Answers...

to commonly asked questions.

ipod

Can I get the music off an old iPod?

Scotty- I am one of your client's fiancé and she suggested I contact you. I have two old Ipods with a some old music on them. The mothership for both of them  is dead and gone. My question-is it possible to transfer from the Ipods back to another computer? If so, I would happily pay to have that accomplished as II am afraid that I could lose the music forever. Thanks
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Official Apple Answer: No

Unofficial Answer: Yes. But you'll need a third party piece of software like
iRip. Music on an iPod is generally considered a one way journey. It was not meant for you to be able to pull the files off. That would have lead to the ability to more easily steal music. However, there is sometimes a need to actually retrieve the music from an iPod due to circumstances like the one you mentioned. There are several programs that will do this but iRip is probably the most straight forward way to do so. I'd be happy to assist if you need but I would suggest you give it a try first. iRip costs $25 and is available here.

Locked out of the iPod. Forgot the password

My email is showing up on my old iphone.  How do I cancel that account on my old iphone?
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To delete the account on your iPhone, go to Settings then to mail, contacts, and calendar. Next, select the account by tapping on it and you can then scroll to the bottom of the page and select “delete account” in red. That’s it.

How do I transfer non purchased music from my iPod?

The latest upgrade of MobileMe Calendar does a real number on your outlook calendar if you are running Outlook 2007 on a PC.  The new upgrade basically hijacks anything that was in the Outlook Calendar folder and moves it over to the MobileMe folder.  Any original entries on your Outlook 2007 Calendar that were entered prior to implementing MobileMe are now completely wiped out the Outlook calendar.  All new events must now be entered in the MM calendar folder in outlook to work with the synchronization process of MobileMe – it doesn’t sync any other calendar folder but the MobileMe folder.  It appears now that PC Outlook users are permanently wedded to using MobileMe unless before they voluntarily end that service, they recreate (God forbid re-enter) the MobileMe calendar events into another Outlook calendar folder.  Clever marketing ploy by Big Brother Apple but it sucks to be pushed into that Calendar Corner.  Scotty is this assessment too harsh or inaccurate?
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It is common for mobileme to have problems with Outlook. Currently mobileme only support 32 bit Outlook. (as of March 21, 2011) I have to say that the large majority of my clients do not use Outlook on either Windows or Mac. That being said, I have not experienced the exact problem described above but from what I know of the relationship between Outlook and mobileme, as I said before, it doesn’t surprise me.

Video out on iPod Touch

Hello Scotty,

I am getting emails saying I need to update my mobile me before May 5 but I seem to recall you saying not to update if you use some applications.  Did I dream this or would it be ok to update?

Thanks,
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Upgrading to the new calendar sync method is inevitable so I’d so go ahead and do it. However, to make things work the way Apple wants them to, you’ll need 4.2 on your iPhone or iPad and 10.6.6 on your computer. You can still sync calendars on your computer with the new method if have only 10.5.8 on your computer but there are a few extra steps. Overall, at this point, I’d say go ahead and update. You’ll have to eventually.

iPod Touch battery issues

Hi... in order to download a dvd into itunes... do i need anything special?  I wanted to have some of our home dvds and store bought dvds to put in itunes so i could watch them on apple tv or download to ipod??

Thanks,


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Ripping DVD's into iTunes is a little tricky. So far, there's no legal way to do it due to the Millenium Copyright Act of 2000. However, if one were trying to take content off a commercial DVD for backup purposes, they would look toward an application called Handbrake. It will copy the chapters of a DVD and even has a setting optimized for AppleTV playback. However you still need to manually drag the final movie file into iTunes and be ready to buy more hard drives because movies take up Gigs of space.

Also, note that it takes a long time to pull video off a DVD so set it and walk away. It's a very tasking process on the CPU as well.

iPod Repair

Hi, I have a 4 year old Mac book pro and wondered if the the new ones
coming out have enough changes or pluses to make it worth changing?

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At 4 years old I would say you are in the category of looking to purchase. What's changed in 4 years?

faster processors
new design with black keyboard
better keyboard illumination
unibody design (all one piece of metal instead of multiple parts screwed together to make the chasis
glossy screen (a negative for some but you can custom order the matte finish)
ability to hold more ram
larger hard drives by default
no more FireWire 400 ports-replaced by FW 800 only.
dial-up modem ports are gone

You say macbook pro but if you mean "powerbook" then the answer would be a much stronger YES. The old powerbooks run on PowerPC processors which are no longer supported. But if you are sure it's a Macbook Pro then you could still get a little more life out of it.

If you are happy with the way your mac is running, then continue to get more life out of it but if you were looking to buy then you would be jusitified.

To check on product cycle you can look to macrumors buyers guide that tracks that info. Good source to see trends of product release. Mac Buyer's Guide: Know When to Buy Your Mac, iPod or iPhone

iPhone Battery has lost it's charge

Hey Scotty!
Hope all is well at school & with business! The two 1-TB drives in my drobo are almost full.  If you remember, I have 4 bays but we set it up so I only use 2.  I have a 3rd HD that I switch out to back up the first HD and keep a copy at home.  I have under 95GB left...

So here's the question.  Recently a tech at Drobo told me that it is REALLY HARD to recover information from the extra HD if something ever happened to my office/the drobo.  He said I really need to be looking at a "grandfather" system (?)  Since I'm running out of room, do I just take the 3rd HD and add it to the drobo and figure out another way to have an offsite backup? Frankly, I'm worried about the expense involved!! I need your recommendation and possibly some of your time to get this sorted out.

Thanks a ton!

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First, I would recommend filling those other two drive bays on the drobo with 2 more 1 TB drives. Newegg.com - Computer Hardware,Hard Drives,Internal Hard Drives,1TB and higher. This will grow your storage capacity imensely. Just go with a $90 choice or so.

Now to the issue of backing up the entire drobo itself. Since the drobo is failsafe within it's own data structure, you are really only trying to cover yourself in case of fire, flood, theft, etc... which is a really good idea. However the problem is that the drobo holds so much capacity that it makes it rather difficult to continue your current "swap out" stradegy. We may want to turn to an unlimited online backup plan. The only catch here is that most online backups limit you to the internal drive of the machine. Not externals. Here are two of the leaders:

Online Backup, Data Backup & Remote Backup Solutions from Mozy.com – Welcome
CarboniteInc

We'd need to go through the terms of use on each site to find the fine print. Online PC Backup: Simple, Secure. Automatic

At a glance, Mozy offers business backup as well for extended data I believe. Check it out here: MozyPro Remote Data Backup, Online Backup, and Internet Backup Solutions for Business - Mozy.com - MozyPro

Otherwise, our only other option is to Raid a couple of 2 TB drives together and clone the entire drobo (which would not be pretty) or get another drobo to swap out from time to time but that would be crazy as well.

iPhone/Touch parental controls


Some of the computers are connecting to the server very very very slow. Is there a setting we can just check and fix?


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You’ll probably want to connect to the server directly as you have a monitor attached. Many companies will run their server headless. There are many reasons the server may be sluggish in its normal response time. One drive may be failing. You can log into the server and run disk utility to check the SMART status of the drive. Any red in the report is usually a very bad sign. Apple offers a set of server admin tool that you can run from any terminal on the network as well.

Those can be found here:
Apple - Downloads - Mac OS X Updates - Server Admin Tools 10.5

Since there are many reasons the slow performance may be occurring, I can’t give you any one good answer. You may also want to do a restart of the server. Sometimes the simplest answer is the one that works.
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