PhoneView
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Getting your music outta a tight Jam
Jam (free) is one of those little apps that has found great traction over here at TUAW. From a pair of charming Australian developers, it helps you create silly, but engaging auto-tuned tracks in a variety of styles. It does have, as we discovered, one major flaw. It expects you to use and engage with Facebook. No Facebook, no Jam account, no music sharing. FACEBOOK! Okay, yeah, that's not the worst thing in the world, but it's one that some of us really don't care for. Jam, for whatever reason, has not engaged iTunes sharing. You cannot just hook up your phone and recover music from the iTunes app tab. What a pity! So can you enjoy the Jam and skip the Facebook? Why, yes you can! Ecamm's PhoneView ($29.95) allows you to browse your iPhone and visit the folders for each of your installed apps. It just keeps getting better and better each year. I connected my phone, navigated to the Apps, making sure to enable the Show All Apps checkbox and opened the Jam folder. Inside its Documents subfolder, I found my music. (This was along with a lot of other files that the School Marm iPhone Dev in me feels should properly live in the Library not in Documents. But I digress.) Recordings are stored in m4a format and labeled with the date and beats per minute. You can use PhoneView to grab those out to your desktop. From there, you can archive your creations, play them in iTunes or QuickTime and/or share them over email. Finding this solution has made me a lot more excited about purchasing some of the other Jam styles. I think I may spring for Pop or '80s Dance next! Oh wait.
Daily Mac App: iExplorer
Like most technically-inclined folks, I found myself doing a little family tech support over the holidays. I needed to use an iPod touch as a USB drive to copy files between my Mac and my brother's Windows 7 computer. This isn't something I'll do often so I was looking for something easy and free. I found what I was looking for in iExplorer (formerly "iPhone Explorer") from Macroplant. Let's be clear: iExplorer is a simple application which is designed to do only two things: a) mount your iOS devices like a basic USB "thumb" drive and b) persuade you to consider upgrading to the company's PhoneDisk (US$20) program, which has more features. Some of those features are even shown within the iExplorer UI, and when you click on them, a prompt appears to upgrade. Even if you don't want to upgrade, you'll still run into a mild case of the "nags." While iExplorer is offered for free, the developers ask that you spread the word by posting a message on Twitter or Facebook. Otherwise there's a window that covers up the application each time it launches. For a program that you keep in your "tech support tool belt" for occasional use only, these are minor annoyances. If you do decide to upgrade, I'd suggest checking out PhoneView which does a whole lot more than just mount the iOS device. I have written about PhoneView before, and it continues to be my "go to" app. There is no Windows version, however, so if that's important to you, PhoneDisk might be a better choice. There's not much more to say about iExplorer itself. The app installs simply, and usage is as straightforward as possible. I had a 32 GB USB thumb drive, but it was formatted for Mac OS X and couldn't be read on my brother's Windows 7 machine. A 32 GB iPod touch (or iPad or iPhone) with a lot of free space makes a great method of transportation between Windows and Mac computers. iExplorer filled a gap, and for free.
How to use PhoneView to fix your iPhoto camera roll woes
If the Camera app and Photos app on your iPhone disagree about the contents of your camera roll, you may find yourself needing to get "under the hood" of your iPhone to fix the issue. Fortunately, you can do this without having to jailbreak and hopefully without losing any pictures. You may know the name Ethan Marcotte from the world of web design, particularly the idea of responsive web design. This week Ethan posted on Twitter that he was having a problem with his iPhone. The Camera app saw pictures in his Camera Roll, but the Photos app claimed the Camera Roll was empty. This was preventing iPhoto from synchronizing his pictures. The first problem was figuring out how to get all the pictures off his iPhone. The second problem was figuring out how to getting the Camera and Photos apps to agree about the contents of his camera roll. A few years ago, when I had a similar problem with my iPhone camera, I was able to solve the problem using Ecamm's $20 Mac utility PhoneView. I've written about PhoneView before, and two years ago Dave Caolo even wrote about fixing a bug in iPhone's camera roll, but obviously this is still an issue. PhoneView gives you access to the data on your phone, regardless of whether it is jailbroken or 'vanilla.' Obviously there are some limitations to what it can access, but for things like pictures and music it can be invaluable. The first step is to enable the "Show Entire Disk (Advanced Disk Mode)" preference in PhoneView. Turning on that feature will pop up a disclaimer that if you aren't careful you can cause data loss. Let's proceed with caution, but without undue fear. Once you have Advanced Disk Mode enabled, click on the "Disk" folder under "Data" and look for the two folders highlighted here: DCIM and PhotoData. Select both of those folders (as shown here), and then click "Copy From iPhone" from the toolbar. This makes sure that you have a local copy of the information, including your pictures and videos. You must confirm that you have all your pictures and videos before continuing. Aside: there may be another folder called "Photos" which I believe contains the pictures which are synchronized to your iPhone from your Mac via iPhoto or Aperture. Leave that alone. Once you are sure that you have copied all of your pictures and videos from your iPhone to your Mac, click the "Delete" button. Now, unlock your iPhone and take a new picture, and you should find that the iPhone has re-created the necessary folders and started a new fresh Camera Roll. Problem solved. PhoneView costs $19.95, however a free demo is available. Check out the website for a fuller description of all the various features that PhoneView offers. It's definitely worth the cost if you want to backup lots of various pieces of information such as SMSes, phone call lists, even voicemails.
Apple TV hacking update: PhoneView, ping, VNC support
Veni vidi hacki. Just picked up an Apple TV this afternoon at the Cherry Creek Apple Store (shout out to the guys there!) and while I haven't had a long time to play around with it -- hence the brevity of this post -- I have had a few moments of hands-on testing to share with you. Here are the basic highlights.
PhoneView gives you an inside look at your iPhone data
Some time ago, I looked around for a way to access my iPhone to use it as a portable hard drive, almost like a generic USB device, for copying files back and forth between computers. I decided on PhoneView. At the time I didn't even care too much about the other features it offered. As time has passed, I've liked it even better and better. The application has been polished with each release and now includes a very substantial feature list. In no particular order, here is what the just-released PhoneView 2.3 brings to the table: View pictures on the iPhone. This was a lifesaver to me when iPhoto suddenly refused to import any of the pictures I had taken on my iPhone. It includes a thumbnail of the pictures (and videos) as well the time-stamp. You can even import them directly into iPhoto. Displays Safari's history, bookmarks, and open windows (ever visit a site on your iPhone and then wish you could remember where it was?). It also includes the ability to search the browsing history (URLs and Titles). View/Play/Export Visual Voicemail. Got a message you want to save? You can copy it as an .mp4 (or add it to iTunes, although I can't imagine anyone wanting to do that). The filenames include the date, time, and name (if known). Shows you a list of music, ringtones, videos, podcasts, and audiobooks on your iPhone, and allows you to copy them off the iPhone if you need to (preserving metadata) Use iPhone (or iPod touch) as a portable drive Access the full "Media" folder on non-jailbroken devices (jailbroken devices will have the full file structure displayed) Allows you to view/export SMS and MMS messages (MMS support is new in 2.3) View, Edit, and Create Notes View call log, including whether the call was incoming or outgoing, completed, missed, or cancelled (it also integrates with your address book, so you will see who those calls came from Play/Export/Delete Voice memos The best part of PhoneView is that it does not require you to jailbreak your iPhone, and it is quickly updated to support each new version of the iPhone OS. I've never found myself unable to access my iPhone through PhoneView. PhoneView can only be used over USB. I wish they would come up with a way to access the iPhone over Wi-Fi, but my guess is that is not possible because they would have to have an iPhone app to serve the phone's data, and I have a hard time believing that Apple would approve such a thing. Fortunately, I have an iPhone cable around most of the time. The application costs $19.95, but that includes free upgrades for life. If you ever find yourself wanting more access to your iPhone, PhoneView provides the easiest way to just about every corner of your iPhone.
Ask TUAW: More migration, expanding Apple's Dictionary, syncing iPhone notes, and more
Welcome back to Ask TUAW, our weekly Mac troubleshooting Q&A column! This time we've got more questions on migrating user data when upgrading to Snow Leopard, expanding Apple's built-in Dictionary application, accessing iPhone notes without Mail.app, and more.As always, your suggestions and questions are welcome. Questions for next week should be left in the comments. When asking a question please include which machine you're running and which version of Mac OS X (we'll assume you're running Leopard on an Intel Mac if you don't specify). And now, on to the questions.
Ecamm releases renamed PhoneView
%Gallery-23025% Remember iPhone Drive? And MegaPhone? Well, Ecamm's pretty sure they're (finally) not going to get sued with their newly renamed "PhoneView." Along with the new name for the iPhone/iPod touch data access tool, PhoneView delivers an overall software refresh. You can now add and edit notes without rebooting after each change -- wait until you're done and tap "Apply Changes" for a single reboot instead. There's also undo/redo support for the notes editor. There's a new search feature for music, contacts, SMS, etc. Read on for more details.
