If you check this out online with a swifty Google search you’ll find many reports and some solutions to a problem about syncing. For instance, this: Apple Support page.
But it’s not working for me. And given how reliant I am on this stuff, it’s becoming a big issue: calendar entries on my iPhone don’t make it to my iPad and vice versa.
I’ve no solution myself but wanted to warn you: check your calendar to see that it’s all copying across the way nature intended.
It’s hard to believe now but Apple was once within 90 days of going bankrupt. Samsung isn’t in as bad a way as that but it has just announced that its profits are down. A lot. Seriously, a lot. They’ve dropped 60%.
Cue lots of articles. Most go along the lines of how every technology and business advisor or expert in the world has said, suggested and sometimes demanded that Apple copy Samsung and give us cheap phones with massive screens. Apple’s ignored them all and suddenly, say the articles, is looking pretty smart.
I agree. It appeals to me as a writer, since we spend so long typing away, that Apple’s head-down working approach is paying off.
But I am frustrated. Today Samsung is deaths’-dooring and everybody understands why. (Short answer: the company leaps in quickly to copy existing hits like the iPhone and now other firms are leaping in to copy Samsung. Samsung was a ‘fast follower’ rather than the innovator everybody kept telling us and now everybody always knew that,)
It’s just that we’ve been told Android is the very best phone system in the world and it just never is when you pick the bleedin’ thing up. Quick aside? A respected, long-standing computer journalist handed me a Nexus 7 tablet one day and I agreed it was very good. The icons and the spacing of them looked a bit ugly to me but actually, I think the spacing of the icons on iPads is ugly too.
But I tried to swipe to the left and couldn’t because I was at the first screen. I can’t remember how this worked now but it had a very clear and obvious visual clue that I was at the first. I scrolled to the right, reached the end and had no visual clue. This journalist rolled his eyes and said it was because Apple ‘invented’ whatever you call that elastic-band-like thing when you reach the end of a list or a screen.
I call it crap. The designers of this Nexus couldn’t be bothered to do something at both ends of the scrolling, they just did one. Absolutely zero interest in making something useful, zero interest in having any pride in the work, just knock it out, tick the box that says there’s the elastic band like alternative, then claim it’s better than iPad. And wait for journalists to say it’s better than iPad.
If you like Android, great. Have a good time. You have far more patience than I do.
But if you like Android on Samsung, that’s now… interesting.
I have a problem with Samsung copying Apple, I have a problem with Android really, really copying iOS, I just also have a problem with articles saying that this 60% profit drop is the end of the line for Samsung.
Mind you, you know that 60% drop? It is for the quarter before the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus came out. The iPhones with the big screens that were previously an Android purview.
There’s an interview doing the rounds that apparently features John Sculley talking about Steve Jobs and Apple. (Previously on Sculley… Jobs hires him, they’re best pals, then they’re not, Sculley fires Jobs. Now read on.)
I say the interview apparently says this because, on the one hand, I haven’t watched it yet – I thought we could do that together – and on the other because every bleedin’ interview with that man is about exactly that same topic.
What I’m interested in more, from our productivity point of view, is how Sculley attempted to shape his story when he was still in the thick of it. He wrote a book called Odyssey: From Pepsi to Apple which at the time I really enjoyed. Later I said that to someone and they looked at me exactly the way I would now. Because of them, I got the book back off my shelf, opened it up, shut it again.
It’s not a very good book.
But here’s a guy attempting to put his career and its single most notable moment into a shape, a narrative that ultimately showed him in the best light. I don’t care whether he succeeded or whether it was even possible, I do care that we could try the same thing.
Why not? You are CEO of your work, I am of mine, let’s write our autobiographies in such a way that we make sense and most importantly that our successes get better coverage than our failures.
I’m not sure I’m really advocating that we write 100,000-word books about us, I have limits to my ego – says the man with two blogs, a speaking tour and previously a podcast – but that bit with the successes and failures could be big.
I forget things I do that are good. If I pull something off then no matter how hard it was for me, it’s done now so I know it’s easy for everybody else and I undervalue my own effort. But I just went a bit bombastic for a second, wrote about my towering glory and that time only last night when I successfully roasted a chicken at 1am, I could feel good about myself.
Possibly also silly, but.
Here’s that Sculley interview if you’re sitting comfortably.
As of thirty minutes ago, Apple has fixed a serious bug in the App Store. If apps were instantly crashing on launch, try them again.
If they still aren’t working, check for updates and that will sort it out.
It’s not clear how many apps were affected: it wasn’t limited to any one manufacturer.
Late last night I installed OmniFocus on Angela’s iPad – because we have family sharing on she can use my copy – and it wouldn’t launch. Whereas I installed my OmniOutliner for her two and that’s fine.
This is one of those cases where the next time you get chance to look at the problem, it’s already been solved.
So that’s good. But I don’t know, bendgate followed by iOS 8.0.1 and .2, it’s not great.
I hadn’t even noticed that it was out but reportedly iOS 8 has already had its first update – and something isn’t working.
I’m not clear yet what it is but let’s have Apple sort it before we trying finding out.
I think that’s advice we can all take in our writing. When you start writing, you get asked when your novel is coming. When you’ve a novel, you’re asked when the film is coming. On and on it goes. But just keep writing. When it comes, it comes.
None of which features in the new BusinessWeek interview with Apple’s Tim Cook but all of it features in there. Apple’s been knocked a lot for a lack of innovation and all the way time it’s been working on a watch. You might not like it, you might very well not be interested in it, but you know that every other smartwatch that comes out is going to borrow from Apple’s design.
The piece interested me anyway but in a small way it reminded me of writing. The way that a Doctor Who release comes out a year after I write it so I have the weird thing of people asking me about my new one and I have to think which one they mean and what I can say. I told you it was a small way. But it’s there.
Dash over to The Onion for the full version of this: I particularly like a section with tech specs for the two phone’s cases.
Bad things first, since you’re wondering.
Initially I thought it was running visibly slower than iOS 7 on my iPhone 5. It was. There was definite lag, even when swiping between home screens. But I’ve been running iOS 8 since last night and now, about an hour after I last grumbled at that lag, it’s gone. The phone feels fast again. But it really had been bad enough that I was going to suggest you hold off unless you have a new iPhone.
I’m going to suggest that anyway. Let everyone else work through this. But when you do update on an older iPhone, and it is worth it, be prepared for it to take a few hours to get back up to speed.
On my iPad Air, by the way, it was immediately perfect. Fast and responsive, not one single pixel of a doubt that if you have an iPad Air you should upgrade to iOS 8 now.
On both machines, though, Safari was irritating. There’s this thing called Private Mode – if you were fussed about nobody seeing who you bank with online, you switch to Private Mode and Safari doesn’t track the address, it doesn’t keep the details in its history. When you’re done, come out of Private Mode and nobody can see that you’ve been to Offshore Islands Dodgy Bank Co. Fine. I didn’t realise I’d switched into it but I had, on both machines, before upgrading. After the upgrade, all existing tabs were considered to be in Private Mode and there is no way to say no, hang on, I want this one to be un-private. I had to swipe-to-remove each separate tab. And to keep important ones, it was copy-and-paste on the address. It won’t be an issue again but it was a pain today.
So was setting up 1Password. The only part that was iOS 8’s fault is the way you have to set up the ability to use 1Password extensions, to be able to be there in Safari and say oi, 1Password, pop my username and password in here. It’s just slightly confusing how you do it, and since I’d been through a very similar but not identical process adding Pocket, it was more confusing still trying to fathom the difference. (Pocket isn’t a lot better: it gives you the error message ‘not logged in’ when you first try to use it but you’re on your own figuring out how you therefore log in.)
Generally I’ve found that 1Password is a marvellous app in every single possible way bar anything to do with upgrading to new versions. It’s just a bag of frustration. The company goes to lengths to make it all automatic but since it goes wrong every time, the automation becomes a barrier to trying to fix it. Less an upgrade cycle, more alchemy. I sweat through it every time because the app is worth it, but I do also file bug reports every time.
So this is 1Password’s fault rather than iOS 8’s per se and actually it worked perfectly on my iPad Air. But I had to delete and reinstall it on my iPhone to get it to stop crashing.
Other annoyances that aren’t really iOS 8’s fault: TextExpander is a paid upgrade. It’s only £2.99 and it’s of course fair to charge for the new functionality that I will use a lot, but there was no mention of this before so it was annoying. Also, the new keyboard that TextExpander provides is simply ugly. That doesn’t help. But the functionality, that’s great.
One part that is iOS 8’s fault: setting up TextExpander as a new keyboard could be more straightforward. It is pretty straightforward but there is a final option called ‘Allow Full Access’ and you can’t even see that option until you’ve been in, set up the keyboard, come out and gone back in again.
One last minor annoyance. This is the most unfair thing of me but OmniFocus needs an New Task button in the Today notifications.
But let me use that to segue on to the good and the great. The good to very, very good is this Today notification. Pick up your phone and without even unlocking it, just swipe down. We’ve had this for a time and I’ve rarely used it as much as I expected to, but now it’s got my choice of extras. I’ve chosen OmniFocus: it shows me my current tasks for the day and I can tap them as done, when necessary. I’ve also chosen Evernote, though, and that gives me buttons to create new notes.
I want both. I want OmniFocus to include a New Task button and I want Evernote to show me my recent notes. I think you can bet these will both come, but it’s oddly hampering today.
I really like the Today view though. And I really, really like the ability to get 1Password to pop in my details on sites. Apparently it won’t do credit cards yet, only logins. That’s a shame but also hopefully something we can expect changed soon. The number of times I book tickets or buy things online is exactly equal to the number of times I get 1Password to pop all that stuff in for me. So I want that too.
For all that I said Safari was irritating, in normal use after you’ve got past that Private Mode tick, it is really superb. Very fast, responsive, and I like how a pinch brings up all your current tabs and you can see what you’re doing, where you’re going.
The sharing extension in Pocket and Evernote is pretty close to fabulous. Again, once you’ve set it up. But to be on any website and tap to send it to Pocket or to Evernote, wallop, done, sold, I will be using this all the time.
The only reason I don’t call that full-on fabulous is that there is something else that is. Siri. When it’s plugged in to mains power, you can say aloud “Hey, Siri” and ask it whatever you want to ask it. At any time. Without pausing. I reckoned I would use this all the time in the car where I think of tasks I’ll need reminding of, but this morning I had an entire conversation with Siri without pressing the button once. Because it’s plugged in to mains by my bed while I charge it.
I need to say that Angela is away, I wouldn’t have a natter with Siri at 5am if she weren’t. So maybe I won’t use that all the time. But it is freaky fabulous.
Overall, now it’s setup, I think iOS 8 is pretty freaky fabulous. And yes, the first thing I did after installing it was buy OmniFocus 2 for iPad. Happy now.
That’s best as in they got there first and also I think they answered the questions I’ve been wondering about.
This is The Verge’s video review of the new iPhone 6:
And this is the same folk’s video review of the iPhone 6 Plus:
The new iOS 8 for iPhone and iPad – which will be available for free from tomorrow – includes a new feature called Extensions. And one Extension is a Sharing one that Microsoft has leapt on for its OneNote app.
If you use iPhone or iPad at the moment, you know that there is usually a Share button somewhere on the screen: it looks like a rectangle with an up arrow coming out of it. When you tap that, you get the option to share whatever is on your screen with anybody you like via email, for instance. Or AirDrop. If you’re looking at a photo you can Share it to your own photo library.
Now you will be able to share it right into OneNote. See something, write something, watch anything, tap and pop it straight into OneNote. It is a great feature from iOS 8 and it is really well adopted by Microsoft.
I’d say that I can only hope Evernote does the same thing but there is more to it than hope: you can be pretty sure that Evernote will. My Share button is going to get crammed with this stuff.
Not including OneNote. I don’t use OneNote. But it’s good touches like this that would make me think about it. Have a look at all this in action in Microsoft’s video.