Just bought BE for ios: I don’t know what to do with it

A place to discuss Bookends for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch.
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Dellu
Posts: 268
Joined: Sun Mar 27, 2016 5:30 am

Just bought BE for ios: I don’t know what to do with it

Post by Dellu »

I just bought BE for ios.
I just learned that it cannot sync via Dropbox.

icloud is not an option for me (i would prefere to kill myself than getting milked by Apple every month: I hate recurring payments)

The Wifi sync seems the only option left for me. I was able to connect the BE mac and BOT at home. Since I have slower network, it was not able to finish syncing the attachements after 3 hours of syncing. so, I took my devises to my work (university) in the morning to use the faster Wifi. BE couldn’t see the ipad in this network [yes, they are in the same network].

What is happening here?
Serge
Posts: 339
Joined: Sat Oct 22, 2011 1:09 pm

Re: Just bought BE for ios: I don’t know what to do with it

Post by Serge »

First of all I should say that initially WiFi sync was removed in BOT for iOS because of network issues we can’t fix. We are using Bonjour technology to find both apps on the same network and then apps try to connect to each other. Because of different conditions like router settings and firewall rules, for some users the wi-fi sync fails. That’s one (of many) reasons we implemented the new cloud sync, which doesn’t have the problems that networking does.
Currently we propose just iCloud Drive for attachment sync, the addition of other cloud services isn’t feasible at this time.

So, there are 3 options for you:
1. Try to use suggestions from the “Troubleshooting” section in the User Guide to get Wi-Fi sync working:
http://www.referencesontap.com/userguide/

2. Try to divide your attachments into different groups on Mac, where only some part of them will be in iCloud Drive, so you shouldn’t pay for extra storage.

3. If nothing is suitable, please ask for a refund.
Here is the link "How to get a refund for iTunes or App Store purchases”:
http://www.imore.com/how-to-get-refund-itunes-app-store
Jon
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Re: Just bought BE for ios: I don’t know what to do with it

Post by Jon »

Dellu wrote: I just learned that it cannot sync via Dropbox.

icloud is not an option for me (i would prefere to kill myself than getting milked by Apple every month: I hate recurring payments)
The first 5 GB from Apple is free (music doesn't not count toward that limit). After that they "milk" you for $0.99 a month ($12 a year) for 50 GB, which is large enough for PDF storage for the vast majority of people). DropBox gives you 2 GB for free, all data stored in the cloud count toward that limit, and then 1 TB (overkill for PDFs) for $99 a year -- a recurring payment just like Apple's. Yet you appear to think that DropBox is OK but not iCloud. To each his own.
so, I took my devises to my work (university) in the morning to use the faster Wifi. BE couldn’t see the ipad in this network [yes, they are in the same network].
As Serge explained, there are network issues that some people experience which cause this problem. The user guide has a troubleshooting section that offers some tips on how to get around them.

Jon
Sonny Software
NilsMS
Posts: 60
Joined: Mon Sep 16, 2013 10:13 am

Re: Just bought BE for ios: I don’t know what to do with it

Post by NilsMS »

Dellu wrote:The Wifi sync seems the only option left for me. I was able to connect the BE mac and BOT at home. Since I have slower network, it was not able to finish syncing the attachements after 3 hours of syncing. so, I took my devises to my work (university) in the morning to use the faster Wifi. BE couldn’t see the ipad in this network [yes, they are in the same network].
You might also try to set up a local wifi with your desktop-mac and connect your ios-device with that, and then sync. This works at least for me.

Best,

Nils
Dellu
Posts: 268
Joined: Sun Mar 27, 2016 5:30 am

Re: Just bought BE for ios: I don’t know what to do with it

Post by Dellu »

The first 5 GB from Apple is free (music doesn't not count toward that limit). After that they "milk" you for $0.99 a month ($12 a year) for 50 GB, which is large enough for PDF storage for the vast majority of people). DropBox gives you 2 GB for free, all data stored in the cloud count toward that limit, and then 1 TB (overkill for PDFs) for $99 a year -- a recurring payment just like Apple's. Yet you appear to think that DropBox is OK but not iCloud. To each his own.


Thank you jon. I understand the icloud is a good idea for most people. I agree the 50GB plan is perfect for this type of task.

1) I have dropbox and box from my work; enterprise editions
2) I have already collected 25GB of free storage in dropbox by recommending my friends in facebook: that is just sufficienet for me.

That is why dropbox is more than OK for me.

But, anyways, I have seen your arguments and the decisions to go with icloud. It makes sense in most cases.
Dellu
Posts: 268
Joined: Sun Mar 27, 2016 5:30 am

Re: Just bought BE for ios: I don’t know what to do with it

Post by Dellu »

1. Try to use suggestions from the “Troubleshooting” section in the User Guide to get Wi-Fi sync working:
http://www.referencesontap.com/userguide/
Thank you Serge: i am trying to troubleshoot it: with no success yet. I am resetting the system of the ipad now: incase there are internal issues with it.

I am also considering to sell this ipad crap in the flee market. The ipad generally has never been effective to me. Sente was the closest system I had: broke unfortunately. The whole concept of sync is just so fragile. The bigger the data grows, the more pain it becomes. It is not just BE; I have tried many other tools: from PDF expert, to iannotate…none of them truly work with bigger data.

And, grouping my resources doesn’t work for me because I want to search across the whole database constantly.

But, thank you for the help, guys. You guys are great, always.
Dellu
Posts: 268
Joined: Sun Mar 27, 2016 5:30 am

Re: Just bought BE for ios: I don’t know what to do with it

Post by Dellu »

You might also try to set up a local wifi with your desktop-mac and connect your ios-device with that, and then sync. This works at least for me.
Thank you Nils. I will try this. I am googling how to setup local network on the mac.
Jon
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Re: Just bought BE for ios: I don’t know what to do with it

Post by Jon »

Dellu wrote:The ipad generally has never been effective to me. Sente was the closest system I had: broke unfortunately. The whole concept of sync is just so fragile. The bigger the data grows, the more pain it becomes. It is not just BE; I have tried many other tools: from PDF expert, to iannotate…none of them truly work with bigger data.
I can't speak for other apps, but Bookends sync is robust, and we have users who sync many thousands of references with no issues. Remember that it is an atomic sync, meaning only references that have been added/edited/deleted are synced. As a result, after the initial upload, a sync event typically involves only a few thousand bytes (not KB or MB, but bytes), so the size of the database is irrelevant.

The problem you're having is with the network configuration, not the amount of data you have.

Jon
Sonny Software
Dellu
Posts: 268
Joined: Sun Mar 27, 2016 5:30 am

Re: Just bought BE for ios: I don’t know what to do with it

Post by Dellu »

Thank you guys. Sharing the Ethernet of the Mac to the ipad worked: and the syncing finished fast. Thank you.
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