2 iPhones, 1 computer

[Martyrd0m]

My wife and I share our iMac and both are iPhone users. We've run into the problem of syncing and having contacts replaced on each others phones. We kinda found the way around it by creating groups in the address book. But I know am faced with 2 problems.

How to I populate her address book with her contacts from her phone?

Second is I backed up my old 3gs before I sold it as I await my i4. I just backed hers up to update it to iOS4. When I get my new one will I be able to just click restore from backup and chose which phone or am I stuck with restoring from her last backup and not mine?


How that all makes some kind of sense

 

[PoitNarf]

Do you and your wife use separate user accounts on the iMac? I don't think it would be an issue if you each logged in with a different account.

As for the backup, I'm not entirely sure. I'd guess that the backup would be unique per device, regardless if you synced multiple devices under the same user account, but I'm not positive on that. Again, another problem that can be avoided if you log in to the iMac with separate user accounts.

 

[Martyrd0m]

Found out about that to late. We are both synced to the one user name already.

 

[PoitNarf]

Found out about that to late. We are both synced to the one user name already.

You're probably up the creek without a paddle then, sorry to say.

 

[PoitNarf]

Now that I think about it, you may actually be in luck with the backup. Look in this folder: /Users/<username>/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup

If you see multiple backups listed there, they are probably the backups for both iPhones. If your wife's iPhone was the last one synced then hers will be the one with the newer timestamp. Now is the time to setup separate user accounts. Create a new user for yourself and log in. Browse over to the folder under your wife's profile and copy over the iPhone backup that you think is yours. Once you each have restored your iPhones with the appropriate backup, go ahead and clean out the contacts that you don't need. Oh, and make sure you're logged in with your user account and she with hers when using the computer to avoid this scenario in the future.

If any of my fellow forum members have anything to chime in about my "solution" or see a problem with it, please let me know.

If you don't want to go through all this trouble, I'm pretty sure that iTunes will list 2 different backups when you restore. Whichever backup has the older timestamp is probably the backup from your iPhone.

 

[8mpg]

hope this is better than 2 girls 1 cup