iOS and other Space, Apple really needs to fix this!

Apple iOS has had a serious problem for a very long time, and it seems to be getting worse, or is at least for me. There is a space on iOS devices that is listed as other, and is supposed to be data, be that document data, caches, saves or other things from applications, but it quickly becomes bloated with random crap and can actually completely fill up your device very quickly. In fact I have hit the point where iTunes is in fact reporting that I have more other space than anything else, and enough other to actually not allow my iPhone to sync! Now that is a lot of other data, especially when I last restored my iPhone only a week ago (and a complete restore in iTunes, when you wipe it, re-install the OS and then restore your data and apps from a backup seems to be the only solution to this issue.
Now here is the space on my iPhone.
And here is what iTunes is reporting when I connect my iPhone.
Over 20 GB’s over capacity!
Here is the other space specifically.
And by contrast the Apps and Music space.

Now this is nuts. This is a fresh install of IOS with a restore of my Apps, and I heavily pruned them to make space for more music (as my iPod Classic bit it recently, the horror!).
Now my iPhone won’t even sync because iTunes reports it as over capacity, and yet I have 2 GB free on my iPhone. Now as I said the only real solution is to once again do a backup and restore in iTunes, but this is an imperfect process at best. First off it doesn’t even work from iCloud (I lost 4 months of data when I tried that and had to go back to my last non-cloud backup) and my first restore of my iPhone managed to forget all of my folders and randomly install my Apps until it filled all the pages and stopped installing (though I had more apps on my iPhone before). Another restore fixed this, but it still leaves issues.
You have to re-enter all passwords. And even worse much app data is lost. Google Authenticator will be empty (even with a safe local backup to my computer) so restoring both iOS devices at once is not a good idea, as getting into the things with 2 step authentication without your second password is a huge pain! And apps like SIZER to keep your friends and family clothing sizes just loses all of it data and you have to get it again! And don’t forget to re-log into to your settings for Messages or you will be getting different parts of conversations on different devices!
So just to do a restore, not only does it take at least overnight on your computer, but then you have to spend a good deal of time getting everything working again! Honestly when I backup my iPhone I expect a full backup onto my computer (I can understand a cloud backup being only partial), not a partial backup! Why not make a disc image of the whole install, so a restore literally restores it?

Apple, you need to fix the restore, and especially fix why this Other space bloats to begin with! It has done this since iOS 1, and the problem is only worse now as Apps get bigger and people take more photos and expect to carry more music!

Alsoft has released Diskwarrior 5

After a very long wait, Alsoft has released DiskWarrior 5. It has been a long time since anything but a point update, but that hasn’t kept DiskWarrior from remaining the single best utility for Mac OS X repairs around. And I am excited to see how good this next version is, especially now that it ships on a bootable USB Flash Drive, so it can start up faster and be updated more easily (the CD/DVD upgrade process always took a while).
Check out the new features, including 64 Bit for speed, the ability to update your Diskwarrior Recovery Flash to to the latest OS X, it can even run from OS X Recovery.
This is great news, as this has always been the best repair program! I do like TechTool’s emergency repair partition feature (on my machine I created it on a second hard drive and have Diskwarrior installed), but the USB will make this really use, especially to do repairs on my wife’s MacBook Air!

Apple OS X Yosemite Kills 3rd Party SSD Support!

This is huge news that is all over the internet, it seems that Apple with OS X Yosemite has removed support for third party SSD in OS X 10.10 Yosemite. If you are using it as a boot drive with TRIM enabled (which cleans up garbage on an SSD) it will not boot of of it. This is due to a security update called KEXT SIGNING. It is possible to disable KEXT SIGNING, but if you do it does it across the board and not just for TRIM and will leave your system insecure.

Now this doesn’t affect may except power users, and neither does it affect SSD’s from Other World Computing, which do not need TRIM to work correctly.

I wonder what this means for Hackintosh’s? Probably means turning off KEXT SIGNING.

I have always waned to upgrade my old MacPro to SSD to speed it up, but just couldn’t afford it. I was thinking a Sonnet Tech Temp SSD Pro Plus 6 Gb/s Host, and one 6 GB 480gb Mercury Extreme Pro 480 GB, but that would be around $700, but would leave room for a second SSD. It would be a pain to move everything from my personal drive to a second drive, but I think not only would the SSD speed things up, but it would be great to start with a fresh system again, as my system has some serious issues that a fresh install would likely fix.

Still not something that is going to happen any time soon.

PVC on wringing new life out of an old Mac Pro Tower

Scott Simmons at the Pro Video Coalition takes a look at extending the life of the old Mac Pro Tower.

I have been trying to do the same with mine. Have not yet been able to afford an SSD boot drive, or an NVIDIA K5000 (though I do have a PC GTX 670), and have added USB 3.

Would love to have an expansion chassis, but it almost begs the question of is it worth it to stay Mac. I would love to be able to get a MacBook Pro to keep me Mac and then build a huge PC tower with all the expansion and ports I will ever need. Thunderbolt is great, but it is expensive, and not as fast as PCI, and I would rather have all the internal storage I could have than have to get external storage.

FitBit will not be integrating with Apple HealthKit and it’s Health App

Well it seems that FitBit will not be integrating it’s Fitness data with the newly released Apple Health App via HealthKit.

You can see this very commented post at Fitbit’s Forums, where FitBit gives the following statment:

 Status: Reviewed By Moderator

We do not currently have plans to integrate with HealthKit.

It is an interesting new platform and we will watch as it matures, looking for opportunities to improve the Fitbit experience. At the moment, we’re working on other exciting projects that we think will be valuable to users. The question we want you to keep in mind when providing feedback is: What do you imagine a HealthKit integration would entail and what do you expect to get out of it?
Your voices are being heard. We’re actively reviewing your responses and providing feedback to our product development team.

Now they say they are listening and want to your feedback, but there are already 32 pages of feedback of people wanting this integration, and they do say they have no plans to integrate with HealthKit.

FitBit does have a $49.99 a year premium service called Benchmark to get better info on your fitness data, so they want to make money off of your data, but they already offer free integration with Microsoft’s Health Vault, which negates any argument about having to pay to access your data how you want to.

Health and HealthKit are one of the most exciting new features of the recently released iOS 8. It is a new central repository for your health data, that eventually will even be able to pass information to your doctor if something changes with your health. It is meant to not only work with the new Apple Watch, but with other fitness trackers and devices. And Apple even showed the FitBit app in their presentation, hoping that Fitbit would integrate.

Now I have been a FitBit user from the beginning, with an original, a One and a Force (which I returned because it was giving me a rash) and an Aria for weight, and got a FitBit for my mom as well. So I have been a very good customer. And I have even been saving my refund check for my Force to see what FitBit would be replacing it with, but this makes me think I would be better off putting that money into an Apple Watch.

I have been quite excited by the Apple Watch as it is a Fitness tracker and also a replacement for my Pebble Watch, but the one day battery life and lack of waterproofing has me quite nervous, but the Fitibt Force was not WaterProof and neither is the One.

So maybe it is time to start thinking about moving away from Fitbit. I could sell my One and my Aria and get an Apple Watch and either an iHealth Lite or iHealth Body Analysis Scale (iHealth already has HealthKit intergation from their 4 apps and 9 devices!).

FitBit really needs to get on the ball here or they are going to lose a lot of customers who don’t want to be stuck only within their ecosystem.

Adobe Updated and added to it’s iOS Mobile Apps

Adobe has completely updated it’s line up of Mobile Apps. Including Adobe Premiere Clip for Editing and Adobe Voice for creating animated videos from Lightroom, and Adobe Illustrator Draw and Line apps. And the new Adobe Shape to create custom Vector Shapes.

Very cool. If only their pen and ruler were less than $200. I still wish I had the Wacom tablet, though really it needs a new version, but maybe the Wacom pen would be great.

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!

The Apple Watch has been Announced along with the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus

Apple has announced the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, the bigger and biggest versions and with more storage coming out September 19th (with iOS 8 on September 18th), moving the iPhone 5S to the low end, and the iPhone 5C 8 GB for Free! Love the 1080 diplay on the big one, but think it is going to be way too big. Apple Pay sounds great, but I won’t have a new iPhone for a while, so I am excited it works with the Apple Watch.

And even more exciting is the Apple Watch. As a Pebble and FitBit user I am very excited. It has a digital crown to help navigate without covering the display. As well as the inductive charging to leave this waterproof (my biggest FitBit complaint). And I love the changeable watch bands! And 2 Watch sizes and 3 types, the Watch in Stainless, The Sport in stronger aluminum or the Watch Edition in gold for the high end. And having siri on watch is pretty cool.

I am most excited for fitness and workout apps. Actually the workout seems more exciting, as it does your specific workouts, vs just overall daily activity. The integration with healthkit will be great though, especially if it also works with fitbit or other health trackers, so you can see your friends on other devices (as I love seeing how my mom does on fitbit, which is usually much better than me). And having the heartbeat monitor is also very exciting.

And Apple TV control is very cool, since it will be on your wrist already.

Expensive though at $349 to start in early 2015.

•••

Too bad apple screwed up the stream so much! Couldn’t watch it on my Apple TV, and it started with Chinese translation overlayed, and it keeps stopping and starting! Bad job Apple.

LastPass for iOS 8 Announced

iOS8_Reveal

LastPass has announced LastPass as a Safari Plug In for iOS 8. So you can access your vault and fill in passwords right from within Safari in iOS 8! AWESOME!

So about my Password Managers question. The $12 a year LastPass will now work within iOS browsers!

Still want to see what SplashiD does, though I am still considering moving everything over to 1Password as I can keep all my passwords away from the cloud that way. Just don’t trust internet security at all anymore, though at least I do use 2 step authentication where I can.

The BBC has adopted Final Cut Pro X for News Gathering

FCP.CO has the story. And Big news for Apple and Final Cut Pro X to have moved the entire BBC News Pipeline to Final Cut Pro X.

Still pretty surprising to me, as I know Final Cut Pro X has really grown as a program, but things like Adobe Anywhere seem perfect for news, as you can edit remotely without having the media locally, which seems huge for news organizations, but I guess they like the Speed and Power of FCP X.

I still don’t like it, mainly because of it’s timeline, because I do graphics heavy shows and I like to have my timeline very organized so things are easy to swap out or turn on and off with ease, but it isn’t like you are going back and doing different versions of pieces for news, so the organization might not be quite as important for that.