Category: Apple

Fixing iTunes Match on iPhone and iPad

16 Mar 2015 · Annoyances, Apple, Howto No comments

A couple weeks ago, I noticed that iTunes Match wasn’t working properly on my phone. I could play music if I downloaded it, but I couldn’t get most of the songs to stream. It would immediately start going through the list of items pausing for less than half of a second on each one before moving on. Eventually it would hit a song it liked and it would wait long enough to stream the beginning and start playing. The only way I found to fix it was to turn off iTunes Match, delete all the music stored on my device, perform a hard reset, and then turn on iTunes Match again. I did this on two devices without restarting the phone and it did not help anything. Here are the steps in iOS 8.2:

  1. Open the Settings app.
  2. Navigate to Music.
  3. Scroll to the bottom of the list to iTunes Match.
  4. Tap the toggle switch to deactivate iTunes Match.
  5. Navigate back to Settings.
  6. Navigate to General > Usage > Manage Storage and wait for the list of apps to load.
  7. When it appears in the list, tap Music.
  8. Tap Edit and red circles will appear next to the items.
  9. Tap the red circle next to All Music and tap Delete.
  10. Wait for the music to be deleted from your device.
  11. Perform a hard reset by holding the home button and the lock button down simultaneously for about 5 seconds until the screen turns black and the goes to the Apple logo screen.
  12. If the device turns off at this point, hold down the lock button to turn the device back on.
  13. After the device finishes loading, unlock the device and navigate to the Home screen.
  14. Open the Settings app.
  15. Navigate to Music.
  16. Scroll to the bottom of the list to iTunes Match.
  17. Tap the toggle switch to activate iTunes Match.
  18. Press the Home button.
  19. Open the Music app.
  20. Wait for iTunes Match to resynchronize your music.
  21. Play some songs to make sure that it worked.

I hope this helps you if you are having issues with iTunes Match on your iOS device. I will report back here if I find that it’s stopped working again.

Accessing Mac OS X Leopard Grayed-out Preference Panes

25 Feb 2010 · Annoyances, Apple, Howto, Mac, Technology, Work 3 comments

UPDATE: This also works on Snow Leopard if you are having the same problem accsessing any preference panes.

I have a work-issued MacBook Pro with Leopard, specifically Mac OS X 10.5.8, installed. It is a test image that was installed to test ideas about ways to administer systems for users without Administrative rights. At the end of the test, my access was changed to grant my user administrative rights on the laptop, but it still has many problems. I am waiting for the new Snow Leopard image to be completed to have my laptop reimaged. In the mean time, I have been struggling with a few issues.

The system blocks access to certain preference panes in System Preferences. This was probably an oversight or the leftovers of some experiment, because it does not block access to some of the more sensitive preferences. I can add new users to the laptop and do all sorts of things that I should probably not do on the network. The preferences I could not access were not too important for me to change, like Growl, for instance. Then I tried to use Apple’s Magic Mouse. When I installed the system update that enables its advanced features, I could not access the new Mouse preference pane. When I hover over it, the tooltip says “Your access to this preference has been restricted.” If you try to open the pane directly the error says “You cannot open “[name of preference pane]” preferences pane because it is not available to you at this time. You might need to connect a device to your computer to see this preferences pane.” It looks like this:

Here’s how you do it:

  1. Open the Applications folder and find the System Preferences.app file.
  2. Right click or Command-click System Preferences.app and choose Create Duplicate.
  3. Right click or Command-click the new System Preferences copy.app and choose Show Package Contents.

  4. Navigate to Contents > Resources and find the NSPrefPaneGroups.xml file.

  5. Move NSPrefPaneGroups.xml to the Trash.
  6. Make sure System Preferences is not running and double click System Preferences copy.app to run it. All the preference panes appear to be gone!

  7. In the System Preferences application click the View menu at the top of the screen. All the preference panes are now accessible from the View menu.

  8. When you have changed the preferences you need to change, close System Preferences.

Any time you need to access the disabled system preferences, just use System Preferences copy.app, otherwise you can still use the original System Preferences.app for changing system preferences normally.