AppleInsider has a disturbing article on extended file attributes in iCloud

Chip Loder has this article on How to store extended file attributes in iCloud.

I hate that any of this is necessary, because iCloud should not be doing anything to your files. It is the whole problem with iTunes and it’s cloud services that can ruin your whole iTunes Library.

Apple needs to fix this, but I think they see it as a feature not a bug.

Why is iCloud ‘s Safari Bookmark sync so bad?

Now I use Firefox as my primary browser, and I have for years. I have enough if my life in google because I use a gmail account, and google search is too much of my life so I don’t want to use Chrome, even if it is marginally faster. And Safari I don’t really use on my mac, because I use Firefox, but I have to use it on my iPad and my iPhone.

My problem is, as it has been for years since they introduced iCloud syncing of bookmarks, is that it constantly fucks up and my bookmarks get destroyed. I end up with empty folders and bookmarks moved all over with all these new random folders. And this happens all the damn time!
Now when it existed I used Xmarks to sync my bookmarks between firefox and safari on my mac, but it never worked well and I tended to get messed up bookmarks both ways, but now that Xmarks is officially gone I realize that the issue is much deeper within iCloud.
In fact I don’t save any bookmarks in any version of Safari. I only add them to Firefox to keep them and I back them up when I add them so that I can restore and don’t have to fix my bookmarks ever. I even e-mail myself the links from my iPad so that I can add them to Firefox on my desktop. It is a pain but it means keeping my bookmarks safe.
And it means that I am constantly fixing my Safari bookmarks. And I know how to do that. You turn off iCloud syncing of Safari on all your devices, and let it sit for a bit, and tell the iOS devices to delete your bookmarks when you do this. Then I export my clean bookmarks from Firefox and import them into safari, then re-organize them so they are correct (bookmarks toolbar into favorites and move the rest of the bookmarks out of the folder they get stuck in). Then you turn back on iCloud Safari on all your devices and hope everything was cleared up. If it was, you will get your clean bookmarks back until iCloud messes them up again.
The stupid part is this is an easy problem to fix for Apple. Instead of always merging your bookmarks add a damn option to upload and overwrite bookmarks. This way I could easily clean them up in a single step! Xmarks had this. And so do other bookmarks sync programs. Apple just acts like it never fucks up, but it fucks up all the time!
Do people just live with their fucked up bookmarks? I don’t understand! WTF! Fix this shit Apple!

More fun with iCloud Bookmark sync

So after giving up on LastPass because it is not e10 multiprocessor compatible, I have been trying to sync my bookmarks using Firefox Sync, Chrome Sync and iCloud Bookmark Sync for windows. Unfortunately iCloud bookmarks is garbage, because it has no simple way to either clear bookmarks, or force a sync from a single source, and unfortunately it often gets completely corrupted! To clear it you have to disable sync everywhere except your mac, and let it sit, then clear your bookmarks and either import or create a new clean set. Unforunately this process is very unstable. It requires much switching off sync and waiting, and hoping.

Keep your fingers crossed, as I am.

LastPass 4 does support e10s in Firefox, but no word on Xmarks

So I was let know that LastPass version 4 does in fact work with e10 multiprocessing in Firefox. The normal update does not work, so you need to install LastPass 4.0 from the web site.

There is no word on Xmarks though.

So I am now running the iCloud Bookmarks Plug In on my Surface Pro 4 to sync between Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome. And using Firefox bookmark Sync to sync from my mac to my Surface Pro.

Looks like Xmarks and Lastpass will never support e10 Multiprocessor in Firefox

So it looks like neither Xmarks or Lastpass will ever support e10 Multiprocessing in Mozilla Firefox. For years Mozilla Firefox has been my browser of choice because of all of it’s extensions. There was a short period where I used Chrome, but it is not as customizable. Firefox though is changing and is becoming multiprocessor, and that requires re-writing plugins to work with e10, or they won’t work. Right no Firefox will still work without e-10, by keeping Firefox in the old mode without mulit-processor support.

I contacted Xmarks/Lastpass support to see about their e-10 support, and I got this response.

Hello,

Thanks for reaching out to Xmarks Support.

Through testing that we were unable to install Xmarks in Electrolysis e10. At this time, we have no plans to launch Xmarks compatibility with e10. I will submit a formal feature request ticket advocating your desire if you’d like.

Thanks,
Jeremy

So basically a paid service will never update their software and will very shortly lose all support for Firefox my favorite browser! Time to kill my accounts for xmarks and lastpass!

Of course now the question is how to replace these essential programs. I am going to try out Firefox Browser sync, and iCloud sync. Unfortunately iCloud Browser sync only runs on windows, but I have my Surface Pro 4 running Windows 10, so I can try Safari Browser sync to sync between Chrome, Firefox and Safari on Mac. And it is e10 supported, so that might work. I will keep my backup in Firefox on my mac so I can keep replacing my good backups.

Message now works on my Mac and all it took was resetting my PRAM! Some NVIDIA weirdness though.

I can’t believe I had not tried that, but Apple support got me and now Messages works in El Capitan

There was some strangeness though, and it is to do with my NVIDIA Geforce GTX 670 I mentioned in my previous post. After resetting the PRAM the computer came back up, but all the blue was orange again, and this time I took screenshots, but they looks correct once the problem is fixed! And to fix the issue I had to re-install the latest NVIDIA web drivers, though they were showing as already installed. Next time I will take a physical picture.

Still unable to log into Messages with iCloud in El Capitan 10.11.2

So 10.11.2 came out, and I am still unable to log into Messages with iCloud on my Mac, though it works fine on my iPhone and iPad.

So I am on the phone with Apple Tech support. They for sure can see that my MacPro is not authorized. We went through signing out my iPad and iPhone of Messages, Facetime and iCloud and then signing back in, but that didn’t help.

I was then moved to a level 2 tech, who sent me and apple application called Capture Data, and had me try to log into Messages with it collecting packets, and I sent the info to Apple and they will be contacting engineers.

They were very nice and I am supposed to hear back Monday. Fingers crossed that they can figure this out. Seems like it has to be on their end, as it worked fine before El Capitan and the weirdest part to them as well is that it still happens on my clean install of the OS.

Apple launches iCloud 4 for Windows, but still no access to iCloud Drive for Mac!

iclouddrive

Yes, Apple has released iCloud version 4 for Windows, which allows access to the new iCloud Drive. iCloud Drive will let you actually see a file system on iCloud and let you access documents from other apps, instead of having every app in it’s own little world.

You can activate it when you install iOS 8 on any of your devices, but if you do you lose access to iCloud from your Mac, but no longer from Windows! I know this will be integrated with Mac OS Yosemite, but if they can so easily add it to Windows, they could add it to Mavericks, especially since it is on in iOS 8!

This is just like Apple releasing a plug in for windows to sync iCloud bookmarks with Chrome and Firefox and Internet Explorer, but not giving the same thing for Mac! I know there is no Safari for Windows anymore, but many Mac users hate Safari on Mac and use Chrome or Firefox, so this would be very useful. Especially since always have issues with X-Marks messing up my Safari bookmarks (or at least causing the iCloud version of bookmarks to get messed up).

Come Apple lets see iCloud Drive and iCloud Bookmarks for Mavericks right now!

iCloud iOS bookmarks are messed up again

Well it seems to have happened again. My iOS Bookmarks are totally screwed up again, and I can’t seem to get them to clear up.

I will explain my situation again, which has changed slightly. I run Firefox as my primary browser (used to be Chrome, but I am starting to not feel comfortable with Google having dominion over everything I do on the web), but I still use Chrome for some things. To keep my Bookmarks in sync I run Xmarks, and to get my bookmarks on iOS I run Xmarks for Safari, but it doesn’t seem to do the trick.

Even though my bookmarks on my Mac in Safari match my bookmarks in both Firefox and Chrome, this doesn’t seem to make it over to my iOS devices.

In the past I have run Chrome in Windows 8.1 in Parallels. I would download the latest bookmarks with Xmarks, and the Chrome iCloud plug in seemed to overwrite the iCloud bookmarks with clean ones, but this doesn’t seem to be working currently.

I just wish Apple would go back to allowing direct bookmark overwrite via iTunes. They used to allow this, and have gone back to allowing it for Contacts and Calendars, but not for Bookmarks! If they aren’t going to give you settings to overwrite things on iCloud, they need to at least let you just overwrite from your computer!

PLEASE APPLE, LET ME OVERWRITE BOOKMARKS WITH MY COMPUTER! PLEASE!!!!

Macrumors is reporting that the next version of iTunes restores local contact and calendar syncing, and my iCloud Bookmark solution.

MacRumors has the news that iTunes 11.1.6 Beta has returned local iTunes Contact and Calendar sync to your iOS devices. I have railed about this because iCloud syncing is very very broken, especially without the ability to easily overwrite the iCloud information from your computer. Now if only they would add back Bookmark syncing so I could forget about the damn iCloud which seems to constantly screw up my bookmarks! Honestly I have now figured the only solution which seems to get clean bookmarks to my iOS devices. I use x-marks to sync my bookmarks, as I use Chrome as my primary browser with Mozilla as my secondary browser. Since I am not a PC (which has the great iCloud Sync extension for Windows) I have to get my bookmarks into Safari on my mac to be able to sync bookmarks to my iOS devices, so I use X-marks, but while my Safari seems to then have good clean bookmarks, it does not follow that my iCloud bookmarks are at all the same. Instead I seem to end up with many duplicate folders, but most of which are empty in random orders. In order to fix this, I have found that the aforementioned iCloud plug in for Safari only available on PC’s seems to actually overwrite the iCloud bookmarks, which I can’t seem to manage from my Mac. So I boot up Windows 8.1 in Parallels (can also be done in BootCamp) and launch Chrome for PC. Then I download clean bookmarks from Xmarks and wait for iCloud to sync, and that seems to clean up my bookmarks for a little while at least. Why Apple can’t add a control to iCloud to control overwrite, like they used to have for syncing, or like x-marks has I will never know. I mean if there weren’t issues they wouldn’t have brought back local syncing in any for. Lets hope they bring back local syncing of bookmarks soon, so I can forget about the broken iCloud bookmark syncing!!!