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iOS 9: More than meets the eye

The Real Abed

Perma-Junior
Does this happen for anyone else?

All of a sudden, my iPhone asks to transfer purchases whenever I backup.
Has been doing this for me for months now. Nothing even transfers. All my apps and music are already on my computer and it still asks even though nothing ends up being transferred.
 

mrkgoo

Member
Has been doing this for me for months now. Nothing even transfers. All my apps and music are already on my computer and it still asks even though nothing ends up being transferred.
Dammit. It only just started happening with me.

Maybe it's a coincidence, but it was around the time I redone loaded the Apple Store app directly onto my phone.

It's either a bug with iTunes or there's a rogue app somewhere in iTunes that wants to be updated but can't because iOS 9 no longer transfers back.

But it's annoying.


Thanks for confirming I'm not the only one with the issue.
 

dallow_bg

nods at old men
Out of curiosity, is there a reason you guys are still syncing with iTunes?

Safety secondary back up so I still back up every 2-3 weeks.
iCloud otherwise.

And when I do upgrade or change phones I always do the full backup and restore from my PC. It's just faster than downloading all my apps again via iCloud restore.
 

mrkgoo

Member
Out of curiosity, is there a reason you guys are still syncing with iTunes?
I trust a local back up more.

Plus I sync albums from aperture and my music.

I just don't know why it's asking to transfer purchases. Because like I said I deleted all apps from my parents iTunes library and the iOS devices don't care.

Maybe it's like a song or movie I purchased? I did them on my computer though.
 

The Real Abed

Perma-Junior
Out of curiosity, is there a reason you guys are still syncing with iTunes?
Why don't you? I like having redundant backups plus it restores faster.

Do local backups backup texts?
Yes. But it's still stupid that I can't back them up and restore them separately from everything else.

I wish you could restore backups in parts. Like just restore one part at a time. Like text messages.
 

Vyer

Member
Why trust a local backup more? Seems like losing your local pc saves are far more likely than the catastrophic failure required to lose all iCloud and appleid data.

I can see the faster restore however.. Though most of the major apps I use have their own restore processes and I don't mind the occasional fresh start. All the most important stuff for me (contacts, passwords, photos, music) are there regardless sans texts.

I don't know. Syncing with iTunes sucks and I'm glad to not have to do it. Plus it seems like carrying over the backup for years and years tends to lead to nagging bugs and issues after a while.
 

The Real Abed

Perma-Junior
I use both. Plus I have my data in four different places. I'm not going to lose my backup. In my case, losing my data off iCloud is only exactly as likely as losing any of my local backups for the following reason:

My house would have to burn down, all my local backups would have to be destroyed, AND CrashPlan's server farm would have to be completely decimated at the same time. Something that is as likely as iCloud also being destroyed on the same day. And since restoring my phone would be the last thing on my mind on a day where my house burned down, it's a non-issue.

Local backup trumps cloud one for the recovery time. But having both assures I'll be able to restore even if I'm not at home.

And a fresh start is not an option until SMS and iMessages are stored on iCloud instead of backups. I will not ever do a restore if I can't get my messages back. That just ain't happening. (I wonder if one of those iPhone explorer programs has the ability of putting the database back and having it work. Could I manually pull the database file off my phone before a restore and put it back on afterwards and have it work? Or will the phone know and say "Nope! That's not valid!"? I'd like to test it out to be honest.)
 

Vyer

Member
Man, them text messages got you by the balls. ;p

In all seriousness though, I get it. But i tend to parse it out for the most part. Like my photos and videos are covered by an OneDrive backup as well. So i guess in some ways I still have the multiple backups thing going as well, just still taking a local iTunes sync still out of the equation.

But yeah, it's too bad there's not a good text solution, as it would definitely free you up a bit.


Though, now that I think about it....even with a restore of a local backup, doesn't it still have to verify with Apple's servers?
 

The Real Abed

Perma-Junior
Possibly. Why would it matter? What's bad about iTunes syncing anyway? I don't have any problems personally. I just wish syncing was done over iCloud. I probably wouldn't even bother backing up locally as much as I do if I wasn't doing it when syncing just to get it done. I'd much rather have iTunes be all cloud based and have syncing be part of that. By which I mean last played and play counts would be updated over the internet in real-time and I wouldn't even need to bother syncing. Also being able to edit playlists, all playlists, from my iOS device would be perfect. Just give me iTunes in the Cloud. Or iCloud Music Library. Or whatever.

And my messages are my life. They will never die. I once restored my entire phone because I accidentally deleted an entire thread. That's how important they are. My threads are months or even years long. The only stuff I delete is images when I've archived them and messages for login approval codes or stuff like that. (Which I get a lot of since I use 2-factor for everything I can.)
 

The Real Abed

Perma-Junior
Yes and no because iOS is terrible at letting you scroll to the beginning of a long message thread since it loads it in chunks and Spotlight can't even find text from the beginning let alone take you to that location when you do find something in a search.

I have plenty of messages that I need for evidence, proof and posterity.
 
I delete all messages, voice mails, emails, call logs, browser history, etc at the start of each year. I like starting over.
I used to get attached to old messages but they just stopped serving a purpose after a while and I'm way too anal an organiser to have anything 'unneccesary' laying around (if I haven't used an app for about a month I'll delete it.)
Different strokes though. Personally I don't get how people can have thousands of unread emails everyday without setting up junk filters. That would drive me insane!
 

The Real Abed

Perma-Junior
Speaking of which, I have 17 voice mails saved up from blocked numbers that I keep forgetting to listen to just for the hell of it. Most of which are from some business who keeps calling me asking if Nicole can work today. My name is not Nicole. I am not related to a Nicole. I even changed my outgoing message to specifically say "This is not Nicole's phone number" and I still have voicemails from them. Yeah. You guys ain't that bright.

As for email, most email I get is newsletters. No one uses email for normal purposes anymore. (Well not in my line of work. I don't work in an office where I would expect it would be used more.)

Basically I keep everything and validate its existence later.
 

Gobbly

Banned
Speaking of which, I have 17 voice mails saved up from blocked numbers that I keep forgetting to listen to just for the hell of it. Most of which are from some business who keeps calling me asking if Nicole can work today. My name is not Nicole. I am not related to a Nicole. I even changed my outgoing message to specifically say "This is not Nicole's phone number" and I still have voicemails from them. Yeah. You guys ain't that bright
Stop trying to get out of work, Nicole.
 

dallow_bg

nods at old men
Yes and no because iOS is terrible at letting you scroll to the beginning of a long message thread since it loads it in chunks and Spotlight can't even find text from the beginning let alone take you to that location when you do find something in a search.

I have plenty of messages that I need for evidence, proof and posterity.

You really should use one of those iPhone explorer programs to get a backup out of the phone.
Would make finding those old messages a lot easier too.

(If you don't already)
 
Possibly. Why would it matter? What's bad about iTunes syncing anyway? I don't have any problems personally. I just wish syncing was done over iCloud. I probably wouldn't even bother backing up locally as much as I do if I wasn't doing it when syncing just to get it done. I'd much rather have iTunes be all cloud based and have syncing be part of that. By which I mean last played and play counts would be updated over the internet in real-time and I wouldn't even need to bother syncing. Also being able to edit playlists, all playlists, from my iOS device would be perfect. Just give me iTunes in the Cloud. Or iCloud Music Library. Or whatever.

And my messages are my life. They will never die. I once restored my entire phone because I accidentally deleted an entire thread. That's how important they are. My threads are months or even years long. The only stuff I delete is images when I've archived them and messages for login approval codes or stuff like that. (Which I get a lot of since I use 2-factor for everything I can.)

I do all of my music management like you described without ever connecting my phone to iTunes. My play counts update and when I edit my playlist on one device like my iPhone those changes are pushed to all of my other device. Unless I'm understanding wrong, I think everything you outlined (except for last played syncing) already exists.
 
What the fuck is the deal with downloading updates from Apple via iTunes? I've had to restore and update a few phones recently, including one right now, and I'm getting 100k/s. Same with previous devices/updates.

3 hours remaining for 2GBs on a T1.
 

Tunesmith

formerly "chigiri"
What the fuck is the deal with downloading updates from Apple via iTunes? I've had to restore and update a few phones recently, including one right now, and I'm getting 100k/s. Same with previous devices/updates.

3 hours remaining for 2GBs on a T1.

Sounds about right for a T1 line (a designation I haven't heard in probably 10 years), a typical T1 is just 1.5mbps.
 
What the fuck is the deal with downloading updates from Apple via iTunes? I've had to restore and update a few phones recently, including one right now, and I'm getting 100k/s. Same with previous devices/updates.

3 hours remaining for 2GBs on a T1.
Tried downloading the updates from the Apple website?

My ISP (Virgin) throttle iTunes downloads at times.YMMV
 

dallow_bg

nods at old men
What the fuck is the deal with downloading updates from Apple via iTunes? I've had to restore and update a few phones recently, including one right now, and I'm getting 100k/s. Same with previous devices/updates.

3 hours remaining for 2GBs on a T1.

2-3 hours seems normal for T1 speeds...
Does T1 still exist?
 

Vyer

Member
Man, a T1. Brings back some memories.

Possibly. Why would it matter? What's bad about iTunes syncing anyway? I don't have any problems personally. I just wish syncing was done over iCloud. I probably wouldn't even bother backing up locally as much as I do if I wasn't doing it when syncing just to get it done. I'd much rather have iTunes be all cloud based and have syncing be part of that. By which I mean last played and play counts would be updated over the internet in real-time and I wouldn't even need to bother syncing. Also being able to edit playlists, all playlists, from my iOS device would be perfect. Just give me iTunes in the Cloud. Or iCloud Music Library. Or whatever.

And my messages are my life. They will never die. I once restored my entire phone because I accidentally deleted an entire thread. That's how important they are. My threads are months or even years long. The only stuff I delete is images when I've archived them and messages for login approval codes or stuff like that. (Which I get a lot of since I use 2-factor for everything I can.)

I was just thinking out loud, seems to further hinder local backups w iTunes as the hypothetical bad shit that killed AppleID and iTunes would maybe hurt that process. Let's hope we never find out, lol.

And yeah I got a whole lot of threads from 2 step too. Though I do like how they are auto grabbed at times on iOS devices.
 

The Real Abed

Perma-Junior
That doesnt work not anymore, Apple has ristricted it
Yeah, they seem to have broken all those explorer programs. I used to use a program that cleared caches for me and worked brilliantly. Deleted all the large web caches that apps like Safari, Tumblr, Twitter and FaceBook would build up and freed up so much space. And I had a program that could browse the disk in the phone and supposedly put stuff back. I used it a couple times to fix my iTunes sync when it had a problem with leaving behind MP3 files that it was supposed to have deleted.

Now I don't think any of them work. I'd give anything to be able to just backup and restore just the message database.

I'd rather Apple make it sync all my messages, SMS and iMessage alike, to iCloud so when I open Messages on my other machines they're completely identical. Right now it syncs them as it goes. When a message comes in, it gets pushed through the cloud to the other machines you have set to receive them. But if there's any threads that existed before, they won't have the messages. And if you delete a message, it only deletes from that device, not all of them. And sometimes messages download out of order or it skips messages all together. I also hate when my iPhone friends messages come in on my Mac first and it takes a whole minute or so for it to even show up on my phone. And when it does, it comes in backwards.

I just want proper message syncing! I want it to be like FaceBook Messenger. Open it from anywhere I am logged in and everything is there. Delete a message from my end and it disappears from all my devices. Maybe iOS 10. Maybe. Probably not.

I also hate that threads on iOS are separated by number (If a friend has gone through half a dozen different numbers, it shows them all separately as different threads.) but on OS X they are separated by person. (All threads are merged into one thread by date and it shows the phone number for the new thread when it starts.) And how it just shows the number on OS X and not the nickname it has. Like my friend who actually exists and has gone through 6 different numbers in the past year so I have them all in her contacts labeled as "Cell", "Old number", "free texting app", "old number 2", etc. But instead OS X only displays the number itself and makes you have to remember what one it was. And I never know which one I'm going to be replying to when I do reply. I assume it replies to the most recently received one but it's still a little paranoia that my message might get sent to a number she no longer has. I'd delete all the numbers from her contact card but then I end up with orphaned threads with no name. Wouldn't be a problem if I could give threads from single people a name like I can with group chats.

And another thing that grinds my gears is that on OS X they display as their normal name, but on iOS they use the nickname, which is what I want. Don't understand why.

I do all of my music management like you described without ever connecting my phone to iTunes. My play counts update and when I edit my playlist on one device like my iPhone those changes are pushed to all of my other device. Unless I'm understanding wrong, I think everything you outlined (except for last played syncing) already exists.
This does not happen for me at all. All my playlists are pretty much smart playlists sorted by either last played or play count. But none of them change when I play my music. They don't update until I sync. Are you using iTunes Match? Because that's not a feature of vanilla Mac usage. I want to be able to have everything stored on the cloud and have smart playlists editable from the devices. If this is something iTunes Match does, I will damn sure buy $1 worth of iCloud storage for my music and a $24 subscription. Because its exactly what I've wanted forever. To not ever have to launch iTunes if I don't have to.

I remember back a long time ago, the iPad Music app updated itself when music was played. But I think that stopped working years ago and I don't even use my iPad for music. I use my phone. Let me do everything from my phone. And let me also manage it, and listen to it, from iCloud.com on a web browser. If Apple does or did this, they'd have my $36 a year.

I really hope iOS 10 and OS X 10.12 is bringing some really good changes to us.

And yeah I got a whole lot of threads from 2 step too. Though I do like how they are auto grabbed at times on iOS devices.
I really have come to appreciate the fact that I can have my phone across the room and can still receive the authentication codes when I need to log into something without having to get up and grab it. That's a great convenience. It just pops up on my screen. I love it.
 

Blackhead

Redarse
iOS 9.x spotlight bug explained: It's the RAM.

Spotlight has been failing for me since I updated to iOS 9 - no results appear. It got much worse with 9.3. Force-quitting background apps, especially Reeder.app, helps. It acts like a limited RAM bug, but I think there are ways Spotlight may fail.

From Apple Discussions it doesn’t hit devices with 2GB of RAM, it’s a problem for 1GB devices with lots of indexed content and/or memory hogging apps.

There are two workarounds for the bug:
  1. Force-quit background apps — may help free RAM. Try again.
  2. Siri works for launching apps even when spotlight fails.
I think setting all Spotlight indexing option to On helps — I have a feeling there’s a bug with rendering results that is worse if the rendering process has to manage exclusions. Restarting your phone daily probably helps too.
 
This does not happen for me at all. All my playlists are pretty much smart playlists sorted by either last played or play count. But none of them change when I play my music. They don't update until I sync. Are you using iTunes Match? Because that's not a feature of vanilla Mac usage. I want to be able to have everything stored on the cloud and have smart playlists editable from the devices. If this is something iTunes Match does, I will damn sure buy $1 worth of iCloud storage for my music and a $24 subscription. Because its exactly what I've wanted forever. To not ever have to launch iTunes if I don't have to.

I remember back a long time ago, the iPad Music app updated itself when music was played. But I think that stopped working years ago and I don't even use my iPad for music. I use my phone. Let me do everything from my phone. And let me also manage it, and listen to it, from iCloud.com on a web browser. If Apple does or did this, they'd have my $36 a year.

I really hope iOS 10 and OS X 10.12 is bringing some really good changes to us.


I really have come to appreciate the fact that I can have my phone across the room and can still receive the authentication codes when I need to log into something without having to get up and grab it. That's a great convenience. It just pops up on my screen. I love it.

I do use iTunes Match. In fact I've subscribed to it since the day it launched. I will have to do some playing around to see if it does exactly what you'd want since I don't use smart playlists, just ones that I build myself. I can tell you this, I play music almost exclusively on my iPhone and my play counts sync to iTunes on my Mac and fairly certain my ratings do too. If I make a change to my playlist that change gets pushed to iTunes on my laptop and iPad or if I make the change in iTunes when I'm messing around with my music on there then the change shows up to the playlist on my phone.

My use case, if it helps, goes a little something like this. I add music to my iTunes library on my MacBook, I then run the update my music library function so that it matches my music to the Apple catalog or uploads what it can't match. Then I add the songs I want to an existing playlist or a new one and those changes show up on my phone. I have an unlimited data plan so I don't store any music on my phone, I just stream it from Match. For my setup it actually works quite well.
 

jts

...hate me...
Any trick to only enable TouchID for app stuff but not for the lockscreen?
Not really a trick, but from the Touch ID & Passcode settings menu you can disable Touch ID for unlocking. It will still work for the rest of the stuff.
 

Ambitious

Member
App Review got bored with waving through shitty scam apps, so they decided to do something else for a change today and pulled all Reddit apps from the App Store. Apparently, the took offense with that fact that one could browse NSFW content with these apps by enabling an NSFW toggle, even though this had been possible for years. So, great job, every single App Review team member who ever reviewed any version of any of these apps and didn't notice the toggle.

Oh, and the official Reddit app, which also has a NSFW toggle, was the only one that was not pulled.

The apps are already back in the store, with the toggles removed.
Here's the Reddit thread, and here's the MacStories article.
 
When are Apple going to learn that I like swearing? iOS 10 banner feature or bust.

iOS 10: You'll Fucking Love It.

The Reddit apps returned. Just removed the NSFW toggle in the app. Will still be NSFW depending on your Reddit user settings. I guess the appearance of the toggle was the issue.
 

Ambitious

Member
Well now that that Phil Schiller is in charge of the App Store, I'm sure we don't have to wait much longer for some positive changes.

Apple has assembled a secret team dedicated to exploring potential changes that could be made to the App Store, reports Bloomberg. Among the features being considered is an option that would allow developers to pay a fee to have their apps "more prominently displayed," perhaps at the top of a list of search results. Changes to "improve the way" customers browse in the App Store are also under consideration.

oh
 

EmiPrime

Member
I wish I could tell my device to download apps from any browser. This is something Android does a lot better.

The App Store isn't a great experience on iOS, especially on a 4" screen.
 

Ambitious

Member
I just use the App Store for updates now. Not finding apps. Finding apps is something I use the internet for.

Yup. The App Store is the last place I'd go to find apps. No, actually, scratch that: I wouldn't ever use the App Store to find apps, not even as the last option. I rely on Google and competent curators like Federico Viticci and the likes.
 

Kaimu

Member
Is anyone else having issues with the YouTube app draining battery like crazy? And I mean like 7% in a few minutes or something while using the app
 

EmiPrime

Member
Not Youtube but Google related, Play Music made up over 60% of my battery yesterday because I left a track on pause. It stayed on as a background process preventing my iPod from deep sleeping until I killed it.
 
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