After fielding complaints from users of its iOS Kindle app of reset reading settings and missing books following an update, Amazon is now cautioning its iOS users against downloading the latest software update to its ereader app.

TUAW spotted the warning from Amazon Wednesday morning. Amazon posted a note on the app’s page in the iOS App Store that read “There is a known issue with this update. If you are an existing Kindle for iOS user, we recommend you do not install this update at this time.”

Complaints lodged by users who downloaded the update include one who said the “upgrade erased all content on my iPad, including all of my bookmarks” and another who said the “update deleted all books from my iPad, and I had to register again, creating a second name for the same iPad. It’s like starting all over again. Now I have to upload over 130 books from the cloud.”

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The update to iOS 4.2 that rolled out last Monday went pretty smoothly, but there were many cases of people who updated to 4.2, then seemingly lost all of their music. I didn’t have this bug on my iPad, but I wasn’t so fortunate with my second-generation iPod touch. Luckily, the fix isn’t difficult.

In reality, your music hasn’t been deleted off the device; iOS has just forgotten it’s there. Here’s how to remind it:

1. Connect your device to your Mac or PC. (If your device is set to automatically sync when connected, you can cancel it.)
2. In iTunes, click arrow next to your device in the source menu on the left-hand sidebar, and go to “Music”.
3. Play any song.
4. Sync your device with iTunes.

That should do the trick. It worked for me as well as other TAB staff affected by the bug. When you fire up your music app, you should see your music there again. If those steps didn’t work for some reason, let us know in the comments.

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This update addresses issues that, in extremely rare cases, could result in data loss when upgrading a library from an earlier version of iPhoto.

Data loss, eh? Sounds terrifying. On the surface, it is. A brief search through the Apple Support forum reveals users who, at first blush, apparently “lost” their entire iPhoto libraries after upgrading to version ’11 (which is actually version 9.0 of the product).

The most commonly reported problem is a frozen upgrade process. After installation, the first time a user launches iPhoto ’11, they must upgrade their existing library if they want to use it in iPhoto ’11. Sadly, for some users, the upgrade never completes. Instead, it never gets past a spinning progress indicator.

The problem isn’t all that common, nor is it irreparable, though for those affected, the fix is quite convoluted. Some have apparently even had to restore from Time Machine backups.

For the record, I haven’t had any problems myself, despite upgrading multiple libraries ranging in size from a few hundred megabytes to a 300GB. I have found that iPhoto slows down considerably as it churns through the Faces database.

Another reported problem with iPhoto 11 is missing help files. Once again – I couldn’t reproduce the problem on any of my Macs. But if you are having problems accessing Help in iPhoto 11, you can find a solution here.

iLife ’11 was, for me, something of a mixed bag. I expected more from Apple, and the few updates we got to some of the iLife titles didn’t set my world on fire. Even though I haven’t experienced any problems myself, seeing library upgrade problems like these cropping up only makes me even less enthusiastic about the suite.

Let us know if you’ve had problems with iPhoto 11… or whether you intend to upgrade at all.

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So the holidays are over. The food portions are returning to healthy sizes but the damage is done. New Year resolutions you’ve been ruminating on for weeks must now be taken seriously. It’s time to get in shape. No more excuses! No more distractions. You have that nice new Mac so you think, “Hey, I’ll type ‘em up and print ‘em out! If they’re pinned up on the wall I can’t possibly fail!”

Only, you might have a problem doing any typing if recent reports prove accurate. It seems the combination of Magic Mouse and Apple Wireless Keyboard are a toxic mix. Over on the Apple Support Discussions forum users are reporting that, since installing their Magic Mouse, their Apple Wireless Keyboards have been guzzling power like there’s no tomorrow.

Brand new, planet-killing alkaline batteries don’t make it through a full week. Tree-hugging rechargeables manage less. Users have been forced to revert to backup mice (mouses?) or switch-out their keyboards for a more traditional, wired variety.

User cbcirrus writes;

Apple Tech Support furnished three replacement aluminum keyboards (unfortunately one DOA and all three were three battery version). All replacement keyboards suffer from the low battery life issue.

They now claim it is a bluetooth driver issue and the engineers are working on a solution, presumably a new driver or patch. One tech said engineering believes the magic mouse bluetooth is interfering with keyboard bluetooth communication and/or sleep mode. No estimate as to time frame for solution just a suggestion to use rechargeable batteries until issue is resolved.

I haven’t been hit by the battery bug described here, but I’ve certainly had my own issues with the Magic Mouse / Wireless Keyboard combo which I suspect may be related. I’ve found that my Apple Wireless Keyboard interferes with my Magic Mouse. I simply can’t have both devices working at the same time in the same room without my Mouse pointer losing the will to live and being reduced to a stuttering, crawling, sorry excuse for a pointer.

Changing wireless channels on my router and Time Capsules made no difference. In the end I had no choice; if I wanted to continue using the Magic Mouse, sans judder, I had to switch keyboards to the wired variety that originally came with the Mac Pro.

About a month ago I found a thread on Apple’s discussion site explaining that — for 2009 Mac Pros — the problem doesn’t lie with the Broadcom bluetooth radio but with its drivers. Unfortunately, Apple isn’t privy to Broadcom’s firmware roadmap and can’t say when an update will arrive.

Oddly, I cannot find that thread now. I suspect that at some point in the intervening weeks it has been edited/removed. If you can find it, please share in the comments below. I mention it here because it sounds awfully similar to the explanation above… perhaps the two issues are connected?

Have you experienced issues with using the Magic Mouse and Apple Wireless Keyboard together?

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The problem lies with Mac OS X’s Guest Account functionality, and was first reported at the beginning of September on Apple’s Support Discussions forum. Specifically, some Mac owners have found that after using the Guest account, and later logging-in to their usual primary account, all their personal data has been wiped clean. Everything. Documents, pictures, movies, music. The whole lot.

More worryingly, some users report that they didn’t even use their Guest account first — simply booting up their Mac normally resulted in an “out of the box” experience — default wallpaper, dock configuration and, again, a loss of all personal data.

It seems just about every technology or Apple-focused website is reporting the issue this morning. At a time when Microsoft is suffering the humiliation of having permanently lost customer’s data, Apple is in similar hot water. It’s not a competition, boys!

From what the user community has managed to figure out, the bug occurs only in Mac OS 10.6 (Snow Leopard) with a Guest Account that was created in Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard). After upgrading to Snow Leopard, the Guest Account settings retain Leopard’s older spots, to coin a phrase. And there the problem lies.

Thankfully, and in a break from its usual behavior (that is, stubborn refusal to admit anything is wrong with their products) Apple yesterday delivered a statement to CNET that reads, “We are aware of the issue which occurs only in extremely rare cases and we are working on a fix.” OK, a few plus-points for finally admitting there’s a problem. Minus a few points for it taking over a month to do so. (Seriously, do we really think it took Apple this long to reproduce the problem? No. Of course not.) And minus a few hundred more for Apple not putting that crucial statement on its own support pages, which I would modestly suggest is vastly more professional and helpful to Mac owners who aren’t CNET or tech-press readers. But oh well — at least we got something.

Thankfully there are some steps everyone can take to minimize the risks of falling foul to this hugely worrying bug.

First off, have a recent and complete Time Machine backup of your personal account and all your data (but think twice if you’re using a Time Capsule that’s a little more than 17 months old).

Next, if the Guest Account was enabled before you upgraded to Snow Leopard, pop in to your System Preferences and disable it. To do so, follow the steps below.

In System Preferences, choose Accounts

Click the padlock icon to make changes - you may be prompted for your password

The icon will now indicate you can make changes

Click on the Guest Account icon

Un-check the box labeled "Allow guests to log in to this computer"

That’s it. Close System Preferences and restart your computer. When you next log in, you can choose whether or not you want to re-enable the Guest Account. Doing so after following these steps ought to be safe, since the Guest Account will be recreated with all-new Snow Leopard settings which, it’s assumed, won’t delete all your valuable personal data. But please note carefully — this is a community-generated ‘fix’ and not officially recommended or endorsed by Apple. It might work. It might not. Your mileage, as they say, may vary.

Anecdotal Evidence Alert: I had my Guest account disabled on all my machines prior to upgrading to SL. In an heroic act of self sacrifice I’ve courageously enabled the Guest account on all of my Macs, then logged back in to my usual personal account. I haven’t lost a thing. Hardly a scientific test of the theory this problem occurs only with 10.5/Leopard flavoured Guest accounts, but encouraging, nonetheless.

Have you been hit by this bug? Can you offer a more technically sound workaround? Please share in the comments below.

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As Zapp Brannigan might say, “Kiff, we have a conundrum.” And it turns out I am not alone.

Apparently one of the new “features” of the iPhone 3.1 update is severe narcolepsy, colloquially called “the iPhone coma.” iPhones running 3.0 or 3.0.1 software are not affected, and the coma appears much more prevalent on the iPhone 3G than the 3GS. This issue seems somewhat widespread and there are several threads about this issue on the Apple discussion boards.

My particular situation of a locked phone that refuses to wake up or ring is but one of the many manifestations of this bug. Depending on when the iPhone becomes comatose, the screen may be on or it may be off. If the screen is on, the display may continue to update (i.e. the time changes) but the phone can’t receive incoming calls, nor do the physical controls or the touch screen actually respond to user input. If the phone is in locked mode (i.e. screen is off) then a comatose phone will show itself as being unable to be woken up by clicking the physical controls. In other words, it will have a black screen.

Triggering the problem is random. Since I updated to iPhone 3.1 on Sunday night, I’ve had the problem about three times a day. It’s never been in the middle of a call and it’s always been as I pick up the phone to make a call that I notice it won’t turn on. My observations of randomness and repetition are consistent with other reports on the web.

The short term fix to resolve the problem is to force a hard reboot by holding down the top and home button down for 10 seconds until you see the chrome Apple. This does not erase the data and the iPhone will reboot and be able to receive calls after a couple minutes. Removing the SIM card or restoring the iPhone from backup had no effect. Unfortunately, Apple does not provide any supported way to revert the phone to the coma-free 3.0.1 software, so unfortunately, iPhone users stuck with narcoleptic iPhones will need to wait for the bug fix from Apple.

If you rely on your iPhone 3G and haven’t installed 3.1 — wait. You’ll miss out on a few new features until Apple provides its fix, but that is a small price to pay for a reliable working phone! Those of you running 3.1, has your phone gone comatose or has it happily remained fully conscious since the update?

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Ooops. Seems I spoke too soon. TidBITS reports that some users who upgraded to Snow Leopard, Apple’s latest incarnation of its Mac OS X operating system, have been experiencing problems sending email using the native email client, Mail.app.

When trying to send mail, hapless users have been getting an error message that reads “Error 54: Connection Reset By Peer.”

Of course, I know what you’re thinking. “Error 54?” you’re saying, as you stroke your Tech Guy Beard of Truth, “Sounds like an issue with port rotation. I probably need to update my SMTP settings.”

A quick look at the newly added Article TS2998 over on Apple’s Support Knowledge Base confirms your Oracle-like insight. According to Apple:

In Mac OS X v10.6, Mail sends messages through a different port rotation for the “Default ports” setting. Your authentication settings for your Mail account (for outgoing messages) may need to be updated.

Just follow step-by-step instructions for updating the offending account’s SMTP server settings.

Several days ago, during Gmail’s recent hiccup, I had just upgraded my machines to Snow Leopard and found I couldn’t send mail from my Gmail account. At the time, I assumed it was caused by the server difficulties Google was having and, seeking a quick and easy fix, I removed the account from Mail and have been using Safari to check my Gmail ever since. It seems, perhaps, I was wrong to assume it was Google’s problem. Perhaps I was experiencing exactly the problem described above.

I don’t feel too foolish for failing to suspect my new big cat was the culprit; after all, everything else works perfectly. Following such a major upgrade, all my hardware and software work exactly as they did on the old feline. I’d like to extend the metaphor a little further — probably something about cats toying with their prey — but I’m gonna stop before it gets outta hand.

Have you experienced the same problem with Mail? Did the fix Apple recommend work for you? Is this a bug in Snow Leopard, or the result of Mail becoming a more secure email client? Share your thoughts with me in the comments, and I promise I won’t use the cat metaphor again.

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The Mozilla crew have updated Firefox 3 and Firefox 2 to address security vulnerabilities and (in the case of version 3) bugs & usability issues, including fixes for Mac-specific bugs.

Firefox 3 had five security issues including two critical ones that could lead to either memory corruption or privilege escalation. Firefox 2 fixed nine security vulnerabilities, four of which were critical.

OS X users will see fewer problems with keyboard shortcuts, be able to enter Japanese, Korean, Chinese and Indic characters into Flash object text fields and store user profiles on AFP shares.

As I continue to use two browsers regularly (Firefox and Safari), Firefox continues to re-grow on me, especially with its rich extension support. If you do use non-Apple-provided browsers, it is vital that you stay on top of updates as you never know when you will find yourself surfing to a site with malicious content. Firefox makes it almost as simple as Apple’s Software Update by letting you choose between Help → Check for Updates… or setting up automatic update checking under Firefox → Preferences… → Advanced → Update.

If you’ve already upgraded, let other TAB readers know how you fared by dropping a note in the comments!

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The typo: instrucitons

The intended word: instructions

The suggested spelling: isntrucitons

The notes: The spellchecker does offer the correct spelling as one of the choices; how isntrucitons ended up in there is beyond me…

The typo: applicatication

The intended word: application

The suggested spelling: applicaticataion

The notes: FAIL. 

Also, Dictionary.com offers up upland cotton as a possible alternate for applicaticataion and no alternates whatsoever for applicatication. That said, it was one heck of a typo on my part in the first place, but that’s no excuse for making up words! :P

The typo: positiove

The intended word: positive

The suggested spelling: positionve

The notes: Like the first one, the correct word was among the choices, but again, Leopard decides to have a little fun with our minds. 

I’m guessing these are just bugs in the spellchecker. Hey, at least this bug is mostly harmless!

Are there any words that you have noticed that spellchecker gets incorrect? Let us know in the comments.

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