How iTunes Match Works

Before: DRM-ed	After: Unprotected

Apple has always stored iTunes music “in the cloud”, but it was never accessible except at the time of purchase. In other words, Apple would allow you to buy a song and download it but you could not re-download purchases, let alone stream them to other computers or iDevices.

ITunes 10.5.1, now available for download, enables online streaming and re-downloading the of media to any authorized computer or device. This means that all of your past and future iTunes Store purchases are now available on all the devices you own. You can stream them over the Internet for casual listening or download them for off-line use. This includes movies, television shows, and books as well as music.

But iTunes Match is the signature feature of this upgrade. Using technology acquired from Lala, Apple now offers an annual subscription allowing you to “match” your off-line library with the online iTunes store. This match technology will scan your entire library and make available all songs in it, regardless of source.

ITunes Match allows you to “upgrade” your music library with legal, licensed, high-quality files regardless of the source. This includes DRM-protected iTunes store purchases, which are also upgraded to 256 K bit DRM-free AAC files. This is a huge benefit: Building a high-quality non-DRM library is well worth a year $25 per year even without online streaming.

For example, if you bought an album from Amazon or ripped a CD (or even if you downloaded music through Bittorrent), it will be available for streaming and downloading to iTunes, iPhones, iPads, and iPods. Even better, the downloaded version will be Apple’s high quality 256 kbps AAC “iTunes Plus” version, even if yours was a lowly 128 kbps MP3 file.

How to Upgrade a Song

Upgrading is fairly straightforward, and iCloud “has your back” if you make a mistake. Still, I recommend backing up your music files before proceeding!

Enable these headings to make it easier to locate songs to upgrade

The first step is subscribing to the iTunes Match service. Download and install the latest version of iTunes, and click on the new iTunes Match entry in the menu bar. Apple will prompt you to sign up and pay your $25 using your existing iTunes account.

Once you have subscribed to iTunes Match, iTunes will scan your library for songs, match them to the online library, and begin uploading any that it did not find. You can continue working with iTunes while the upload proceeds, since we will be working with files that do exist on the iTunes servers.

Right click on the menu bar above the song listing in iTunes’ Music pane and add the new “iCloud Status” column. You might also want to add the “Kind” column to determine which files should be upgraded.

Locate a file to upgrade. There’s no need to replace songs that are or 256 kb iTunes Plus format, so look for those with “Kind” listed as “MPEG audio file” or “Protected AAC audio file”.

Next, check the “iCloud Status” column to make sure the song is “Matched”. Now you’re good to go with the upgrade.

Any song that is "Matched" can be re-downloaded DRM-free!

I created a backup folder to save a copy of my music just in case the upgrade fails. Just drag and drop the file right out of iTunes and into a backup folder.

In iTunes, select the song you wish to upgrade and press the delete key. ITunes will ask if you’re sure: Go ahead and click “Delete Song” but do not select “Also delete this song from iCloud” just in case.

Scary! Delete your music (but save a backup first!)

Once the song file has been deleted, you will notice that it does not disappear from the iTunes interface. Instead, a new icon will appear in the “iCloud” column. This is the iCloud download button: Click it and iTunes will re-download the high quality version of that song directly into your library. Or just press “Play” to stream it over the Internet!

That nifty little icon (or a right-click) allows you re-download your deleted files

Note that any metadata, such as custom year or composer, will not be lost. Even star ratings will be retained, though it appears that play counts are not saved.

This process can be repeated for multiple items at once, allowing you to upgrade your library with just a few clicks.

Before: Low-bitrate MP3	After: 256 kbps AAC

Stephen’s Stance

The ability to “go legit” and upgrade older music files is a huge benefit, and makes iTunes Match well worth the $25 annual fee. Having all your music online for streaming is pretty cool, but probably wouldn’t have enticed me to spend money. I will definitely be upgrading my entire iTunes library this way!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | How to Legitimize and Upgrade Your Music Library Using iTunes Match
This post was categorized as Apple, Personal, Terabyte home. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

iTunes 10 breaks third-party server compatibility. Again.

Do you use an “iTunes compatible” device like an Iomega ix4 or Drobo FS or Roku SoundBridge? Have you noticed that it no longer works since you updated to iTunes 10? That’s because Apple made a simple change to their Digital Audio Access Protocol (DAAP) that causes third-party devices to fail to connect correctly. Although software patches are already appearing, there is no guarantee that older devices like that Roku will ever be updated.

DAAP, Firefly, and iTunes Clients

Apple introduced “music sharing” over a network in version 4.0 of iTunes way back in 2003, and third-party devices have been trying to play along ever since. Digital Audio Access Protocol (DAAP) was based on http and xml and leverages zeroconf/Bonjour to discover and stream audio across a network. iTunes can act as both a server or client.

Although Apple only licensed the protocol to a select few client applications, DAAP was successfully reverse-engineered shortly after its debut and integrated into a number of third-party clients and servers. Apple has continually modified DAAP for almost a decade, adding MD5-based and proprietary authentication in versions 4.2 and 4.5, but this has not stopped third-party servers like the open-source Firefly/mt-daapd from serving as an iTunes server.

Apple was successful in preventing third-party clients from accessing music through iTunes, adding a client validation challenge to version 7.0 that has not yet been broken. This allowed them to limit client access to only those few third parties who paid for a license, including the Roku SoundBridge that I own.

No More Servers?

Did your "iTunes-compatible" home NAS suddenly stop serving music?

Since it was open source and capable of supporting iTunes, the Firefly Media Server (formerly called mt-daapd) has seen widespread use in “home media servers” like the Iomega ix4 and Drobo FS. Just about every home NAS that supports iTunes uses this software or a related fork, and just about every one stopped working with the release of iTunes 10.

As of version 10, when iTunes requests a list of songs, it requires the server to respond with a correct “mediakind” response. Previous versions apparently assumed type 1 (music) whenever this was missing, but iTunes 10 simply refuses to play, reporting odd error messages like “untitled playlist.” So Apple has broken iTunes compatibility. Again.

A patch is ready for some versions of mt-daapd, but a more important question is raised: Should commercial products rely on reverse-engineered protocols like DAAP? Much of the Apple ecosystem is reliant on reverse engineering, from iPod chargers to AFP to Time Machine. Many of the resulting “tricks” are commercialized in a wide variety of products from manufacturers small and large. Even IT titans like HP and EMC advertise Apple support based on reverse-engineered protocols!

Stephen’s Stance

Anyone want to buy a lightly-used Roku SoundBridge? It may work with iTunes for a while yet...

In my review of the Drobo FS, I questioned the wisdom of relying on “buggy and limited software” and discussed my use of “a real iTunes instance on my always-running iMac.” My experience with a Linksys NSLU2 running Firefly was never positive. Even my two Roku SoundBridge clients don’t work very well, and they’re licensed! I’m much happier with the performance of my AirPort Express, even though it would be nice if Apple would update the Remote app for the iPhone!

Many people complain about Apple’s “walled garden” approach, and I think they have a point when it comes to protocols like DAAP. By not allowing third parties to develop compatible hardware and software, they’ve forced everyone underground. Now that they’ve changed their implementation, all of these devices are “broken” in the eyes of users. Some, like the Roku, are out of date and might never be updated.

This is typical Apple. Out with the old and in with the new. They did the same with their own Apple TV hardware this month, stranding the few buyers it found without an update. Some may suggest that this minor change to iTunes is a conspiracy to push AirPlay, but I imagine it’s a simple case of upgrade-itis. Who cares about all that old junk when all this pretty new hardware and software is available?

We really can’t blame Apple for this. They never allowed the DAAP protocol to be used, and never promised that these reverse-engineered servers would work. In fact, I wonder why they even allowed “iTunes compatibility” to be promised without licensing. Perhaps some of the larger companies have Apple licenses, but I doubt it. At the end of the day, it is these vendors who are responsible for promising compatibility that they could not hope to deliver.

Note: The Roku SoundBridge still works fine as a client with iTunes 10. To clarify, I was saying that Apple could break this functionality in the future and Roku would be unlikely to fix it since they seem to have abandoned this product line.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2010. | iTunes 10 Breaks Non-Apple Streaming (Again)
This post was categorized as Apple, Computer History, Everything, Personal, Terabyte home. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Adaptive Audio Controls and Portrait-Mode Screen Rotation Lock

The double-click task switcher isn’t as well-known among regular iOS 4 users as I would have guessed, but even less well-known is what happens when you double-click the home button and slide right. Rather than listing running apps, the task menu shows some incredibly-useful icons: A screen rotation lock and audio controls!

Double-click the home button and slide right to reveal audio controls and a screen rotation lock

Earlier iPhone OS versions included a pop-up audio control screen, but it wouldn’t appear when no music was playing. This new control screen is always accessible and is a great way to get to the iPod function if you want to replace it with a different app (or a folder) in the dock.

Third-party audio apps can be controlled here, too!

As an added bonus, iOS 4′s unified audio engine allows these buttons to control any other background audio-capable app as well. Run Pandora, MLB, NPR, or any other app that supports the new iOS 4 frameworks and you can switch tracks or pause with a simple double-click!

The screen rotation lock is disappointingly portrait-mode only (as is the multitasking menu itself) but it’s a start. I find myself using the lock switch on the iPad constantly, and it would be nice to have all the same functionality on the iPhone.

Support for Multiple Exchange Servers

It might not be obvious why regular people would use multiple Exchange ActiveSync accounts at once on an iOS device. Here’s a hint: Google contacts can only be synced over-the-air with the EAS protocol. Although you may want your email and calendars to use iMAP and CalDAV, respectively, anyone who has contacts stored in more than one Exchange or Gmail account needs this capability!

I’ve covered this topic extensively before, so I’ll just leave it at that. See How To Set Up Multiple Exchange ActiveSync Accounts in iPhone iOS 4 and How To Enable ActiveSync For Google Apps Accounts for more.

Camera Zoom and Movie Refocus

Zoom in to compose better snapshots

The camera app was touched up, too. Photo-takers have been able to tap a spot in an image to refocus (and reset exposure) for quite a while, but tapping now also brings up a zoom slider. This makes composing photos on the iPhone that much easier and improves the resulting image for quick sharing. Image crop and other edit controls in the photo app would be nice, as would more-extensive image controls, but this is a good first step. Digital zoom generally stinks, but the high-resolution camera in the iPhone 4 makes it tolerable.

Apple also enabled the tap-to-refocus square during video recording. This allows for some (gasp!) artistic video shots to be composed, despite the limited depth of field of the iPhone camera. It’s especially useful outdoors, where brightness can vary wildly.

Spellcheck

iOS now detects misspellings and offers suggestions

The iPhone has always had inline spelling correction using popup “tags” as you type, but iOS 4 does this one better. Like desktop computers, the iPhone and related devices will now underline potential misspelled words in red and offer suggestions when these hotspots are tapped.

“Data Detectors” for Dates, Addresses and FedEx and UPS Tracking Numbers

iOS 4 detects dates, addresses, and tracking numbers and converts them into useful links

Users of Mac OS X have gotten used to the “data detectors” embedded in Mail and other apps. They are capable of converting dates, email addresses, and other plain text into smart links. Receive an email that says “let’s meet next tuesday at 10″ and Mail creates a link to create a new appointment for that date and time in the Calendar app.

iOS 4 has this capability as well, decoding dates and addresses as well as popular package-tracking codes. This is incredibly useful: When someone sends you a UPS, FedEx, or USPS package tracking number, the Mail app will convert it into a link for the appropriate web site, allowing you to quickly check on shipment.

Web and Wikipedia Search

“Spotlight” search has been a part of the iPhone OS since OS version 3, though I never used it much. It offers full-text search of all data, including email messages. But most people don’t store more than a month of email on the device, reducing the usefulness of search. Now that we have folders, search doesn’t even save time locating apps.

iOS 4 now integrates Wikipedia and Web search with Spotlight queries

Search for data not already found on the iPhone, and Spotlight will suggest a Web or Wikipedia search option. This is nice, but would be more useful if it also suggested searching the contents of mail servers, LDAP directories, and other more user-specific online data sources.

Simplified “New Contact” Screen

You can select information types in the streamlined "New Contact" screen

The iPhone always allowed one to add a contact from an email address or phone number. But the “new contact” screen was annoyingly limited. It categorized all new phone numbers as “home”, for example, an assumption that is almost always incorrect in my case. iOS 4 adds tap-to-select field categories, allowing you to correctly enter information right from the start.

Resize Photos When Sending

The iPhone camera is a great companion, allowing serendipitous photos from everyday life to be grabbed for posterity. But sharing these photos was a hassle, with the phone automatically compressing any mailed photos to save space.

iOS 4 now gives you the option of compressing photos and videos in mail messages

iOS 4 now gives you the option of leaving your photos in their original size, or compressing them to “Medium” or “Small” size. The same options appear for video attachments, and multiple images are supported as well.

Create Real Playlists in iPod

No more playlists called "On The Go 4"!

iPods have had the ability to create lame “On The Go” playlists for almost a decade, but until iOS 4 none could create a real full playlist, complete with a name. Finally!

Birthday Calendar

Happy birthday to who?

Lots of my contacts included a Birthday field, but there was no easy way to use this information on an iPhone. iOS 4 automatically creates a new calendar called “Birthdays” that automatically includes these in the new unified calendar view.

Stephen’s Stance

There are lots of great features hidden in iOS 4 besides folders and multitasking. Background audio, VoIP, selectable wallpapers, saving PDFs as iBooks, and many others compete for attention. But I found the 10 listed here to be the most useful and surprising to me in everyday use. What are your favorite iOS 4 features?

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2010. | My 10 Favorite Hidden iOS 4 Features
This post was categorized as Apple, Features, Personal. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Back in the old days, vendors used to give away Harley Davidson motorcycles and Mercedes-Benz cars (no kidding!), but even in these days of waning investment, conferences still have some expensive goodies. I decided to take a walk around the show floor at the April 2010 Storage Networking World (SNW) in Orlando, checking out the loot.

So we’ve got some solid prizes here, with a definite Apple bias. The score:

1. Amazon Kindle x4
2. Apple iPad x3
3. Apple iPod Touch x3
4. Cisco Flip x3
5. HP Mini netbook x2
6. Dell Mini 10
7. Beats Headphones
8. Flo TV
9. Apple iPod Nano
10. Spy Robot (!)

Folks were most excited about the iPad giveaways, and there were at least five other iPads given away off the show floor. But NetApp wins my award for creativity: The “spy robot” was a clever choice amid a sea of book readers, cameras, and music players!

Prizes like these really did draw a crowd. The smartest companies had second- and third-prize drawings as well, and some had simple tests on the form to judge knowledge of their products. I still don’t like chotchkies, but these prize drawings pass my sniff test.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2010. | Conference Loot: SNW Orlando 2010 Edition
This post was categorized as Personal. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

iPad iPod

The iPad iPod interface is all new - but where's cover flow?

Apple hadn’t said much about the iPod application in the iPad. But today’s release of a series of “guided tour” videos clears the air somewhat. The iPod app is neither a port of the small-screen app from the iPhone and iPod Touch nor of the OS X iTunes application. It sports a new look and feel that is a cross between the two, with a column listing media types to the left and a new “bookshelf” view of cover art to the right. Surprisingly, cover flow seems AWOL.

Selecting an album causes it to flip and grow in place, changing to a song list. This is a welcome new concept, since simply listing the tracks in the right column would have left much white space on the screen. Album art can be displayed full-screen, but I wonder just how good low-res images will look. I also wonder whether iTunes LP content will display in part or in full.

iPad AirTunes?

One comment in the guided tour voiceover really caught my attention, though. They mention three ways to listen to music: Use the built-in (mono) speaker, listen with wired or BlueTooth headphones, or “connect iPad to your home stereo system and play your music throughout the house.” Does this mean the iPad uses AirTunes to stream to an AirPort Express? Or that the iPhone Remote app is built in? Or do they mean connecting it through a wired or bluetooth adapter? I’m definitely hoping for direct AirTunes, since we very much enjoy that capability today at my house!

The Connected iPad

Yes, the iPad supports Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync

One area of great interest is the usability of the iPad in corporate and academic settings. Although Apple admitted (late) that the iPad supports Microsoft Exchange, there has been no mention of VPN support. Disclosure of calendar and contact support has been sparse, too, though one imagines it will be at least as full-featured as the iPhone.

It’s Mine!

I remain surprised that no multi-user features have yet appeared. Although iPhones tend to remain with a single person, the iPad just begs to be shared. Yet it appears that the apps are all single-user oriented. This is disappointing.

Consider the Mail app. Most people have an email account or two these days, yet the iPad has no obvious means of separating his and her (or their) mail accounts. Even a mail app-specific password would be nice, allowing one to share the device’s other features but reserve private mail access. Apple assumes that iPads will not be shared, but I’m sure my kids will have their peanut-buttery paws all over mine constantly!

Lots of Books!

It’s great to see Apple stocking the iBooks store with 30,000 free books from Project Gutenberg, and major existing book readers and stores (Amazon, Barnes & Noble) look to be supported. I’m especially looking forward to using Instapaper on the iPad, having fallen head over heels for that app recently.

Hardware Surprises?

The mute switch has become "screen rotation lock"

So far, the only post-announcement hardware surprise has been the fact that the switch that mutes the iPhone will be used instead to lock the orientation of iPad content. Although many speculated that a camera might be added before the ship date, it looks like this will not happen. Although all iPads sport a digital compass, only the 3G model includes GPS hardware.

Apple clarified that the iPad will support just about any BlueTooth keyboard or A2DP audio system, but it remains unclear if it can connect to a standard BlueTooth headset. The specs are also vague on whether the headphone jack supports inline microphones, as found on the iPhone.

Waiting For My Box of Mystery

That's a thick box for such a slim device!

iPad mysteries remain. I’m certainly looking forward to opening the UPS package Apple promises to deliver this Saturday!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2010. | Is There Anything We Don’t Know About The iPad?
This post was categorized as Apple, Personal. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

IT infrastructure is following consumer technology out of the data center glass house and into the wide world

Dave Hitz over at NetApp poses a very interesting question: What is the ten-year trend in information technology that we are currently building to? He supplies these historical examples:

• 1982-1992: A computer on every (business) desk
• 1990s: Networking all those computers

He then goes on to suggest three ten-year trends that we might currently be living through:

1. Cloud/Outsourced Computing
2. Server Virtualization
3. Flash Memory

Although I agree on the importance of these three to enterprise IT, I don’t think they’ll be seen as the megatrends of this decade in hindsight. I suggest that, more than anything, we are witnessing a wholesale shift from information tied to place/device to information mobility. Cloud computing, server virtualization, and even flash memory are all contributors to this massive trend, along with the user-side trends of the post-PDA mobile phone, 3G data, social web services, and connected home.

What Is Mobility?

The meaning of mobility, to me, is expansive. It doesn’t just refer to taking a copy of your data with you, ubiquitous connectivity, or portable devices. Mobility is a new paradigm of computing.

• Your data no longer “sits” in one place – your data lives out there in the network!
• Your applications no longer “live” on this device or that – your applications live out there in the network!
• Your productivity environment no longer requires a particular piece of hardware – you expect to be productive everywhere on every device!

This doesn’t sound strange to the modern Internet user. We have completely accepted the role of Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Wikipedia and the rest in our personal lives. Just as they did in the early days of the PC, business people have transitioned these concepts into the professional world – witness Salesforce and LinkedIn! In all cases, we have endorsed the idea that certain types of information want to live in the cloud because it makes them better!

Once you’ve used these services, old-fashioned email, contact management, encyclopedias, maps, and the rest seem incredibly limiting. A GPS system that can’t update its maps seems antiquated, and we want it to have real-time traffic data, too. An iPod that needs to be physically connected to a PC to add music or applications is simply unacceptable. Time- and place-shifting technologies like TiVo To Go, over-the-air podcast downloads, and Slingboxes reset our expectations about availability and choice of entertainment, but they are mere symptoms of our changing perceptions. We want mobility of data, applications, and platforms, and we are getting it.

Consider two truly revolutionary platforms: the iPhone and the netbook. In both cases, we knowingly accept limitations in the name of portability, knowing that the cloud will give us what we can’t hold in our hands. These devices are limited in ways that would seem inconceivable just a few years ago: Apple has locked their platform up tighter than any in history, and netbooks are too small, underpowered, and cheap in all senses of the word. But we love them because they get us where we want to go, which is up and out!

Mobility and Enterprise IT

The concept of mobile data, applications, and devices is just as applicable to enterprise IT infrastructure as it is to personal technology. Some enterprise data must be kept close to the vest, especially where privacy laws and litigation concerns are applicable. But there is certainly a vast pool of corporate data that wants to be out working in the field! Setting this data free is the enterprise equivalent of the mobility megatrend!

Cloud computing is hype. Server virtualization is hype. Flash storage is hype. XaaS is hype. Web 2.0 is hype. But once the cloud of hype passes, we will be left with solid technologies to enable mobility and transform corporate computing. Why should corporate email have to punch through your firewall? Why should the intranet be limited to internal or VPN users? Why can’t customers interact with a (limited/controlled) set of your corporate records? Salesforce showed us that roaming users (sales teams) need greater access than most IT staff were ready to build. What if we applied the same ideas to other data types?

Many companies are already doing this. Microsoft offers a variety of internal/external services for their customers through Live (see Connect, for example). Many companies are using mail and productivity applications in the cloud from Google, MessageOne, and Zimbra. Backup and archiving as a service to mobile users is widespread (see Iron Mountain Connected and Mozy). And more and more corporate PR relies on blogs, twitter, and social networking sites. Corporate security and legal types are worried about data “escaping” from the eggshell of control they exert, but this cat is out of the bag. Enterprise IT will never be the same!

It comes down to a single core question that IT folks ought to have been asking themselves all along: What should be held internally and what should be let loose? We already “outsource” many non-core corporate functions. Sometimes we do this for cost reasons. But the most effective outsourcing decision is when a third party will do a better job, offering levels of expertise or service that an internal group could never realistically reach. We already buy enterprise software to leverage outside development (remember, this was not always the case!), so why not also buy enterprise services? Corporate-grade outsourced email, groupware, sales automation, and the like is not only more robust and less expensive than internal systems, they enable a disconnected, mobile workforce.

Today, I Was Angry

I bought a new album from Amazon, but I forgot to sync my iPhone with my laptop, so it was sitting at home when I wanted to listen to it in the car. Then I couldn’t find a colleague’s phone number because he moved to a new company and my address book didn’t automatically update. And I couldn’t review a presentation because I needed a special account to access a corporate document system behind a firewall.

These little accomplishments would have seemed like miracles just a few years ago: I remember the joy I felt ten years ago when I could read a web page offline on my Palm Pilot using AvantGo; I was amazed when I first fired up 802.11a wireless networking and could work anywhere in the office; I was gleeful to be able to take 5 GB of music with me on the train. But all this is past. Today, I want to access my portable data and work anywhere. We are in the midst of a revolution in the mobility and ubiquity of computing.

See my posts on Gestalt IT for similar enterprise IT infrastructure commentary

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2009. | Ten-Year Trend: Mobility
This post was categorized as Apple, Computer History, Enterprise storage, Everything, Personal, Terabyte home, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

The iPhone doesn't support more than one Exchange/ActiveSync pairing

One of the major advances introduced in iPhone software version 2.0 was the ability to sync over-the-air to Microsoft Exchange servers using Microsoft’s ActiveSync protocol. This was introduced to much fanfare with the iPhone 3G and is available on older updated iPhone and iPod Touch units, too. Google and NuevaSync also offer over-the-air calendar and contact syncing for the iPhone using ActiveSync.

All of these synchronization options seem like an embarrassment of riches for iPhone users. But, like so many things in life, they’re too good to be true. iPhone OS 2 and 3 can’t sync to more than one Exchange/ActiveSync server at a time! Or, at least, not in the way you’d like.

Note: iPhone OS 4.0 will allow syncing to multiple Exchange ActiveSync accounts! See How To Set Up Multiple Exchange ActiveSync Accounts in iPhone iOS 4.

For the most up-to-date information, see my iPhone Exchange ActiveSync Guide!

This post is part of my series focused on integrating the iPhone with Microsoft Exchange using ActiveSync:

• iPhone OS 3.0 information:
  1. First Look: iPhone 3.0 And Exchange ActiveSync Integration
  2. How To Subscribe To Internet Calendars In iPhone OS 3.0
  3. How To Access LDAP Directories In iPhone OS 3.0
  4. iPhone 3.0 Exchange ActiveSync: Better But Not Perfect
• How To Set Up iPhone Exchange ActiveSync
1. A Few iPhone Exchange ActiveSync Gotchas
2. Can the iPhone Sync With Multiple Exchange Servers?

The Connected iPhone

Let’s back up a minute and talk about how the iPhone integrates with mail, contact, and calendar servers. There are essentially two synchronization engines at work here:

• Like all iPods, iTunes can synchronize your contacts, calendars, and mail account information (though not the mail messages themselves) over a USB connection to the iPhone and iPod Touch. This requires a full copy of Outlook 2003 or later on Windows but works with the built-in address book and iCal calendar on Mac OS X.
• The iPhone can also synchronize some or all components of email, contacts, calendars, and bookmarks using a variety of over-the-air protocols.

Note that when you configure over-the-air sync, you must disable USB sync, and vice versa.

iPhone Email Sync

Configured mail accounts can synchronize email messages in one of six ways:

1. Periodically pulling message content down using the POP protocol – this is what most older ISPs and mail accounts use
2. Periodically pulling message content down using the more advanced IMAP protocol – this is what newer mail accounts, including Gmail, AOL, and Yahoo use
3. Having mail pushed to the phone using a weird combination of hidden SMS and IMAP – this is what Yahoo push mail uses
4. Having mail pushed to the phone using a proprietary notification system of XMPP (Jabber) and IMAP – this is what Apple’s MobileMe push mail uses
5. Pulling or receiving push messages using Microsoft’s ActiveSync technology – this is what Exchange servers, NuevaSync, Kerio, Zimbra, and Google’s over-the-air calendar and contact (but not email) sync use
6. The iPhone’s software seems to support IMAP Idle, which is a realtime message push technology supported by Gmail and some advanced mail systems, but the phone will not use it unless the mail application is actually open on the phone

The iPhone does not support P-IMAP, BlackBerry, or other over-the-air protocols at this point.

The iPhone can sync email messages to any number of IMAP or POP accounts without a problem, but it can only sync to a single ActiveSync server at once. So you can set up Gmail over IMAP, Yahoo over SMS/IMAP, your local provider over POP, a Gmail Apps account over IMAP, etc at the same time as your work Exchange server without a problem. But you cannot set up more than one Exchange server using ActiveSync.

iPhone Calendar and Contact Sync

Calendar and contact information can only be synced in one of (perhaps) three ways:

1. Over a physical USB connection to iTunes (as in the original iPhone 1.0) to Outlook or OS X
2. Using some unknown protocol that MobileMe uses – can anyone identify this?
3. Using ActiveSync to an Exchange Outlook Web Access (OWA) server

Yes, that’s really it. Every over-the-air calendar-and-contact sync system (other than perhaps MobileMe) uses the ActiveSync protocol, including Microsoft Exchange, NuevaSync, Zimbra, and Google’s service.

Now the punch line: The iPhone can only sync to a single ActiveSync server at once. Read that again. Now consider what that means.

So no matter how cool a service is (Google sync, Zimbra), you cannot use it for over-the-air sync if you are also connected to an Exchange server. So even though the iPhone explicitly supports multiple calendars, you can’t sync them with multiple ActiveSync systems. So I guess the iPhone’s calendar system is even more disappointing than I thought!

Pick One ActiveSync Service

The upshot is this: iPhone users much pick one (and only one) ActiveSync service.

• Need to use the iPhone for work? You’ll probably have to use your work Exchange ActiveSync server, and can forget about (usefully) subscribing to MobileMe or using Google sync. Instead, try to sync everything else into Exchange in other ways (like Google’s Desktop app) and then let Exchange handle the iPhone sync.
• A dedicated Mac head? Subscribe to MobileMe and get all of your data there, to be sent to the iPhone.
• None of the above? Google’s new Sync service looks great!

The Big Mystery

There are many mysteries lurking here, but one is really perplexing to me. The iPhone seems to maintain its own set of contacts in addition to any ActiveSync contact store. Although it doesn’t obviously have multiple contacts pools, it must maintain them internally. But you can see that it does in a simple way:

1. Set up an ActiveSync server (like Exchange)
2. Set up an IMAP email account (like Gmail)
3. Add a unique contact on the phone (call him “Steve Jobs”)
4. Add a unique contact in Exchange (call him “Bill Gates”)
5. Add a unique contact in Gmail (call him “Sergey Brin”)
6. Now turn on and off the accounts one at a time

Notice that turning off the Gmail account will, within a few minutes, cause your “Sergey Brin” contact to disappear! Turn it back on and Sergie is back. Now do the same for Exchange and Bill Gates. All the while, your “Steve Jobs” contact should stay put. And this all happens in a single contact list! If you assigned one of these to a “favorite”, their name will be replaced by their number when you remove their account.

So the is iPhone somehow syncing contacts over IMAP? Or does it use some other Google-specific protocol? And how does MobileMe’s contact sync work? Time will tell!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2009. | Can the iPhone Sync With Multiple Exchange Servers?
This post was categorized as Apple. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Seriously, the simplicity of control was one of the prime factors (along with iTunes, the Store, and Ive’s design) that made the iPod a winner in a sea of loser MP3 players. I speak from experience, having been a hard drive MP3 player owner before the iPod was even announced! I gladly dumped my Nomad Jukebox with its ridiculous control setup when I received a fourth-generation iPod as a gift. Although it lacked many of the Nomad’s features, the iPod’s ease of use won me over. Put simply, I could actually use the iPod’s features!

The iPhone (and similar iPod Touch) is another story entirely. Although I remain impressed by the phone and app store, and have seen the mail and calendar interface improve, the “touch” iPod controls are just plain frustrating. Not because they’re bad, mind you. The fact that the touch iPod is so good is what makes the inconsistent and missing controls so frustrating!

A Portrait Of Absolute Perfection?

One would think, given the purple prose heaped upon it, that the iPhone was, like Oscar Wilde’s Cecily, “in every way the visible personification of absolute perfection.” But, although the iPhone replaced my 40 GB iPod for daily use, it remains frustratingly limited in control. Even the Apple Remote app is better than the native touch iPod controls! And, with the exception of the Genius feature, the iPod interface has remained static since the iPhone was first released.

The portrait-mode touch iPod interface is pretty good, but there are some frustrating issues

Selecting music, video, and podcasts is simple enough with the touch iPod interface, with a slick flick gesture augmented by a quick right-hand scroll between letters for large song libraries. Apple even lets you change the icons at the bottom of the screen – I added “Podcasts” to the list, since I’m a big fan of NPR content on demand! Overall, I’m satisfied by the portrait-mode selection capabilities, though a search feature would be a nice addition.

Why take up all that space for a giant volume control slider?

Playing songs in portrait mode is pretty good, too. You get full-screen artwork and nice big fast forward and rewind and pause/play buttons right where they’re most useful. But there are shortcomings:

The portrait-mode scrubber is good but touchy for longer items like podcasts

• Apple chose to devote a huge amount of screen real estate to a volume slider. But a visual indication of volume isn’t all that useful, and this is seldom used to change the volume on the iPhone since it has hard volume controls anyway! I’d have the volume be a pop-up on-demand slider like in Quicktime.
• That screen space could have been used for another much more useful slider – a forward/back scrubber bar! Instead, one has to tap the screen to get an overlay scrubber with repeat, shuffle, and Genius controls thrown in, too. Why are these things relegated to a pop-up that disappears and partially obscures the pretty artwork?
• And why is that popup hidden anyway? It’s not intuitive to tap the artwork to get to the scrubber…
• It’s awfully hard to actually use that scrubber, too. Queue up an hour-long podcast of “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” and you’ve got a challenge trying to skip forward to “Not my job!” My fingers wobble it forward and back in five or ten minute increments, so I have to resort to the scan forward/reverse mode.
• Scanning forward and back with the “arrow” controls is frustrating, too. It’s variable-speed, but the maximum “skip” is about 30 seconds so you have to hold the “button” down an awfully long time in a podcast!
• There’s also no visual indication of track number on the screen. They could be displayed along with the title at the top, but aren’t.
• How about playing time? I often want to know at a glance how far I am into a track, but I have to pop up the scrubber bar to see it. Ugh!
• And I’m one who uses stars to rate my tunes. But these are hidden in the alternate portrait screen (see below).

Lots of these issues could be solved by a quick refresh of the controls. Swap out the scrubber (with playing time) for the volume bar and add an obvious icon to pop up the secondary controls (volume, shuffle/repeat, Genius) and it would be an excellent start. Add stars and I’d be much happier!

The portrait-mode song list hides behind a toggle, not an artwork tap, and is the only place for stars. But you can't use the scrubber from here.

Then there is the alternate portrait-mode display, the song and stars list. I guess it makes sense to hide these “behind” the artwork, but the interface is frustrating again. Instead of tapping on the art (as in landscape/Cover Flow mode) to see the track listing, you have to tap a little toggle in the upper right corner. Weird!

This is the only place in the entire interface where you can see or modify rating stars for tracks. But you can only see the stars for the currently-playing track, and they’re nailed to the top of the screen rather than appearing “close” to the track name.

If you’re in this mode, playing controls are limited, too. You can’t access the scrubber popup, the shuffle/repeat controls, or Genius. And you can’t see how far into the song you are. All of this could be fixed by swapping the volume slider for the scrubber, of course.

One more portrait-mode issue: Both playing windows also displace the familiar “dock” of iPod icons at the bottom. Want to change artists or select a podcast instead? You have to use the arrow in the upper left corner. Not terrible, and at least it’s consistent, but I would have liked an OS X-like popup dock or something instead.

I know, I’m tough to please. And we haven’t talked about video controls or landscape mode yet!

A Beautiful Landscape

Let’s get this out of the way immediately: Cover flow in the touch iPod interface is beautiful. It’s a natural fit for swipe/flick gestures, and this is the mode that impresses in demonstrations to newbies. But once you start to actually use the iPod application in this mode, you realize how frustratingly limited it is.

Cover Flow in landscape mode is pretty but useless

Where to start? How about a list of the things you can’t do in landscape mode:

• The most basic of all features, fast forward and reverse, are gone.
• The scrubber bar has been scoured away, and there’s no play time indicator either.
• What’s that? Nope, sorry, no volume slider.
• Shuffle and repeat are excised, too.
• Genius clearly wasn’t at work.
• There are no stars.
• Podcasts can’t be selected here, though they do show up in the ‘flow if you’re playing one already.
• Although videos only play in landscape mode, you can’t actually select them here!
• Landscape mode is album-only, causing weird behavior (see below).

Ooh, I can select sonts! Too bad that's all you can do!

On second thought, maybe it would have been easier to just list the three or so controls that actually work in landscape mode! Of course, “work” is a relative term, and the teeny tiny play/pause button barely matches this description. Plus, although it’s pretty, flicking through cover flow gets tedious when more than a few dozen albums are present.

As reader Jame points out in the comments below, landscape mode also has a strange album-only fixation: Yes, it shows everything as an album in Cover Flow, but any actions you take also affect only that album. This can be surprising when shuffling songs, for instance, since a playlist or artist shuffle will transform into an album-only shuffle if you select a song in landscape mode. Try this: In portrait mode, select an artist with more than one album, select “All Songs”, and Shuffle. Now switch to landscape mode – you’ll see whatever album is playing at the time. Select a different song from that album by tapping on it. Suddenly you’re only shuffling that album! This is consistent with landscape mode’s album-only behavior, but will come as a surprise if you weren’t expecting it!

Video

One of the features that makes the iPhone and iPod Touch so nice is their large, high-resolution screens and native H.264 video capability. Watching movies and TV shows on these gadgets is truly a delight, and I probably spend more time with video than audio, to tell the truth. 

Apple actually implemented many of my audio ideas in the video player, too. On touch, it shows not just “transport” controls (play/pause, forward, rewind), but also the scrubber bar and time counters. Although the big useless volume slider remains, it’s nice to have all of the different controls on screen by default. And it’s nice that there’s not some useless inconsistent button to touch to bring the controls up!

Videos get a nice complete set of controls, but it's landscape mode only for playback

Another nice feature is the built-in zoom feature. The iPod interface offers two zoom levels: Full-width and full-height. This is great for movies that are encoded properly, since it can make widescreen content fill the screen better. Though I would never pan-and-scan or zoom on a full-size TV, I find I’m more accepting of these on a small portable device.

Widescreen films can be zoomed to full-height or full-width (pictured). Notice the chapter list button next to the transport controls.

Another nice feature is the touch iPod’s handling of chapter markers. When a film has chapters, an extra icon appears to the right of the transport controls. Tapping on this brings up a list of chapters (also in landscape mode) similar to an album track listing. The skip forward and reverse buttons also jump from chapter to chapter nicely.

Movies and TV shows don't appear in the Genre listing, but music videos do! No videos show up in landscape-mode Cover Flow, though.

The touch iPod software is pretty solid for video. But here again, Apple’s interface lets me down in some areas:

• As mentioned before, you must select videos in portrait mode, but must watch them in landscape mode.
• Also as mentioned, videos do not show up in landscape cover flow, unlike iTunes and the Apple TV.
• Movies and TV shows won’t appear in the Genre list, but surprisingly music videos do. It seems like Apple don’t expect people to keep many movies on these devices, but that could change as 16 GB and 32 GB devices become more common!
•  The scrubber bar is even less useful when watching movies, since a little movement can add up to five or ten minutes of “movie time”.
• “Variable speed” fast forward or rewind is ramped up in video mode, zipping up to two minutes at a time, but is still too slow for my tastes.
• There are only two zoom levels when playing movies. I’d love manual zoom, too. And the redundant zoom arrow button is a waste.

All in all, the video mode is the most satisfying, apart from the lack of landscape-mode title selection options.

One More Thing: Playlists

I admit that Apple’s iTunes playlists are kind of limited compared to some other systems, but they’re good enough for me. I especially like Smart Playlists in iTunes, and On-The-Go was a nice addition to the iPod. But the touch iPod could use some more playlist mojo. How about a button in the UI somewhere that adds the current playing song to the On-The-Go list? The real hard-button iPod has had this for a while! (Hint: It’s the hard button!)

In talking to some buddies, it seems like poor playlist management on the iPhone is their biggest gripe with the device. I have to admit, it wouldn’t even have made my top-10 list, but it’s there.

(In)Consistency

But the lack of controls in landscape mode and weird video selection aren’t my biggest gripes with the prettiest iPod interface ever – it’s the overall inconsistency between landscape and portrait, audio and video:

• The play/pause button moves from near bottom center (portrait) to (physical) top left/(virtual) bottom left (landscape music) to center (landscape video).
• I like that a tap on the cover (in ‘flow mode) brings up the track list. But why does it bring up something entirely different in portrait mode? And it does something else entirely (zoom) in video mode…
• Why is there a redundant “information” control in music landscape mode to bring up the track list with a completely different look and placement from the one in portrait mode?
• Then there’s the redundant zoom arrows in video mode…
• Why do the little blue arrows in the track list look like play/pause controls but not act like play/pause controls? This is obviously very minor, but I did try to tap them.

Apple really needs to revisit the touch iPod interface in the iPhone and iPod Touch. Make the controls consistent between different modes, remove the superfluous buttons, and focus on what people do. You know, this is exactly the kind of thing that Apple has always been really good at!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2008. | iPhone: The Frustratingest iPod Ever!
This post was categorized as Apple. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2008. | 2.2 And Eight Things That Are Still Wrong With The iPhone
This post was categorized as Apple. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

The tech industry has been buzzing about solid state drives (SSDs) again lately, but many questions remain. Even after many major vendors (Apple, EMC, and Dell to name a few) have introduced NAND flash-based disk into their core products, it is unclear whether non-disk storage will fly or flop. I’m betting it will find a nice niche, but that traditional spinning disks are here for a good long time.

Apple’s Flashing Success

When Apple switched from hard disks to flash in their mainstream product line, the world was abuzz with the novelty: Would flash displace hard drives? Sure, the company still offered disk-based storage for those needing vast capacity, but most people found that 8 GB or so of storage was plenty for daily use. Of course, instead of the MacBook Air, I’m talking about the iPod family, which contains just a single disk-based model.

Like the Air, the iPod demonstrates that what matters in the “take it with you” market is portability in the form of low weight, perceived durability, and compact dimensions. And NAND flash excels when it comes to packaging. The flash-based iPod is an excellent semaphore for this market segment in other ways, too. Audio files are fairly small, so music users don’t need all that much storage, relatively speaking. They will gladly ignore the cost per GB, too, at such small capacity points: iPod Nano buyers pay ten times more per GB than iPod Classic buyers.

In the case of the iPod, the compact size and joggable durability afforded by the flash iPods is worth the money to most buyers, not that flash player has sufficient capacity to meet their needs. The MacBook Air teaches a slightly different lesson: Although reviewers are quick to point out that the speed and battery life difference between the hard disk and NAND flash versions of the mini notebook are negligible, early buyers were happy to pay $1000 extra to skip the disk. In this case, they paid for quick access time, light weight, and durability that exist as much in their perception as in real-world benchmarks.

EMC’s Heavyweight Champion

In the exact opposite corner of the data storage world lurks EMC’s top-line Symmetrix DMX storage array. When the company announced the availability of NAND flash drives as their top-tier choice for storage, it turned the heads of the whole enterprise storage industry. Although the technology implementation is substantially different from Apple’s iPod, EMC’s move suggests that another group of customers exists who are similarly unimpressed by a low cost per GB: Enterprise application managers.

Many have suggested that enterprise flash is not yet competitive in terms of price, capacity, reliability, or even performance. And they have publicly disagreed with EMC CEO, Joe Tucci, who claimed effective parity after 2010 at last year’s EMC World event. After all, today’s enterprise flash drives are far more than ten times more expensive than their spinning brothers, and disk capacity continues to march higher by the month.

But the comparison is not about the cost of apples or oranges. In the enterprise storage space, flash drives sot at the top of the pyramid, with just a few units added into the traditional tiered storage mix as a “tier zero” of maximum performance. It is not as simple as pulling out a set of 146 GB FC drives and replacing them with a similar number of flash units. Instead, a few key applications or data sets are migrated up to the pinnacle, with the rest of the stack remaining the same.

There is huge promise when this tiered model is combined with storage virtualization, especially the automated variety. If the tiny percentage of storage that truly needs top-tier performance could be moved to a few solid state disks, the whole stack will benefit from reduced device contention. If automation could make the decision on a block-by-block basis, the effectiveness would be much greater.

I Still Remember

There is another kind of solid state disk in play, too. For over two decades, company after company has pushed the idea of packaging high-performance DRAM as a disk substitute for enterprise storage, just as EMC has now done with NAND. These RAM-based disks offer even higher performance and prices than their flash-based cousins, and none has taken the industry by storm.

Way back when a tiny EMC was one purveyor of solid state storage, I recall the philosophical conundrum posed by the devices: Is it better to package DRAM as storage and use it in a conventional manner or to use that same memory as a cache for actual disks? The market voted for the latter, with EMC and others introducing in-array cache to accelerate RAID to great effect. System memory expanded in parallel, with modern servers optimally caching data in three or more levels internally as well.

Where Does the Flash Go?

For most uses, this is precisely the correct configuration. The priciest and quickest “storage” is placed close to the CPU, with performance and cost dropping and capacity increasing as one moves outward.

Where does flash belong, then? Apple teaches us that NAND flash delivers the goods when it comes to the portable market, and it is likely that the use of this technology in this area will only continue to grow. And EMC shows that there is a need for higher performance in the enterprise storage world as well, though perhaps not enough for pure DRAM devices.

The message is clear: As long as the cost of disk continues to lead, NAND flash will remain a niche product. There are certainly markets for NAND-based devices, from portable computing to the enterprise, but disk just works too well to be displaced. While one can never see too far into the future of storage, it seems clear that conventional hard disks will remain the dominant media for a few more generations of technology at least.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2008. | Flash Forward or Flash Back?
This post was categorized as Apple, Computer History, Enterprise storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.