I sync’d my iPhone with iTunes, version 9, and all of a sudden a whole load of free space appeared. Then I noticed that all the music had been removed.

When I checked the Music tab for the iPhone the radio button for ‘Selected playlists, artists and genres’ was checked and below that was displayed two columns one for the playlists and another for the artists. These had checkbox’s and none were checked, hence no music on the iPhone. Checking on any of these playlists or artists means that those songs will be sync’d. That’s OK for the playlists as that was how iTunes sync’d with iTines version 8. But checking an artist means that everything by that artist will be sync’d, you can’t select individual songs by an artist. Great.

Seems that iTunes ignores any rules you have set by checking individual songs or albums on the Music window. I did check some artists on the iPhone’s Music tab and they were sync’d to the iPhone OK. I then tried checking the radio button for ‘Entire music library’ and that does remove the playlist and artists displays. I hoped that rather than trying to sync the ‘Entire music library’ it would sync just those individual tracks checked on the Music tab. Even that wasn’t straight forward as iTunes then unchecked the the ‘Sync Movies’ checkbox on the Movies tab but did leave the ‘Sync Podcasts’ checkbox checked. I suppose it unchecked the ‘Sync Movies’ checkbox because movie files are so large and they are the prime culprit for filling up an iPhone and iTunes was trying to be helpfull, or it’s a bug.

By the end of that sync the movies I’d checked were sync’d correctly as were the podcasts but the only music that was on the iPhone were by the artists on the three playlists I’d checked when I’d selected the ‘Selected playlists, artists and genres’ checkbox and which wasn’t currently checked – ‘Entire music library’ was checked. This is a bit confusing. By the end of the day I’ll have figued out how to get my iPhone sync’d like I want but this new functionality in iTunes 9 is way too geeky for most people and they’ll just have the feeling that they aren’t in control of their iPhone or iPod.

I thought I’d try and sort out the intermittent iTunes problem where the Bonjour service is apparently running but I get a message saying it isn’t running and iTunes doesn’t connect to the appstore.

I did the most basic of tests and switched off OneCare’s firewall and the Bonjour service appeared to work OK as iTunes was able to connect to the Appstore. That’s OK occassionally but not how the PC is supposed to run so I had a look at some of OneCare’s settings, specifically its firewall. What I found was that the ‘location’ for the PC was not ‘Home or Work’ which I expected but ‘Public Computer’ and a whole load of network activity functionality had a status of suspended. Not sure if that alone was causing iTunes problems. I had a look at the allowed programs, according to OneCare, and the Bonjour was set to ‘Allow’. When I clicked on the ‘Change location’ control a windows displayed two network connections. The first was my lan connection which I expected and had a zone of ‘Home or Work’ and the second connection was described as ‘Unidentified network Multiple connections’ and this one had a zone of ‘Public place’. So it seems that the initially displayed zone will be set to ‘Public place’ if any of the underlying network connections are set to ‘Public place’.

Having set the zone to ‘Home or Work’ for the second network connection, and hoping that was the cause of the iTunes connection problem, I rebooted the PC and tried iTunes again. Again it would not connect unless I disabled the firewall. I had a look at the zone OneCare displayed and it was back to ‘Public place’. The question was what were these other network connections?

In Control Panel I started ‘Network and Sharing Center’ and clicked on the Manage network connections link and it displayed three local area connections. The first connection I knew about but the second and third connections turned out to be for VMware and were described as ‘VMware Virtual Ethernet Adapter for VMnet1′ and the third was described the same except appended with ’8′.

Were these the cause of the problems? I disabled both of the VMware network connections and rebooted the PC. Would iTunes have trouble with the Bonjour service now or would iTunes work OK. Nope, iTunes still wouldn’t connect, the Bonjour service says it was started but I had a feeling OneCare’s probably the culprit here.

I then disabled OneCare’s firewall, re-enabled the two VMware network connections and turned on the Windows Firewall. This is the firewall that comes as part of XP or Vista. This time iTunes connected OK. The problem with iTunes not connecting when the OneCare firewall is running happens most days but not all the time. Still annoying though.

OneCare’s shelf life is coming to an end now that Microsoft are bring out a new free anti-virus application and are no longer supporting OneCare so that’s it for me with their firewall.

Just read the following in a book about how to bust web software:

“We are already seeing a backlash against many of the mainstream waterfall and iterative software development methods in favor of agile and Extreme Programming methods. If taken “to the extreme,” agile development is a completely unstructured, chaotic process that employs unrepeatable processes and bypasses much of the testing and design phases. Although agile development might decrease time-to-market delays and increase the rate at which programmers can write code, whether such an approach improves quality is uncertain at best.”

But agile is still the new kid on the block so we have a few years more with agile before the light is seen.

I have some intermittent iTunes problems which, bizarrely, tend to happen in the early evening. When I need iTunes to connect to the web to update podcasts or applications or just go to the App store quite often it doesn’t actually connect and eventually I get a message that the Bonjour service isn’t running. When I check services it does say it has started. If I get that message then I also get a message when iTunes starts stating that it isn’t the default music player and do I want it to be the default music player, or words to that effect. I also sometimes get a message from the firewall asking me whether I should allow iTunes to access the web.

The last of these two issues make me think that good old Vista thinks that iTunes is being used for the first time and it needs configuring. I have stopped and started the Bonjour service, I have set iTunes to being the default music player and OK’d that iTunes can be run through the firewall. I have then successfully restarted the PC so that the registry settings are firmly applied.

But then if that was the case I wouldn’t keep getting these problems so my thinking isn’t quite right here. So what the heck happens in the early evening that doesn’t happen earlier in the day? Think..think.