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50% of iPhones Brought to Genius Bar Have Never Been Synced

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Apr 12, 2001
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Fifty percent of iPhone owners who have iPhones swapped at the Genius Bar have never plugged them into a computer to backup or sync. That's according to a "little birdie" that former Macworld Associate Editor David Chartier (now at AgileBits) knows. It also suggests iCloud will save a lot of headaches and lost data.

icloudbackup-500x333.jpg

This is a big reason, according to this birdie, for why Apple Store Geniuses are excited about iCloud.

Backupophobes can get away with never touching iTunes after activating an iOS device. But folks obviously need to plug them into some kind of power source to recharge which, combined with a reachable WiFi network, is what triggers iCloud's automatic backup feature. Sure, these customers can manually reinstall apps one by one from the store, but they have no way to recover any of their data or media purchased on the device. That holds true for contacts, too, if users didn't sign up for MobileMe or even Google's free (and, in my experience, terrible) contact sync.
Click to expand...
Apple's iCloud, with automated wi-fi sync and instant backup to the cloud will be a welcome feature for those millions who never sync or backup their current iOS devices.

Article Link: 50% of iPhones Brought to Genius Bar Have Never Been Synced
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2011/06/13/50-of-iphones-brought-to-genius-bar-have-never-been-synced/
Last edited:
This is so true. I know plenty of people who just buy all of their apps on the device and never backup.
 
ECUpirate44 said:
This is so true. I know plenty of people who just buy all of their apps on the device and never backup.
Click to expand...

Same. I've had a few people replace their phone with a newer model and then call me to ask how they move their data over.

iCloud solves a real problem. People don't want to do anything. They want it to "just work".
 
Not that surprised. My friend's iPhone 3G is still running on 2.x I believe. *edit* he does still sync it ... but 2.x ?!?!?
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8J2 Safari/6533.18.5)

More useful for me is syncing while I am on the road, hopefully icloud allows that as well as my home network.
 
wouldn't this figure include all the phones brought in for exchange that were freshly restored? Those phones wouldn't contain any backup or sync data either...
 
I find I've been syncing my iPhone less and less. Before I would very regularly. now, I'll go weeks without.

arn
 
Makes sense to me. I personally hate backup. It not only takes forever, but it really doesn't help much when i can simply just re-sync. I know you lose some preferences, but nothing that cant be reset.
 
Just the other day I was talking to an iPhone 3G user and was shocked to see that their phone was still in iPhone OS 3.0.1 ... But I guess people who don't keep up with technology and don't usually sync with iTunes, would have no clue that there are new OS updates. They never had to worry ab that before the iPhone! :D
 
I can definitely believe it from personal experience with customers like this. I think many people here would be surprised how many "basic" features of the iPhone are totally unknown to TONS of people.
 
I'm sorry but those 50% are idiots and don't deserve a smart phone. They are probably the same people that type the word "google" into the google search area of a web browser.
 
Yep, I see the move to cloud syncing / backup / wireless updating saving the Geniuses a lot of headaches over time spent "fixing" problems that could be solved by updating and/or restoring from a backup.

What I'd really like to see is iOS be able to back up locally to my AEBS the same way my mac does via Time Machine. Or better yet, use the Time Machine as a cache, the middleman who holds the backup while it's uploaded to the Cloud (and vice versa when it's update time the Time Machine holds the updates). That would allow the end user to experience backups / updates at 802.11n speeds instead of whatever pathetic internet connection they have.

Edit: Arn, I'm the same way. Used to sync damn near daily, but often only weekly / every other week now. In large part I find this is due to my collection, over time, of more and more apps that sync themselves wirelessly. There's just not the need that there used to be, and once iOS 5 gets here I won't be surprised if I don't physically sync again.
 
Doesn't surprise me in the least. I know several people with iPhones and iPads who have never even heard of a software update and have no clue what syncing is.

I think they are the same people who boot up their computers and have to sit through 15 pop ups in the task bar from available Windows/Java/Flash/Anti-virus/etc updates available.

Finally these people will be backed-up without even knowing.
 
No surprise to me at all.

My sister, BIL, and a handful of friends have (or had) never sync'ed theirs to a computer either. They all call when then have some random iPhone issue...and when I ask the question, I get the "uh, I never have" or "I am supposed to do that?"

I'd like to think I've broken my BIL...he does it once a day now....my sister, on the other hand....
 
So since iMessage keep track of conversations across devices, does that mean that Text Messages will also be backed up into the cloud? That would be fantastic!
 
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