On the preferences->devices tab, I have checked the prevent iPhones and iPods from syncing automatically. I do not want the sync kicking in every time I connect my iPhone to the computer. It stops the playback of whatever I am listening to and won’t go back and continue playing whatever I was playing before the sync kicked in. It is an annoyance. At least it should provide an option not to auto sync when I am playing something or running an application.

So, here is the problem. Whenever I connect my iPhone to the computer, iTunes does a short sync of sort even though I have disabled the auto sync. I don’t know what it is doing but it does reset whatever I was playing. All the podcasts I listened since the last sync are reset back to the state of the last sync.

I do have a workaround though. I close the iTunes before I connect the iPhone to the computer. Once I connect and the iPhone beeps/vibrates, I can open the iTunes. Now it won’t do that short sync. The problem is I keep forgetting to close the iTunes before I connect my iPhone to the computer. Most of the times I just scrub through the podcasts I already listened to get around this. When the number of podcasts I already listened are large, I have to listen a bit to figure out if I already listened them.

Update: This workaround doesn’t work! I just had one instance where it did sync and mess up my podcasts.

I have no guesses on what is the real purpose of this sync. If this problem does not appear on iPod Touch, my guess would be something pushed by AT&T through iTunes.

I also don’t know if the same issue occurs on the Mac version of iTunes.

Here is an iTunes error I keep getting.

I am trying to create an iTunes store account that can be used on the second (old) iPhone. I did not want to attach a credit card to that account. Apple wouldn’t let me do that. I ask myself why do they need a credit card information until I make a purchase? Need a new law preventing such practice. No business should ask for credit card or social security number unless it is required to complete a transaction.

I found out a workaround that is to use a gift card to complete the account creation. So I go to the iTunes store and try to purchase a gift card. It won’t let me either. It gave me an error saying my legit account that I use on my new iPhone and successfully used for other transactions is not eligible. The error message is “This account is not currently eligible to purchase gift certificates”. Right. I can buy a certificate that they will mail to me but not something that can be used right away. The reason: not eligible! With Apple you never know what that means. You don’t need to know. You just need to be protected. Sound familiar?

There are some discussions at apple forums about this but not answered.

This is one of the reasons why I always wanted a Windows Mobile phone. But I ended up with not one but two iPhones. Wonder why?

I have never installed iTunes on my work computer based on my experience with it on my home computers. It installs stuff that runs in background and now it installs a device driver for iPhone etc. My colleague who also has an iPhone installed the iTunes 8 today and it bricked the computer. It was the device driver that caused the trouble. It blue screens while booting. All afternoon he was trying to get it back to working. The last I saw him doing was trying to use system recovery. Not sure if it will work. While loading drivers, it is faults in KERNEL32.EXE.

For the past few days I have been postponing the update message from Apple Software Updater on my home computer. I think I will wait until the issues are completely resolved. I only recently rebuilt my computer to Vista. I do have completely PC backup though.