dryfly wrote:
svjim wrote:
As an iPhone/iPad developer I have love hate relationship with Apple. But one of the best things they have done over the past couple of years is the ability to backup and restore your iOS devices from the cloud. You get 5 gbytes of storage free and there are nominal charges for additional storage. You need to get an iCloud account to enable back up. Also, if you have music on your PC iTunes app, and if you imported music into the iTunes system from CDs or other means you will want to use iTunes Match to transfer your library to the cloud. I guess iTunes match also works for movies, tv shows, etc. that you have also.
Once you go through the pain of getting everything into the cloud and your wife is happy, then don't worry about iTunes any more. You can do all your backups and restores from the iCloud via wifi. I can tell you that I absolutely hate iTunes on the PC. It is a real pain. I now have everything in the cloud. The only thing I need iTunes on the PC for is if my wife gets a music CD as a gift from someone. Then you need to import it and have iTunes Match transfer it to the iCloud.
Anyway, this is not the place to get the detailed information you need. Go to the apple support forums and ask your questions there. In end, the less you need to use iTunes, the better off you will be.
Good luck,
Jim
Great info, thanks!
Let me rephrase my question this way. Without ICloud storage(which I plan to pursue) if someone has ITunes on the computer and the HD crashes, can they just reinstall the ITunes software on a new HD and sync with the IPhone ? In other words does the IPhone store all the data/info to reestablish ITunes data as it previously was on the computer?
It depends on what you have been doing in iTunes. There are different kinds of data you could have in your library, and not necessarily all of it is on your phone.
My library contains, or refers to, a lot more data than I carry at one time on any of my iOS devices. That's because it includes music videos and movies from sources other than Apple, and a lot of music (foreign CDs) that Apple will not match. Also a lot of books from sources like Amazon and B&N; Apple might sell some of the same titles, but not match them.
I also don't carry all my apps all the time, because I've bought a lot of data-intensive programs I need only for certain occasions. E.G. if I am going to Budapest and Prague, I load my Budapest and Prague city guides, I don't take London, Paris, Rome, Chicago or New York. I don't need the RV parks guide for that trip either, but it will usually be there because it is not big enough to be a space problem.
If you have stuff like this in your library, where it is on your computer will depend on what iTunes options you used when setting up the library and importing the data. There is more than one way for iTunes to handle what data you bring in, particularly media.
This is a big part of why a lot of people don't like iTunes. That, and putting the Mac user interface in front of your Windows acclimated face. But before getting an iOS device I tried other media library managers (for music only) and most have similar obscurity issues about where to find all of the data the library is using, as well as the metadata it is creating.
