Tag Archives: iphone

iOS Splitting Albums + Unknown Album Problems Apple Music

computer issues, ,

The situation: you have albums that seems to be properly organized in your Apple Music Library (formerly iTunes) on your Mac, but when you sync to your iPhone, iOS for some reason either splits albums (two or more albums with the same artwork, title, artist, but with different tracks spread across them) and/or labels some albums as Unknown Album. It’s FUCKING MADDENING. You’ve double-checked your meta data to make sure you have the same album title and artist for each track, etc. (if you haven’t, do this part now). You’ve changed the album title to something weird, then renamed it back and did a sync, no change.

I finally found a thread not on Apple’s site that properly explains the issue. It’s posted here on iLounge and it’s brilliantly explained with a super-simple fix. The basic gist is that iTunes/Music has a weird issue when writing between the iTunes database and ID3 tags on MP3 files. The issue doesn’t seem to appear on purchased items or AAC-encoded songs. Here’s the fix:

Set aside a few hours so you can sync your phone uninterrupted. I set my up to run overnight and woke up to no issues.

  • Plug in your iPhone, launch Finder and select your phone
  • Under the Music tab, uncheck Sync Music…
  • Sync your phone.
  • Once you’ve confirmed all the music off your phone, then open Music on your MacOS device.
  • Make a new Smart Playlist (File / New / Smart Playlist) with this setting
    • Kind / is / MPEG audio file
    • uncheck limit
  • Open this new playlist and Select all tracks then hit:
    • File / Convert / Convert / Convert ID3 Tags
    • Check ID3 Tag version and choose v2.4
    • Hit Okay
  • Depending on how many MP3 files you have, this could take a few minutes. Once done, sync music back onto your phone.

That’s it. If you add new MP3 files to your library in the future, you might have to do this for the new tracks. Or you know, Apple could update their fucking shitty software.

All Contacts Have Disappeared From my iPhone

computer issues

Symptom: All your contacts have disappeared from your iPhone and perhaps from your address book, and MobileMe contacts as well.

Cause: Updating the MS Office software on your Mac. For some reason certain patches of MS Office will cause an issue with your sync services.

The Fix: This is specific to Macs running MS Office:
1) Launch Outlook on Mac and under Preferences, de-select Sync Services.
2) Close Outlook and then re-open.
3) Re-enable Sync Services.
4) Wait.

Your contacts should start appearing in your address book, iPhone contacts and MobileMe contacts. This can take anywhere from 30 seconds to 5 minutes depending on your connection speed.

How to fix a locked-up iPhone

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My iPhone 3GS locked up this afternoon for apparently no reason.  Lovely.  Here are the steps I took to repair this particular iPhone.  Your mileage may vary.

  1. Hold down the power and home buttons for about 6-10 seconds.  The phone will reboot, if it works from that point, you’re done.  Congrats.
  2. If not, try once more.
  3. Boot up your computer and launch iTunes.  Make sure it’s up and running, not updating or anything before you start the next steps.
  4. Plug the iPhone into your computer.
  5. Press and hold the power and home buttons until it resets.
  6. As soon as the phone resets, let go of the power button, but keep holding the home button.  Get a good grip, you’ll be holding it for 30 seconds or so.
  7. Eventually your iPhone screen will change to the “plug into iTunes” logo.
  8. Your computer will inform you that the phone is in recovery mode.  Follow the on-screen directions.

What will end up happening is that iTunes will wipe your phone, reinstall the OS and firmware, and then sync all your info.  This will take a while.  You’ll lose any photos, gamesaves, etc, that occurred since your last sync.  So… make sure you sync often.