Category Archives: iPhone

iOS 12.2 iPhone Photos won’t upload to iCloud over WiFi (but do over cellular)

Sometimes Apple stuff is just “magic.” But when the magic fails, it can send you endlessly searching for a solution online. I am placing this post here so search engines can be find it in case someone else is having this same issue.

Normally, I can take a photo on my iPhone and see it show up moments later on my Mac or iPad. Lately, however, photos taken from my iPhone seem to get stuck uploading to my iCloud Photos library. I had a few photos that didn’t sync after several days (hooked to power overnight and on WiFi). Sometimes, switching to cellular causes these photos to upload immediately.

I read some tips that suggested turning off iCloud Photos and turning it back on (with a phone reboot in between). I did that, end then had 5818 photos waiting to upload. Not great.

After none of the tips I read (from dozens and dozens of forums, blog posts and “fix it” site articles) worked, I decided to try the “erase everything and restore from a backup” approach.

I did that, and after an hour of restoring and getting Apple Pay and Touch ID and such set back up, I find that I now have 14,803 photos waiting to upload.

Does anyone have any clue what causes this, and how to fix it? My phone has been plugged up an on WiFi for half an hour and not a single change in the upload count.

Thoughts?

Tech whiners and the iPhone headphone jack. Plus, big phones.

I have listened to tech whiners for years, and am always amused at how wrong they end up being when the rest of the world ignores all their concerns and embraces something that “can’t possibly work.” Tech whiners said the iPod was a stupid idea (I think I would have agreed – who would spend that kind of money to play music?). Tech whiners said the iPhone was a stupid idea (I disagreed on that one; I’d been using a “smart phone” PDA without a physical keyboard since 2000 and was hooked). Tech whiners said Apple Store was a stupid idea (I might have agreed on that one, but knew the other solutions – store-within-a-store at CompUSA – were stupider ideas). And the list goes on and on.

Now I have to listen to pundits bitch and moan over Apple removing the headphone jack from the iPhone 7. Well, I don’t have to, but it will be difficult to escape it. Whine whine whine about needing an adapter.

Guess what? This is nothing new. Every pair of nice “real” headphones I have — you know, the full size ones you use when music matters, or when you are doing music recording — have 1/4″ headphone jacks. Those are/were industry standard. In the olden days, they plugged directly in to my multi-track cassette recorder, then later my Roland VS-880 hard disk recorder, and anything else I had.

In modern days, my MacBook has a 1/8″ jack, and since GarageBand (was that also a stupid idea?) has killed all my old recording tech, I had to get a cheap adapter from Radio Shack (back when it still had the space in the name) to make this possible. Thus, I kept all five pair of my old headphones, and have an adapter so I can keep using them on modern equipment with the tiny, fragile (and far easier to snap/break) 1/8″ headphone jack.

And guess what? That adapter has been on the end of my big headphones for the past decade. I have never lost it. You just leave it there.

Problem solved.

Whine, whine, whine, but this is how audio folks have done things for decades. Apple gives you an adapter with the new iPhone, so just plug it in to the headphones you’d normally use and you are done. “What if I lose my headphones?” You no longer need the adapter šŸ˜‰
Yep, if you lose something, you lose it. How is that Apple’s (or Radio Shack, or Samsung, or Disney) fault?

Whiners amuse me.

BONUS: I hear so many people complain about how bulky these big phones are because they “won’t fit in my pocket.” Guess what? Years ago, all phones were big. They came with (or sold separately) cases that had belt clips. You carried your phone on your belt, and you never sat on the phone and bent it, and you never sat down and had it hurt your stomach.

This problem was solved long ago. Thing of all the phones that could have been saved from broken screens or being bent or even lost because people constantly set them down … If they just kept them on their belt.

Oh, but that would be tacky. Strange, we do a bunch of tacky things every day now, but since “everyone does it” no one seems to be bothered by it.

Millions of dollars a year of damaged and lost phones might be eliminated if folks would use the solution we had twenty years ago…

But, hey, whining is fun.

Talk to you soon…

ā€œTalk to you soon.

Thanks for signing up. You’ll be the first to hear the latest about iPhoneā€” coming this June. That gives you just enough time to think of ways to break the news to your current phone.ā€

…so says an e-mail sent out from Apple today.

Why the iPhone will iPhail

Although an overpaid computer engineer by trade, Iā€™ve had bad times where I had to keep my landlord happy by selling wireless serivces. SprintPCS, T-Mobile, AT&T Wireless, US Cellular, NexTel, DirecTV and Dish Network were all part of the ā€œsell this and make commissionā€ plan. But, my experience lead me to great distaste for the industries. To this date, I refuse to purchase any similar service from anyone other than an official company store. Read the fine print. There may be a $150 cancellation fee from Verizon, but Universal Wireless Cell Company tags on their own similar fee to double get you. Buying ā€œdirectā€ prevents that and, as the iPhone has shown, thereā€™s always the possibility for something just over the horizon that will make you glad you can get out of your contract (easier).

I could write a book on all the issues and problems (and how to avoid/prevent many of them) when dealing with cell phone companies. I could share stories from within the company I worked for that would make you fear ever filling out an application (with your social security number and such) again. But the real education I got turns out to be very significant in lieu of the iPhone release later this year.

Contracts, you see, are the key to making money in the cell phone business. My store didnā€™t even sell phones. You couldnā€™t buy one. Period. What we sold was contracts. My cut of activating one carrier was $45 for a one year agreement. $50 for turning on a one year satellite contract. You get the idea, and can imagine the money being made by the company itself, and the cell phone company (though they take the risk that the customer will keep paying those monthly bills; and if they donā€™t, thereā€™s always those cancellation fees.)

More and more companies push for two year agreements. So did we, even though we were still able to activate one years; we were told not to offer them, period. Thatā€™s good for us (more commission) and good for the cell co (you canā€™t take your business elsewhere without them still getting money) but … bad for anyone trying to sell a phone to the majority of people walking through the strip mall.

ā€œSorry, Iā€™m under contractā€ was what changed my job from a potential ā€œ$50,000 yearā€ commission rate to a lousy $6.50/hour retail gig. And when working for a specific GSM company, with poor coverage in many areas of my state, they simply werenā€™t even an option for those who could have signed up (unless we lied about how great it would work on their farm; lying is also very important to successful cell phone selling, it seems).

So the iPhone comes out, and only folks like me who have been out of contract for years can even think of buying one without spending a few hundred more on cancellation fees. And even if you do that, or can get out of your contract using ā€œother techniques,ā€ will Cingular even work in your area?

Folks like me, smart enough to avoid contracts and perfect early adopters for anything high-tech with Apple on it simply canā€™t have an iPhone. Thereā€™s still question to whether or not Iā€™m going to be able to buy them in my state, and even if I can, will I be able to use them anywhere outside the main city limits?

The iPhone will be an amazing device. It should easily be able to outsell the Treos and similar ā€œsmartā€ phones, but probably not touch the Blackberry corporate environment (who refuses to switch to Unix-compatible Macs while slowly embracing nonstandard standards of Linux). But none of this matters.

The iPhone may be a roaring success when compared to the Treo (and Iā€™d toss my 650 in a minute if I could), but compared to the Apple iPod… it will be seen as an iPhailure. Apples to Apples, thatā€™s what will make the iPhone seem like a failure.

Even if it manages to destroy many other competing smartphones easily…

Now, if only Cingular can find out if I can buy one in my area. Iā€™m out of contract, and we finally got Cingular service here about two years ago.

I canā€™t wait to find out.