Erroneous app update badge begone!

For several months now there has been a little badge in iTunes telling me that there is an update available for one of my iPhone applications. Doing a “Check for Updates” never found anything and yet the badge remained… taunting me with its inaccuracy and its implications of disorganisation.

A swift search showed that this is not an uncommon problem, but also that there is no single sure-fire solution.

With hindsight the “delete everything in your mobile apps directory and sync, making sure to let iTunes copy all the apps back off your iPhone” suggestion would probably have worked, but that felt a little too drastic and provided too great an opportunity for things to go horribly wrong. And I wouldn’t have learned anything by doing it.

So, taking the opportunity to have a bit of a tidy up of apps, here is what I did instead.

• A quick check of apps on the iPhone, delete any that didn’t make the grade.
• Sync
• Compare apps on iPhone to apps showing in iTunes, delete any extras in iTunes. (There were several, I have no idea why, there shouldn’t be.)
• Sync
• Compare apps in iTunes to apps listed in /Users/sarah/Music/iTunes/Mobile Applications, delete any old apps in the folder.
• Sync

At this point a miracle occurred and the badge disappeared.

Things I have learned:

• If you delete apps on the iPhone rather than within iTunes the files will never be deleted on the Mac — I knew this but hadn’t considered the implications.
• iTunes apparently still checks for updates for apps in the Mobile Applications folder even if they aren’t listed in iTunes.

That should be that, but the OCD-afflicted part of my brain is still not happy. It is now annoyed by the untidiness caused by the presence of old versions of current apps in the Mobile Applications folder.

I guess the next step to appease it is to make a backup of the folder, check which apps have multiple versions, Get Info on the app in iTunes to double-check which is the current version (it’s not always obvious from the file names), and delete the old ones.

Then, hopefully, all should be nice and tidy and, as long as I remember to delete apps from iTunes rather than the iPhone, I can forget about it. At least until the next updates arrive and my brain is reminded of the multiple versions that may be accumulating…

Advertisement

Just give me a hint

The setup:

iPhone in Apple iPhone dock plugged directly into iMac

So exactly which element of that is it griping about when it says:

“This accessory is not made to work with the iPhone”

LifeCasting

Today is a testing day, and I’m not referring to the earlier lack of water – goddamn incompetents nadgering the local water main.

No, first it was a quick test of email posting, this time it’s LifeCast, an iPhone app which should work with both Blogger and Tumblr.

UPDATE: and it works, on both services.

Posted with LifeCast

Touch Testing

Until there is actual, easily available, stock of white iPhones
Codepope has kindly lent me his iPod Touch to play with so I can get
used to it and try out some of the apps.

And yes, I do want a white one, there are enough small shiny black
devices in this house without adding another one.

UPDATE: testing successful; email posting to Blogger from the Touch works.

Twitter people

I like Twitter, though I do go through phases of posting and then disappear for weeks or even months on end, pretty much like my blogging history in general.

One of the joys of Twitter is the wide variety of people who use it.

When I first joined I don’t think I knew anyone who used it, so I ended up following and being followed by a few random strangers. Later I found a couple of people off my Flickr contacts and a handful of people I actually knew started using it. Add in a bunch of people I don’t know but whose blogs I read, and a few more scattered strangers and the list of people I follow is mixed to say the least.

But there are certain classes of users who automatically get blocked by me when get the “x is now following you” notification email drops in my inbox.

1. Male and only or predominantly follows women. Sorry but you’re just creepy and will be instantly blocked.
2. Twitters in a language other than English. Sorry, but apart from a smattering of French my language skills are limited to English and if you don’t speak it I can’t understand you and I don’t feel comfortable with that sort of one-sided arrangement.
3. Your Twitter feed is full of links and that’s all. Sorry but you’re a spammer and I’m interested in people’s personalities not their bookmarks.
4. You are following thousands, if not tens of thousands of people. Sorry but no, you’re obviously not interested in the social aspects of Twitter, you’re probably a spammer of some sort, and I’m not interested in you.

Other than that, well, I may not choose to follow you back but unless you are particularly offensive I won’t block you either.

New shiny

My old Macbook gave off a last puff of citrus vapour a couple of days ago as it devoured its fifth hard drive in eighteen months.

We are infinitely grateful to the Apple tech we dealt with last time it died for actually writing “if it does this again, replace it” in the case notes rather than just telling us they would; that made everything go incredibly smoothly. We are now awaiting a call from TNT to pick the old one up, then they’ll replace it with the higher spec white Macbook (the old one had a superdrive in it).

Of course it’s never quite that straightforward…

If I were to just bimble along laptop-less until the replacement arrived that would mean that I would have a better specced lappie than Codepope‘s Macbook Pro. Add to that the fact that he has recently been contemplating getting a Macbook for himself anyway (a little more manageable for slobbing out with in the evening), and what you get is Codepope heading out for some serious retail therapy at the Apple store this morning and me setting up a shiny new basic spec Macbook for myself this afternoon.

Then in a week or so he gets to set up his new Macbook when the replacement turns up.

New toys all round.

Yay!

This worries me…

BBC NEWS | UK | Switch off for traditional bulbs

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for being environmentally friendly but, call me selfish, my sanity has to come before the well-being of the planet.

We have tried numerous types of energy efficient bulbs and they’re all dreadful in one way or another. The least offensive in terms of light quality are the ones my mum has in her bathroom BUT they have a nasty head-hurty flicker as they come on which makes me wince and it’s really only acceptable because it’s not a room you have to spend a lot of time in.

The one Codepope has in his room at the moment is like letting the light from a particularly grey day into the office. Hardly effective.

100W equivalent be bollocksed. I don’t know how you’re making this comparison but it obviously doesn’t involve anyone actually looking at the light. I can stand on out landing and see the light in my room (a standard 100W bulb in a uplighter shade) and the light in his. They are not comparable in any way. I can look directly at the energy efficient bulb and not be left with a hint of an after-image.

And that uplighter shade? Well I use that to minimise reflections and highlights on my computer screen and a jolly good job it does to; nice balance of general light in the room without any glare. I have yet to see an energy efficient bulb which will even fit in an uplighter shade. They’re all much bigger than standard bulbs.

And what about the great Philips Wake-up Light we bought yesterday? That sure as hell won’t take one of the new bulbs and quite frankly I’d rather wake up to the natural light from a miserable November morning than the piss-poor light from an energy efficient bulb.

Light is important to me. Especially around this time of year. If I didn’t have my Brightspark and hadn’t been using it for the last month I would currently be sitting in the corner wondering what the point of it all was and wishing desperately for spring.

Surely someone must know…

Q. What do you call a company that doesn’t know the specs of it’s own products?
A. Canon

A couple of weeks ago the ever lovely Codepope decided he needed a new little digital camera. After a short while browsing cheap cameras we couldn’t find reviews of, he came to the conclusion that what he actually wanted was my Canon IXUS 850 IS and the best way to achieve this was to buy me the next model up, the IXUS 950 IS.

Now there isn’t much difference between the two models, basically 1 megapixel and the ability to use SDHC cards. Which is where the fun begins.

There are 3 different readily available classes of SDHC cards in capacities up to 8GB.

The manuals don’t mention which is fully supported. So I thought I’d use their online support system to ask for more detailed information.

Simple enough request: which class of SDHC card is fully supported and what’s the maximum capacity card that can be used?

Cue automated response.

3 days later: “Your query has been sent to the appropriate group and is currently under investigation.”

Today, another week has passed: “This is to inform your enquiry is being further escalated to our Product Support Specialist Group for further investigation. You will be contacted as soon as possible.”

Surely someone must know…

Scanner woes

It turns out that, to go with my shiny new iMac, I am going to need a shiny new scanner.

Canon have just confirmed the utter non-existence of Intel drivers for my D2400U.

So now I have to hunt down a not too spendy scanner which will be good for scanning old photos and 35mm negatives. Preferably one with a holder that will actually hold the negatives flat unlike the one that came with the Canon…

Oh, and of course I have to find a home for the old scanner as well.

Canon WTF?

It’s bad enough when installers insist that you restart your Mac when they’re finished but this is just taking the piss.

Canon, are you seriously saying that you have written a printer driver installer that will die horribly if so much as one other application is running? I don’t remember this being a requirement for installing the S9000 drivers or the ones for my camera, so you obviously can do it, so why the difference this time?

And not only do you say that no other apps should be running but you’re not going to give me the option of risking it and you’re going to automatically shut them all down for me. I wonder how many pissed off Mac owners there’ll be who, used to people writing sensible driver installers, will automatically hit continue and lose shedloads of work.