iPhone backup slow after syncing PocketPedia

[Conor]

At the top of the iTunes window inside the middle beige-green status box.

[djwudi]

I was just thinking that it'd be nice to have an option for a text-only, no-covers display for Pocketpedia. Perhaps choosing this option could also disable cover syncing, and speed up the sync times?

[Ted]

The new 2.0.1 iPhone firmware *should* improve synch times. I haven't had a chance to try it yet since upgrading.

Ted

[bwhite]

We have reported the bug to Apple. Thank you for all the details..

I have been a long time customer. Downloaded the iphone app and was surprised at how long the backup took. I then realized that the only thing that had changed was my installing the pedia app. Normally my backups took seconds. I never even thought about it.

Aloha .. Brad White

[billydo]

Anyone know if this slow-backup problem with PocketPedia has improved since the latest iPhone 3G updates?

[Ted]

Anyone know if this slow-backup problem with PocketPedia has improved since the latest iPhone 3G updates?

As best as I can tell the incremental backups are faster now -- i.e. the second and and subsequent backups after having added a large PocketPedia collection.

The first backup, however, is still ridiculously slow, taking hours to run in my case. Apple still has work to do.

Ted

[billydo]

Thanks for the info, Ted.

I know I'm talking about the icing on the cake here, but hey Conor, how hard would it be to do a trimmed-down export/sync which uses only text content? I have nearing on 5,000 DVDs in the library and even if backups were lightning-quick, space could be an issue at some point.

[Conor]

We have it as a request to create an interface that does not use covers and an option to not sync them. For now you can cancel the covers sync to trim down on space, the downside is that it will not consider the sync complete and will update all entries on the next sync, instead of just those that have been updated or added. Syncing details is fast and if the sync is not done often you can simply cancel the covers sync when it comes up on the iPhone.

[billydo]

And cancelling this sync has no effect on any other sync or backup activity, only on PocketPedia's?

[Conor]

And cancelling this sync has no effect on any other sync or backup activity, only on PocketPedia's?

Canceling the Pocketpedia sync has no effect on other iPhone syncs. To be clear I am talking about the cancel button that appears on your iPhone after you press the sync button in Pocketpedia. It will sync the collections list first, then the details for each entry, when it changes to "Requesting Images x of x" hit the "Cancel" button.

[JRBTempe]

Kudos on PocketPedia 1.1 and all the great new features. It syncs to my DVDPedia and CDPedia much faster than before and carrying over the default sort options from those programs is just what I've been waiting for.

Unfortunately, the iPhone backup via iTunes is still insanely slow... I have maybe 850 DVDs and 425 CDs in my Pedias so it's not a ton of info. It's definitely not taking hours like it did before, but it's still dog-slow. I realize this is probably Apple's cross to bear now. And yes, I did turn off the option to save big versions of the artwork before I did my Pedia sync and backup.

But the good outweighs the bad, anyway!

JRB

[Conor]

Thank you for the feedback. This is indeed an Apple issue. We have helped alleviate the problems with the large covers option, as well as giving users with large collections a quicker sync at the same time. With the setting for large covers turned off, your information for 1200 entries would be about 4 megabytes. This is just a few megabytes to backup, so it should be quick. What we have read on the internet is that the number of applications downloaded can affect the backup times, as well as having the iPhone connected via a USB hub and not directly to the computer. The good news is that tomorrows Apple event will bring iPhone OS 2.1 as well as iTunes 8, so look forward to that update. Hopefully several of the issues will be addressed. And we are already hard at work on Pocketpedia 1.2 adding even more features, the malnourished preference screen has only one option at the moment.

[ltcarter47]

I guess I didn't subscribe to this thread after I created it, looking forward to 2.1 on Tuesday and the next update of PocketPedia! Hopefully Apple will have made some major changes to the way it handles syncs. Thanks again for the cool app.

[JRBTempe]

Hoorah!! I just updated to the 2.1 iPhone, reinstalled PocketPedia, resync'ed my DVDPedia and CDPedia libraries onto it and I'm happy to say that the backup which was formerly dog-slow is now pretty doggone zippy! I started it at 10:08 pm local time and it finished around 10:23 pm, which clocks in at a record 15 minutes. (Prior to PocketPedia 1.1 that backup was literally hours long!). Of course, I'm still hoping that backup time gets chopped down further with subsequent backups, but we're definitely heading in the right direction!

EDIT: W O W ! I unplugged my iPhone, plugged it back in and hit Sync again, just to see how long it would take to do another backup... the meter zipped by in a few seconds and it was done! I think we're finally out of the woods with these insane iPhone bugs, folks!

[ltcarter47]

This is great news! Can't wait to update and sync when I get home!