[justmeandnooneelse]

I have to say, that I used to love my iphone, but now it's got to a point where I am considering throwing it out of the window. As a mobile device it's great, but as soon as it goes near my iMac, it all goes tragically wrong. Here are a list of my current problems. If anyone can help me, it would be greatly appreciated.

1) Contacts. I have 52 on my iMac, 53 on me.com and 108 on my phone. I keep replacing the contents of my iphone with the contents of my Mac via itunes, but they keep coming back. Any changes I make to my phone's contacts get lost forever. I keep 'losing' numbers this way.

2) Calendar - they're in a right mess. Stuff duplicated and all over the place. I usually enter calendar info on my phone, so I'm reluctant to lose all the info. I play a lot of gigs and these dates are important. I have 2 of everything, but needless to say, ones I enter on my phone are not in iCal. I have to check both iMac & phone to be confident about a date, but I'm losing faith.

3) iPhoto keeps opening when I plug my phone in. I very rarely take photos with my phone and do not have these items selected to sync. I find it irritating when it goes through the 20 second process of realising there is nothing to add and leaves it open.

4) updating software - I tunes tells me I have 8 updates. I click the Download All Free Updates button, only for the itunes login box to come up. I enter my password and hit 'buy' (wtf?) It tells me I have already purchased this item and does nothing. My phone still shows 8 apps needs updating.

5) ITunes has "Mobile Me - set up now" displayed when I click on devices, which takes me to a help screen. Even after I log in, it still shows this.

6) Emails very rarely show the red circle to indicate I have mail - I have to check each account manually and I'm often surprised to find stuff, although I suspect it only checks for email when I do.

I've reset my iphone a few times, much to my annoyance. Can anyone help? Perhaps all these problems are the same issue. But I can't believe Apple would run junk like this...

[analogika]

Have you RESTORED your iPhone, or just reset (i.e. rebooted) it?

If just the latter, restore it using iTunes.

The "purchased" application updates will show as updateable until you actually download them (depending on how often you've set iTunes to search for downloadable items).

To kickstart that, just hit the "Store" menu --> search for available downloads (or whatever it is in English).

[xclusive]

I think you should fine tune everything on your mac then restore your iPhone and then fresh-sync it again...

[gradient]

Originally Posted by justmeandnooneelse 

3) iPhoto keeps opening when I plug my phone in. I very rarely take photos with my phone and do not have these items selected to sync. I find it irritating when it goes through the 20 second process of realising there is nothing to add and leaves it open.

To solve this part of it, launch the app Image Capture. Go to settings and select "when a camera is connected, open [no application]". It's nowhere near intuitive, but that's what you need to do to stop iPhoto from automatically launching every time you connect your iPhone.

[Stogieman]

1. Sounds to me that your MobileMe sync isn't set up correctly. See below

2. Are you sure push calendar events is turned on your iPhone? Any entries you make on your phone should automatically upload to your .mac/MobileMe account. On your iPhone, go to settings and select mail, contacts, calendars. Select your MobileMe account. Make sure push is turned on for Mail, Contacts & Calendar. Make sure to do the same on your computer. See #5.



3. Launch iPhoto and open the preferences. Under the General tab near the bottom, select "No Application" for Connecting camera opens:



On the rare occasion you do want to copy photos over from your iPhone, just plug it into your computer and launch iPhoto manually.

4. Do you sync apps between your phone and computer? Have you tried updating the apps on your iPhone only? If so, does the update number remain the same?

5. See #2. Also, on your mac go to System Preferences and select MobileMe. Make sure you have the same items (Mail, Contacts & Calendar) selected in the Sync tab.



6. Do you have your settings set to manual? On your iPhone, select settings and click on Fetch New Data. You should have push turned on. Towards the bottom you can select to fetch email from your non-MobileMe email accounts every 15, 30 or 60 minutes.

[tooki]

The fact that MobileMe is showing an extra contact gives me pause, and makes me think the MobileMe data is corrupted.

I'd do the following:

1. Delete your MobileMe account from your iPhone.
2. Reset your MobileMe sync data, replacing the MobileMe version with the data from your Mac.
3. Restore the iPhone, if you want to go on the safe side, but only if you're willing to NOT restore it from a backup, which would likely defeat the point of the exercise.
4. Re-add your MobileMe account to the iPhone from scratch and configure the push contacts.

[justmeandnooneelse]

Hey, thanks everyone for the comprehensive replies. I've applied everything (except Tooki's suggestion which I'm keeping if all else fails) and things look like they're working. I did loose a number of contacts from my phone (curiously some of my most popular) and the calendar lost a few items, but all is well.

When I arrive home and check my iMac I get that crazy "You are trying to update less than 10% of your calendar, are you really sure you want to do this?" message which I wish would go away, but other than that things are in sync!

Many thanks again.

[- - e r i k - -]

Reset all of your sync data from one point. That should fix all your troubles, including messages.