If you ever need to troubleshoot a MobileMe sync problem, you'll need to access your MobileMe sync logs. While Mac OS X actively logs MobileMe sync data, Windows does not. Either way, this guide arms you with some good information to help troubleshoot MobileMe syncing problems on both platforms.
Mac OS X 10.6
You can find the MobileMe sync log file mobilemesync.log in the following location: ~/Library/Logs/Sync ("~" represents your Home folder).
You can always view a log file by using the Console application, like so:
- Launch Console by double clicking its icon, located in /Applications/Utilities
- Locate "Show Log List," and click it near the upper left corner of the Console window
- Expand ~/Library/Logs, then Sync by clicking their disclosure triangles
- Locate the mobilemesync.log file and select it
You'll see all the most recent sync activity in this log file for prior sync sessions (if they exist), and you can view the archive files of previous mobilemesync.log files that now end with a number.
Mac OS X v10.4.11 - Mac OS X v10.5.8
You can find the MobileMe sync log file dotmacsync.log in the following location: ~/Library/Logs/Sync, or view it via the Console application by substituting the log file name as needed. Archives are also stored, as in OS X 10.6, with numbers appended to the end of the archived log files.
All Mac OS versions of the Console application will let you save a copy of these log files to your desktop by choosing the "Save a Copy As" option from the File menu. If you currently use Mac OS X 10.6 and you upgraded to this release from an earlier version of Mac OS X then don't be surprised if you find copies of these log files using both names since the Mac OS X 10.6 update doesn't remove the older versions of the log file.
Microsoft Windows XP or Vista
Windows MobileMe syncing is a bit different from Mac OS X because Windows does not log to a file that you can refer to later. You have to generate a log file manually while within a Windows Command Prompt.
- Open a Command Prompt in Windows
- If you are running Windows in 32-bit mode, enter the following DOS command or skip to step 4
- type: cd "\Program Files\Common Files\Apple\Mobile Device Support\bin" and press return
- type: cd "\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Apple\Mobile Device Support\bin" and press return
- Now enter the following DOS command to run a sync manually: dotmacsyncclient.exe sync, then press return
Your Windows computer will start to sync with MobileMe. While doing so, you will see logging information scroll past in the Command Prompt window. You can cut and paste this information into your favorite text editor and save a copy for future reference.
Once you've collected a copy of your MobileMe sync log on either computer platform, you'll be prepared to troubleshoot sync issues on your own, with your favorite expert, or with AppleCare support.
E-book - Take Control of Syncing Data in Snow Leopard
We recently received a review copy of an e-book titled "Take Control of Syncing Data in Snow Leopard" from Take Control Books and it offers a great in depth look at syncing on your Mac between another Mac, iPhone, iPod, mobile phone, or PDA. The publisher has offered a 30 percent discount on the e-book for CNET readers who visit this link. Clicking the Buy e-book button will add it to the shopping cart along with the discount applied. This offer doesn't apply to the print-on-demand version of the book.
(Credit:
Apple)
Apple has updated MobileMe's Find My iPhone service for iPhone OS 3.1 to include a feature appropriately named Remote Lock. The new feature provides another way to protect data on a lost or stolen iPhone. Remote Lock lets you add a passcode or change your existing one, locking your missing iPhone's screen from afar. The new feature resolves some of the Find My iPhone's previous shortcomings.
Remote Lock button
(Credit: David Martin)MobileMe subscribers can go the control panel for Find My iPhone after logging into their MobileMe account. Once there, users can protect the information on their missing iPhone by remotely assigning a new, four-digit passcode lock--useful if you've never set a passcode before.
The phone will immediately lock and can only be opened with the passcode you set via MobileMe. Your former passcode is replaced by the new one and can no longer be used to unlock the phone. This is good if, say, a robber forces you to give them your passcode before they run off with your iPhone.
If you have upgraded to iPhone OS 3.1 software, you can use Remote Lock by following these steps:
- Log in to your MobileMe account.
- Choose Find My iPhone in the column on the left.
- Click Remote Lock.
- Enter your four digit pin.
- Re-enter your four digit pin.
- Press Done to Confirm and lock your iPhone remotely or Cancel to abort.
Setting passcode pin
(Credit: David Martin)
(Credit:
Apple, Inc.)
Find My iPhone, a service Apple provides to MobileMe subscribers, is certainly paying off for one Pittsburgh-area man. According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the man was robbed at gunpoint in the Shadyside area of east Pittsburgh by two men who demanded his credit cards and their PINs.
The local Pittsburgh police reported that the victim, who was not identified, handed over his wallet, PINs, and iPhone to robbers. He later used a computer to locate his iPhone using the MobileMe service, which eventually led the police to the suspects at a local gas station. Officers arrested the two suspects plus another person involved and recovered a pellet gun, stolen ID cards, credit cards, and cash.
The three men were charged with access-device fraud, conspiracy, receiving stolen property, and possessing instruments of crime. The two who reportedly robbed the victim had an additional charge of robbery filed against them.
This incident was not the first time Find My iPhone has been used creatively. David Molnar once used an iPhone to track his girlfriend's belongings on their trek from Chicago to Oakland by packing the device along with other household items in a hired moving truck, then tracking its progress across the U.S.
Have you found an interesting use for Find My iPhone? Tell us all about it in the comments.
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Apple Inc.)
Among the bevy of problems--some large, some small--reported by iPhone users following the release of iPhone OS 3.0 and the iPhone 3GS lurked a bug I encountered in Find My iPhone on Apple's MobileMe service.
Find My iPhone remembers all your devices, including any old iPhones turned off or sold after you upgraded to the iPhone 3GS. Until now, there was no way to make Find My iPhone forget that old iPhone.
Apple has quietly released an updated Apple support document, "MobileMe, iPhone OS 3.0: Troubleshooting Find My iPhone and Remote Wipe," which now states:
Previously-owned iPhone/iPod Touch appears at me.com/accountIf your iPhone/iPod Touch was linked with your MobileMe account, it may still appear when you log in to www.me.com/account, even if you no longer possess the iPhone/iPod touch. If the device is offline, you can choose to remove the device from the Find My iPhone section of www.me.com/account by clicking Remove below the name of the iPhone or iPod touch.
Note: If your device is still configured with your MobileMe member name and password, the next time the device connects to the Internet, it will be added to the Find My iPhone page again.
The old iPhone 3G I sold to a T-Mobile employee
(Credit: David Martin)If you accidentally delete a current iPhone, you can add that phone back by making sure that your MobileMe member name and password are still configured on the iPhone before reconnecting it to the Internet. Once that connection is made, the iPhone will reappear on the location page with the rest of the devices you are tracking.
You can see our previous coverage of iPhone OS 3.0 and iPhone 3GS problems here and here.
Have you or someone you know found new problems? Let us know about them in the comments.
After more than a month of waiting, Apple has finally brought its MobileMe iDisk application to iPod and iPhone users. Originally announced during Apple's Worldwide Developer's Conference in early July, the free iDisk app offers users of Apple's MobileMe service a way to access files they, or their MobileMe contacts have stored on Apple's servers.
Some of the nicer features include being able to view and send any native file types. This includes music, so if you've got a bunch of tracks stored on iDisk, you can stream them from the app. Movies work as well, although they have to be formatted to play on an iPod or iPhone.
Apple says that some files over 20MB won't load, although I successfully managed to get a 198MB MPEG4 movie file to stream in. Things that require downloading, however, such as documents and photos, are capped at 30MB--even when you're on a Wi-Fi connection. The application must first download those types of files to your device before you can even see what they are. This process is made faster by a cache you can adjust to allow for more local storage, all the way up to 200MB. Not included in that cache are audio and video files, which are simply streamed, meaning that you'll need to be on a solid connection for the entire listen or watch.
As nice as the local cache is, it's a long ways off from offering users the chance to manage files locally as some other iPhone storage apps have done. You cannot download anything back to your device from the app, save for photos, which can only be saved using the iPhone's screenshot feature--not the superior copy and paste. There are also no previews before or after you've downloaded something to view locally, which means you better have named your files properly.
I applaud Apple's efforts for giving users a first party way to access their files, it's just too bad it offers so much less than third parties have provided. Besides local file downloading, I would love to see omissions like copy and paste, and quick visual previews offered. It would also be fantastic to let users copy a file from the app into a mail message without having to use the built-in e-mailer, which wraps each file in MobileMe branding.
MobileMe iDisk for the iPhone weighs in at 2.2MB and requires users to have an active subscription to MobileMe, along with an iPod Touch or iPhone running OS 3.0.
The good:
• Lets you quickly access files you have stored on your iDisk in a native application.
• Streams in audio and video, letting you bypass file size restrictions.
• You can view files in portrait and landscape modes.
• Your log-in is saved between sessions, so you don't need to re-enter your user name and password.
•You can view files your friends have stored online if you know their MobileMe user names.
The bad:
• Certain files are capped at 30MB--even over Wi-Fi.
• There are no visual previews of what photos, videos, and docs contain.
• No way to save files for offline viewing. There's a local cache, but as soon as a newer file needs some space, old files are removed.
•Copy and paste doesn't work.
We have been exploring iPhone OS 3.0 for nearly a month and continue to discover new features, so when we recently stumbled across a productivity boosting MobileMe news post about searching your MobileMe Mail on an iPhone or iPod Touch, we had to share.
According to Apple, iPhone OS 3.0 gives your iPhone and iPod Touch the ability to search messages stored on the MobileMe cloud (server). The process works like this:
- Select your in-box or another folder belonging to your MobileMe account.
- Flick scroll to the top of the screen to reveal the search field.
- Tap the status bar at the top to reveal the search field.
- Enter the text you want to search for (i.e. AT).
- Tap the From, To, Subject or all to search those particular areas
Search From field for AT
(Credit: David Martin)The search will then reveal the messages that match locally on your iPhone or iPod Touch. If you then tap "Continue Search on Server," your iPhone will reveal any remaining messages stored in the MobileMe cloud.
No results found on MobileMe
(Credit: David Martin)Have you discovered other interesting features in iPhone OS 3.0? Share your discoveries or your favorites with everyone by leaving a comment.
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Apple, Inc.)
Apple has updated a support document that details MobileMe enhancements for an iPhone running iPhone OS 3.0. The updates include the following features.
Mail
On an iPhone or iPod Touch, a user can search all messages including those stored on the MobileMe "cloud" (server). You can search in the From, To, and Subject fields.
Gallery
- iPhone 3GS users can publish videos to a Gallery album.
- If no Gallery albums exist, an album is automatically created when publishing a photo or video from the iPhone.
Push Contacts and Push Calendar
- There's an option to merge existing contacts and calendars on first sync from iPhone/iPod Touch.
- Deleting a MobileMe account or turning off contact and calendar sync on iPhone/iPod Touch allows users to keep a copy of the data on the device.
- iPhone contacts that sync with MobileMe maintain ringtone associations.
Details regarding Find My iPhone and Remote Wipe are included; we've covered both topics previously.
Apple has a complete list of MobileMe service updates since August 2008 .
Apple's Find My iPhone feature is helpful, but can be thwarted by tech-savvy thieves.
(Credit: CNET)Over the weekend, Livejournal blogger HappyWaffle (real name Kevin), posted a great story about how he purportedly used Apple's MobileMe service to track down his iPhone, which was stolen while he was at a bar. By using a laptop with a Sprint EVDO wireless data card, he and his friends figured out where it was and managed to get it back from the person who had taken it. They even used Google Translate to alert the thief (in multiple languages) that they would call the police if the device was not returned.
As good as the story is, a lot of it relies on iPhone owners having certain settings flipped on, as well as the person who has the phone not knowing the right ones to turn off. For one, they can disable all of the MobileMe features by simply yanking the SIM card out or deleting the MobileMe account from the phone. They can also perform a software wipe right on the phone, which means your data gets erased, however that means you can no longer track where it is without carrier intervention.
This isn't the main thing to worry about though; it's that... Read more
Apple recently sent out an e-mail to developers testing the latest iPhone OS 3.0 software. Apple wants to put the Push Notification system through one last stress test before releasing OS 3.0 to consumers on June 17. The app picked for this second test was the AOL AIM $2.99 instant messaging application. (Previously, Apple tested the Associated Press application, AP Mobile Free.) We assume that Apple chose news and instant messaging apps because these applications will be using Push Notification the most.
Push Notification is a system Apple developed to work around the fact that Apple does not allow third-party apps to run in the background on the iPhone. (We first wrote about Push Notification last year when it was announced at WWDC. You can see a video about Push Notification here.)
Multitasking--or running apps in the background--caused security problems, according to Apple, and negatively impacts battery life. Although there are rumors that Apple may in the future be a little bit more flexible with background tasks--perhaps in answer to the Palm Pre, which does pull off multitasking--currently only Apple's native apps (such as Mobile Mail) can run in the background.
You can see Push Notification and AIM in action below in a YouTube video. We are told that with Push, receipt of the messages is practically instantaneous.
Push Notification was missing-in-action since last year and we had expected to see it last fall, but it was a no show. It appeared then that with all the new things Apple was bringing to market, the company may have bitten off more than it could chew. (Witness MobileMe's disastrous first days.) Now, fast forward to WWDC 2009 and all of this has changed. MobileMe has matured, and Push Notification appears to be working well according to our testing sources.
Tell us what you think about Push Notification versus true multitasking in the comments.
MobileMe's Find My iPhone service is alive and ready for anyone using iPhone OS 3.0. Using it allows you to locate your iPhone or iPod Touch on a map, send a message along with a sound to the device, or wipe your device remotely if its been misplaced, lost, or, stolen.
Here is the location screen for an iPhone (iPod Touch is similar in all cases below) in the Account settings section at me.com.
The location screen supports the following actions:
Press the Update Location button and MobileMe will attempt to query your iPhone and display an updated map showing its location.
Press the Display a Message... button, and MobileMe will send a text message to your phone that displays with an optional sound playing for up to 2 minutes. You'll be prompted to enter your message and check the box to include the sound.
The message then appears on your iPhone like this:
Next, you get a confirmation e-mail that your message was sent, received, and displayed on your missing iPhone.
Press the Remote Wipe... button and MobileMe will remotely erase your iPhone. According to Apple:
This will permanently delete all media and data on your iPhone, restoring it to factory settings. This will not suspend your wireless service. Once wiped, your iPhone will no longer be able to display messages or be located. Learn more.
You'll be prompted to erase your device with a warning that you cannot undo this process once it has started.
If the iPhone is eventually recovered, users can restore their data by enabling their MobileMe account on the iPhone or syncing with their computer. It's unfortunate that the iPhone cannot be completely disabled, but at least you have a chance of destroying your personal data if it lands in the wrong hands.
The system isn't foolproof, however. One problem with Find My iPhone, according to Jonathan Zdziarski in a Twitter post, is that, "There's a magic button on every iPhone a thief can use to disable remote wipe and LocateMe; it's called the SIM eject button."
... Read more
