk files that were in the backup, iDisk itself is unavailable. If I didn’t sync iDisk locally the files would be unavailable.

For most of the day I was also unable to login to the me.com website. Most of the time I’d simply get redirected to a info page that didn’t even provide a login link. Finally tonight I was able to logon through the website (so at least I know the ID/password are valid). But even though I could logon performance was spotty and eventually I got kicked out.

My iMac hasn’t been presented the update for MobileMe although it did get the iTunes update. I’m not sure if this is because Apple is holding back or some other problem. Others have reported the same thing and some have said Apple pulled the update but that could be the same speculation I was making.

For a paid service doing a planned upgrade I would think Apple could do better than cause a day long outage for existing customers. Just when I was thinking I could trust the service Apple sends a dose of reality. I realize this was probably a complicated upgrade but that’s no reason to lower expectations.

[Update July 11th: I'm able to logon through the pref pane this morning. All my sync settings are gone and I'll have to reset them. I also can't access my iDisk. I can see my iDisk through the web but can't download any files.]

[Update #2 July 11th: I'm now able to access and copy files from iDisk using my Mac.]

[Update July 12th:My iMac had MobileMe 1.1 waiting for me this morning. I still haven't installed it. Syncing still hasn't worked for me on the iMac but maybe this will fix it. My Macbook hasn't gotten the iMac update and when .Mac syncing kicked off today there were lots of errors.]

[Update #2 July 12th:Still more problems on my iMac which still hasn't gotten MobileMe 1.1 and fails to sync. My MacBook with MobileMe 1.1 seems better. In any case, I've decided to abandon MobileMe so this will be my last update.]

MobileMe also requires OS X 10.4.11 or better (Apple recommends Leopard of course). The included storage doubles from 10 to 20GB. Of course, the big change is support for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Apple has also announced:

7/9/2008, 6pm-12am PT

As part of the MobileMe launch, www.mac.com will be taken offline at 6pm PT on Wednesday, July 9th.

Members will be unable to access www.mac.com or any .Mac services during this time with the exception of .Mac Mail accessed via a desktop application, iPhone, or iPod touch.

MobileMe will be available as soon as possible during this maintenance window.

So it looks like the changes for existing users will happen tomorrow with MobileMe being available to new users on the 11th.

MobileMe is available from Apple for $99 a year which is the same price that .Mac was sold for. There’s a $30 discount if bought with a new Mac. MobileMe is available from Amazon for $90, which is only $9 off the list price. Last time I checked .Mac had been $30 off list from Amazon. Amazon also has the family pack for $135, which is $14 off the list price.

I’m interested to see how MobileMe evolves over time, .mac never really took off. I’ve been a .Mac user but the main selling point for me was the ability to sync multiple Macs, not the apps. I used iDisk a bit but never really used the other features. Is Apple moving to “the cloud” with MobileMe or is it still just for people who have multiple Apple hardware devices?

The update naturally requires a reboot. This was a double-reboot which is common enough now that my heart no longer stops. Each reboot took much longer than normal and the desktop took much longer to completely appear after the first logon. Subsequent reboots were back to normal.

On two of my Macs there was also a RAW Camera update for Aperture. I decided to apply this update first (no reboot required). After applying this update Software Update refreshed and the OS X 10.5.3 update jumped from a 198MB download to a 420MB download. So if you’re concerned about the download size be sure to apply 10.5.3 first or both at the same time.

After applying the update on my iMac the button configuration for my Mighty Mouse was reset to the defaults so I had to go into preferences and reset them. I’ve had to do this after other updates.

Another problem that’s occurred with previous updates is that the first .Mac sync after the update causes several iCal conflicts. The appointments are fine and the problem hasn’t returned or occurred with my other Mac. The appointments affected are recurring appointments that go back several years.

That’s the extent of my problems so far, but the update is fresh and I haven’t done a lot or run a lot of apps yet. So far I’ve just run iTunes and Parallels, but no problems so far. Only time will tell.

This MacBook and MacBook Pro firmware update addresses an issue where the first key press may be ignored if the computer has been sitting idle. It also addresses some other issues.

Once the update is download you’ll see the following dialog box:

Clicking update kicks off the update which took less than a minute on my MacBook.

I also received the Pro Applications 2007-01 and Pro Applications 2007-02 updates again. I suspect this was due to my install of the Aperture 2 trial software on my MacBook. My iMac did not receive the updates and does not have Aperture 2.

None of these updates required a reboot.

The problems I was having were minor but annoying. I had to turn of .Mac syncing of the Dock because the two updated Dock items, Documents and Downloads, always displayed conflict errors. The second problem may not be related to the upgrade since it didn’t occur at first. I could no longer logon to my Windows Home Server shares through the keychain. I had to delete the item from the keychain then I could logon. Even saving a successful logon to the keychain would fail the next time.

I updated my SuperDuper backup and booted off that disk to verify it was usable and then started the update. The update went along as it did for my MacBook update. The only difference was I got the iLife ‘08 update at the same time I got OS X 10.5.2. After the reboot I got the Leopard Graphics Update. The installation of the updates went fine.

The upgrade of my iMac wasn’t quit as smooth as the MacBook but it wasn’t too bad. The problems I had were related to .Mac syncing. I kept getting the following errors when iDisk synced:

I keep a copy of my iDisk locally so I turned off iDisk syncing (in .mac preferences) which deleted the local iDisk on my iMac. (It makes a copy on the desktop.) Then I turned on iDisk syncing again. It recreated the local iDisk and all was fine after that.

Once the keychains on both my iMac and MacBook synced the problem logging onto my home server also went away. The Windows Home Server shares would then be automatically mapped during logon using the password in the keychain.

The bottom line - multiple Macs that sync over .Mac should be upgraded at the same time or syncing should be turned off.

While I didn’t experience the problems, there’s been reports or problems between OS X 10.5.1 and LinoType Font Explorer, problems with the Leopard Graphics Update, and a list of additional issues. 

Last week Bare Bones software released a minor update to Yojimbo. Yojimbo 1.5.1 is a minor update that contains 7 bug fixes. Click the thumbnail to see a list of fixes. I installed Yojimbo 1.5.1 on my MacBook first and ran it for about a week. I didn’t have any problem syncing with the slightly older version (1.5) on my iMac. I upgraded the version on my iMac last night. I haven’t had any problems with the upgrade. I use the basic functions of Yojimbo, filing, search, PDFs and tagging and haven’t encountered the situations described in the fixes.

Apple describes this update by saying…

This update supports system software components shared by all iLife ’08 applications to improve their stability and performance. This update also supports important bug fixes for Aperture 2.0.

No computer restart is needed.

The $199 price seems to be a price cut from version 1.5. I don’t keep track of these things but Amazon.com is still selling version 1.5 for $230 with a list price of $299. (So don’t buy from Amazon yet, they don’t seem to have Aperture 2 listed.) Amazon has Aperture 2 listed now.

If you work for a large company check and see if they have Apple’s “Employee Purchase Program” available. My company does, and Aperture is discounted about 18%, which is a lot for Apple. Since I would inevitably buy the upgrade so I just went ahead and ordered it.

Apple has identified 103 new features in Aperture 2 with the User Interface having the longest list (30). Like the Leopard list some don’t seem worth mentioning, like the “Reset All Warnings preference” feature.

The recommended configuration is a dual core 2GHz processor with 2GB RAM. Apple has a compatibility checker which will tell you if Aperture will run on your system and there’s a 30-day trial available. The compatibility checker is linked at the bottom of the trial download page. If you have a licensed copy of version 1.5 you need to go through a short process to install trial version which is why I’ll just wait for my full version to arrive.

Not a lot in the way of details. A restart is needed and it was a 43MB download through Software Update on my Intel MacBook. It’s also available as a 48MB standalone update.

I installed the update on my Intel MacBook. Like the 10.5.2 update my local iDisk displayed a quick compression popup after the reboot. The pop-up hasn’t appeared on subsequent reboots.

The update itself went fine. It’s a 180MB download through Software Update on my Intel MacBook. The install requires a reboot and like the 10.5.1 update the system can’t be used while the update is being applied and a restart is required. The install took about 5 minutes (not including download time) and there was a single reboot. There was a long minute or two where the progress bar didn’t move.

The minor issues came up with .Mac. During the first sync I was told there were 15 conflicts in my iCal. All the conflicts were old recurring appointment. The immediate sync after that flagged 14 conflicts, all of which appeared to be in the first batch. The third sync was just fine. All the conflicting appointments were full-day appointments.

Shortly after the startup I received the following message which cleared within a minute.

I keep my iDisk local on my Macs so it was compacting it after the reboot. I haven’t re-sized iDisk in Months. The updates to iCal include recurring appointments and .Mac sync:

Improves iCal so that it accurately reflects responses to recurring meetings.
Addresses stability issues related to .Mac syncing of iCal calendars.

Which probably caused the sync issues. In my case some of the iMac dates were a day early, so I picked the iCal appointment as the one to save.

The iDisk compression may have just been a side effect of the OS X system update, eveything seems to be fine.

I’ll spend a day or two running things on my MacBook and wait a day or two before updating my iMac, but things seem to be OK for now.

OS X 10.5.2 is also available via a 343MB standalone installer. After installing OS X 10.5.2 a Leopard Graphics Update will be available for installation and it also requires a reboot.

iPhoto 7.1.2 is described as:

This update addresses issues when publishing photos to a .Mac Web Gallery, improves overall stability, and fixes a number of other minor issues.

iPhoto 7.1.2 also contains a security fix to prevent arbitrary code execution.

The ProKit Update is described as:

This update improves reliability for Apple’s professional applications and is recommended for all users of Final Cut Studio, Final Cut Express, Aperture, Logic Studio and Logic Express.

I didn’t have a problem installing either update but I don’t use .Mac Web Galleries. No reboot was required.

Well, I almost had a week without an Apple update. But I think all my Apple software has been updated so hopefully things will quiet down.

I haven’t installed the new version yet and since backups require a little more testing beyond just installing the app and making sure it runs, it may be a several days before I switch over to it completely. But it’s nice to see it finally released. The tribulations of getting Leopard & Time Machine compatibility were covered on the Shirt Pocket blog, although it is down as I post this. But the website is up and the software can be downloaded.

It’s a free upgrade to current users. There’s also a free version which provides the basic cloning features without expiration.

But then iTunes for Windows came out and that’s what really made me a iPod fan. Not the iTunes store (which I avoided for the longest time), just iTunes as jukebox software that could manage my iPod. The killer feature for me was the smart playlists. They’ve evolved over time but here’s an overview of a few I have now. Screenshots are from iTunes for Mac but they should apply just fine to iTunes for Windows.

Rating Songs

I rely on the song ratings for some of my playlists so some background is in order. Every song is rated 2 to 5 stars but it’s not true that I like every 5 star some better than every 4 star.

A song with two stars means I don’t like it. It’s probably not synced to my iPod although there are exceptions if I like the song when played as part of an album but don’t want it to play outside the album.

Every song starts with 3 stars. Five stars means I like it more than most for that genre or artist.

Four stars means I liked it more than most. I may rate a song 4 stars instead of 5 if I have too many five stars for the artist.

One star isn’t used for songs, it means it’s spoken word and I’ve already listed to it.

Smart Playlists

Smart Playlists are created by selecting “File -> New Smart Playlist…” from the menu. They can be edited by right-clicking the list and selecting “Edit Smart Playlist”. Click the thumbnails for for full size images.

All Music

For the mother of all playlists I start with one called “Music Only”. This one is set up to only include songs and exclude everything else. If new file types are added I have to change it but at least I only have to change it in one place. All my playlists are set to include only checked items as shown here. If I don’t want a song on my iPod I uncheck it in iTunes.

While “Music” can be selected as a playlist this indicates what iTunes sees as the Music library. In my case this isn’t just songs so I need the Music Only playlist.

List of 5’s (by LRP)

This is an example of a playlist that uses my ratings, the All Music playlist and presents me the songs that I haven’t heard in awhile at the top of the playlist. In this case the “by LRP” means “by Least Recently Played”. The playlist criteria is shown in the screenshot. As you can see from the screenshot it picks files with a five star rating and is limited to my “Music Only” playlist so I’ll only get music.

It’s not checked, but you’ll see it’s set to limit to 700 items based on least recently played. This is a holdover from when my music didn’t all fit on my iPod. Checking the box would limit the playlist to the 700 songs and if this playlist was set as the sync criteria only those songs would sync.

As for the Least Recently Played Piece…

Save the Smart Playlist then sort by the “Last Played” field in iTunes by clicking on it until it’s sorted least recent to most recently play. If you need to add the field right-click the field header bar and select it from the list. The playlist will sync to the iPod in this order (at least it does for my 5G iPod) and any field can be sorted. Click the first column (numbers - no title) to return to manual sort.

I have similar playlists for my other ratings. It’s convenient to listen to songs of a certain rating and change the rating if my tastes have changed.

Best of…

I have numerous “Best of” playlists for specific artists. There are minor differences between the way they’re set up in order to either keep the number of matched songs relatively low or provide enough songs for a playlist. But they’re all basically the same and the screenshot to the left shows the basic playlist. Some artists may be limited to 5 stars while others may include songs from various bands they were in, which is covered in the next section.

Similar to the best of for artists I also have best of genre playlists. Simply pick Genre as the criteria instead of artist.

Grouping

The properties of every song contains a Grouping field on the info tab. This can be used to contain the artist name if they were in various bands. The example shows Buddy Holly entered into a song done by The Crickets.

To create a Best Of collection for Buddy Holly I can use the Group field and avoid some complex nested playlists. Smart Playlists can only “match all” or “match any” which can be limiting at times. The criteria is “contains” because there may be cases where several artists I like are in the same group and I want those songs to appear in each of their own playlists.

Unrated Songs

When I add a song to the iTunes library the first thing I want to do is rate it. So I have a playlist setup to identify unrated songs. This way I can easily play the songs and rate them. No star is selected, if you accidentally click a star you can clear it my clicking at the very left edge of the field.

One thing to keep in mind - if you are playing the list in iTunes and rate a song it will immediately drop off the list, even if it’s playing. If it’s the one playing then all playback stops. To prevent this uncheck “Live Updating” or do what I do and rate the song when it’s done playing. Songs can be rated on the iPod without affecting playback.

Playlist of Selected Podcasts

I like listening to podcasts while driving to work in the morning. I have a smart playlist set up that contains the podcasts I like to start the day with.

Podcasts can be selected by using the Album field.

Amazon MP3 Store

For me, the Amazon MP3 store has become a place to buy music since it’s all DRM-free and in many cases cheaper than iTunes. This smart playlist identifies the music that was bought from Amazon.

My Favorite Playlist

This is my most used playlist. I like the constant refresh of the music I listen to even if it does take several months to get through everything. Still, this playlist doesn’t contain every song. It’s limited to 250 songs so I can still do random play and only get older songs. It also excludes Classical and Jazz since I only listen to those when I’m in the mood for them. It also excludes all those lowly 2 star songs. Some people like shuffle but I prefer this list.

As for where I came up with the 250 number. It’s approximately how many songs I’d have to listen to each week to make it through the entire collection in 6 months.

Additional Playlists

Theses playlists are variations on the above themes so don’t really require any explanation once you see the criteria. Hover your mouse over each thumbnail for the list description and double click it to view if your interested.