Archive for June, 2010

iOS 4 Upgrade: Workaround for Stuck on “Backing Up iPhone” step

Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010

I tried updating my iPhone 3G to iOS 4 today (along with millions of others no doubt). The update downloaded fine, but then iTunes tried to backup my iPhone before installing the update, and got stuck on the “Backing up your iPhone” dialog. Well not technically “stuck”, but glacially slow. Like, 1 pixel of the progress bar every 30 minutes. It would have taken all day (and then some) to finish.

After trying a few things, the workaround was simply to hit the Restore button in iTunes. This then “restored” the iPhone using the already-downloaded iOS 4, then copied all my apps back from iTunes. (I had to sync my music manually afterwards.)

The downside was that I lost my app data, which was a bit of a downer, but at least I was up and running with the new OS. And it’s nice to start with a clean slate in a way. My iPhone feels a bit snappier now – not sure if it’s because it was wiped, or if iOS 4 is faster. Anyway, loving it so far.

This forum post outlines the procedure.

Update June 23

I was slightly irritated to discover that my entire Camera Roll was empty upon restore. Turns out that the Camera Roll is backed up by iTunes, but it didn’t restore them from the backup (no idea why). Fortunately I was able to find an old backup of my iPhone on my Time Machine disk from a few days ago (when it was still iPhone OS 3), and use this excellent tool to extract all the Camera Roll photos from the backup:

iPhone / iPod Touch Backup Extractor

I had to temporarily copy the backup folder back to ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/ so that the extractor app would find it. Then I just extracted the “iPhone OS Files” entry to a folder, and my Camera Roll images were inside a Media/DCIM folder inside there. Phew!

More info here.

Apple really could be more explicit about the iPhone backup process – i.e. what’s backed up, where it’s backed up, and the backup file format. Sounds like they’ve changed the whole backup system again in iOS 4 so iPhone / iPod Touch Backup Extractor no longer works. Grr!

Lesson learned for next time: Always import your iPhone Camera Roll using iPhoto or Image Capture before you upgrade…

Apple Just Released Mac OS X 10.6.4, Photoshop CS3 Works Again

Wednesday, June 16th, 2010

I finally took the plunge on Tuesday and upgraded my iMac from Leopard to Snow Leopard. Oops! Bad move, mister. My Photoshop CS3 started crashing on launch.

Whose fault was this? Sounds like you could blame Apple or Adobe, but personally I’d say Adobe after reading this forum post. Adobe should have followed Apple’s guidelines on serial number length.

For the record, my iMac’s serial number is “SystemSerialNumb”. Why? Because Apple replaced my logic board 2 years ago. Why didn’t they give the logic board a proper serial number? No idea, but it seems a bit slack of Apple.

Anyway, all this is moot now because Apple have today released Mac OS X 10.6.4, which works around the issue. Yay! This just a day after I upgraded to Snow Leopard. Talk about lucky timing for me! Some poor sods have been stuck with no Photoshop since March because of this problem.

One other unrelated problem with Snow Leopard: Google Analytics no longer works in Safari 5. I get the error “This page has encountered an error that may prevent it from working correctly.” Could be a problem Google’s end though.

Problems aside, Snow Leopard seems lovely and fast so far. I can’t point to anything specific, but the whole thing just feels snappier somehow. Finder windows come up more quickly. Mail brings up messages and message lists faster. Browsing other Macs on the network is smoother. I no longer get a slight lag when typing into a form in Firefox. Apps launch more speedily. I also love the new Dock pop-up menus – they suit the Dock much better than the old grey menus that are used in the menu bar.

Ooh, and I’ve just noticed that some apps, such as TextEdit, auto-correct text as you type (for example, “teh” -> “the”). Nice! For reference, you can toggle this feature by right-clicking and choosing Spelling and Grammar > Correct Spelling Automatically.

Overall I’m a happy camper with Snow Leopard. 🙂