iPhone, iOS 4, and Windows 7

So iOS 4 came out the other day… Yes, I recently switched from a Motorola Q9c with Windows Mobile 6.1 with Verizon to an Apple iPhone 3GS 16GB from AT&T.

Anyway, after updating iTunes to version 9.2 I was notified that the iOS 4 update was available. I sync’d my phone and performed a backup to make sure that all of my data was safe and then clicked the update button…

At first, things looked good. The phone rebooted into recovery/update mode (causing it to disconnect, then reconnect with my computer). At this point the little balloon appeared in the notification area alerting me to the fact that a new device had been connected. When I checked, it said it was an “Apple USB Device (Recovery Mode)” and that it was searching Windows Update for a drive. This took far too long and the iOS update timed-out, leaving the iPhone in Recovery/Update mode. Ugh.

After reconnecting the device, the only option iTunes presented me with is to restore the device to it’s original settings (ironically using iOS 4, not the original iOS 3.1.x) and that I would need to restore from a backup to get my applications, settings, photos, etc, back. I had nothing to lose at this point, so I started it. Again I was prompted with the new device notification, but this time I chose to cancel locating the driver on Windows Update. Once I did this, the Restore process started chugging along. Once it completed and I restored my prior backup, I seemingly had everything back to normal running iOS 4, including my apps. But when I looked at the photos and videos, they were all gone!!

After getting mad for a few minutes, I decided to try restoring from an earlier backup. Once that process finished, viola! My pictures were back.

After getting through all of this and playing with it for a little bit, my wife asked if I could update her iPhone as well  (she has been dying for the background audio support for Pandora). This time I had learned my lesson and followed the steps below and the upgrade went without a hitch:

1. Connected the iPhone and copied all of the pictures and videos to a safe location.
2. opened iTunes and did a ‘Transfer Purchases’ to ensure all of my Wife’s purchased content (apps & music) had been copied to my computer, followed by a ‘Sync’, and finally a backup.
3. Clicked the Update button. The device went into Recovery/Update mode and when the Windows device balloon appeared, I opened it up and cancelled the driver search on Windows Update. I had to do this twice.
4. The phone’s screen switched from showing the ‘USB connector and iTunes logo’ to just the Apple logo with a progress bar and the phone updated within 5 minutes!

Success! Hope this helps!

How stuff works

I am a big fan of understanding how things work. I am also a huge fan of describing how things work by breaking it down into it's most basic working element(s) and then build upon that until you get back to the thing you are trying to describe.

One of these things is the differential gear system in your car. I've known it was there, had a very basic understanding of why it's there, but had no idea how it worked... until now. Give the video a a little bit of time to get into describing how it works, but once you get past the introduction it gets very interesting.

Nice!

This video might be a bit old (it is in black and white after all), but it does an excellent job of breaking down the whole process to the very basic and then builds on that until you see how the whole thing works. Very elegant solution to a seemingly simple problem.

It might be because I am an Engineer (Ok, so I'm a Software Engineer, but they have some of the same mental traits), but I think most things should be taught like this. I also think more people need to be exposed to how stuff in our daily life works if we are to continue to come up with solutions to bigger problems. Too many of us take for granted the elegant engineering in the everyday things that surround us and take for granted.

Google Storage – 2x the storage; 1/4th the price!

A little while back, Google announced new pricing on their paid storage option that can be used for Gmail & Picasa Web Albums. The new pricing means you can get 20GB of storage for only $5/year!

This, in addition to adding Facial Recognition to the desktop version of Picasa, turned out to be the final push for me to start using Picasa. I had looked into in the past, but preferred some of the features in an outdated version of Adobe Photoshop Elements.

Since I have about 45GB of digital photos from the past 10 years, I opted for the 80GB account for $20/year. This allows me to change the settings in Picasa to upload the full resolution images to Picasa Web Albums, thus creating a full backup of all of my photos at their original resolution. If anything should happen to my computer (or my local backup), I can make use of the ‘Download to Picasa’ option in Picasa Web Albums to sync the album to my (repaired/new) machine!

It’s not anywhere near as fast as a local restore would be, but for the price, it’s a quick way to have an offsite backup of my photos. I can replace most of the actual ‘documents’ on my computer. I can’t replace 10 years worth of photos of my family, especially those of my kids growing up.