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iPhone 11 Pro Do y'all sync/backup your iPhones with your Mac or PC?

D

davidg4781

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Oct 28, 2006
2,886
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Alice, TX
I've tried to backup my iPhone to my Mac at least once a week since the iPhone 4S. But is this necessary? Am I one of the few that does this?

I've also been thinking of doing the backup over wifi, just to see if it'll be faster. I'm sure it'll be riskier to stay connected for that long of a time, though.

I'm about to do a backup/restore and all that got me thinking about this. I'm doing this because it's saying I'm out of storage and I want to see if this helps with any rogue files. I just need it to last 1 more year until I can get the iPhone 15!
 
I use iCloud but mainly for a redundancy. I always think of if I lose or damage buy phone, I can go to an Apple Store, get a new one, and be up and running within the hour.

I'm curious about the importing of photos. I thought I would import them and they would delete from my iPhone, years ago. I wonder if I can still do this. I have thousands but don't need them handy. At least not when I'm 98% full on storage.
 
I backup to both the iCloud and my PC. I backup on the PC using iMazing which I love, using WI-FI or wired.
 
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I’ve been backing up my iPhone to my Mac via wifi for years. (I also back up my iPads to Mac.) I don’t completely trust cloud nor want to pay for extra cloud storage, and I just don’t see the need to when it’s so easy to back up to my Mac automatically when I charge (my Mac also has an offsite backup). The other reason is that because of Mac’s Time Machine versioned backups, I’ve been able to recover lost data from my iPhone that I wouldn’t have been able to recover with iCloud.
 
No. I backup my iPhone to iCloud. Anything of importance on my phone is already synced by other means via iCloud or other services.
 
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davidg4781 said:
I've tried to backup my iPhone to my Mac at least once a week since the iPhone 4S. But is this necessary? Am I one of the few that does this?

I've also been thinking of doing the backup over wifi, just to see if it'll be faster. I'm sure it'll be riskier to stay connected for that long of a time, though.

I'm about to do a backup/restore and all that got me thinking about this. I'm doing this because it's saying I'm out of storage and I want to see if this helps with any rogue files. I just need it to last 1 more year until I can get the iPhone 15!
Click to expand...
I always keep my phone backed up via iTunes/Finder. It's the most reliable way of backing up your phone and I've been doing it since I got my first iPhone like 10 years ago. It has not once failed me.
 
davidg4781 said:
I've tried to backup my iPhone to my Mac at least once a week since the iPhone 4S. But is this necessary? Am I one of the few that does this?

I've also been thinking of doing the backup over wifi, just to see if it'll be faster. I'm sure it'll be riskier to stay connected for that long of a time, though.

I'm about to do a backup/restore and all that got me thinking about this. I'm doing this because it's saying I'm out of storage and I want to see if this helps with any rogue files. I just need it to last 1 more year until I can get the iPhone 15!
Click to expand...
iCloud, but only for certain bits and redundancy. The stuff on my iPhone is set up so I don't really need a backup.

Contacts - Google. Available on any device that can import my Google account.

Email/Notes/Reminders - IMAP. Available on any device and via webmail.

Photos - automatic backup to Dropbox (Camera Uploads folder). Photos go directly to all devices running Dropbox. I use Google Photos too from time to time. Also, photos are backed up with iCloud. So I have backups of photos in three different places.

Messages - here's where I use iCloud. Note. Nothing of ANY importance is stored in messages. I could lose every single message tomorrow and it wouldn't matter to me. Important stuff is discussed in person or via a phone call.

Voicemail - that's my carrier, can't do much about that although I think an iCloud backup includes it. Anyway, same as with messages. Nothing important is stored in VM.

Apps - iCloud, just the apps and not the data, except for a few.

I do not believe in putting all my eggs in one basket. I'd rather have multiple copies of multiple backups in multiple places. In fact, that's what I had to do to restore all my photos in May to a new replacement phone. But I had all that precisely because I chose to split all this up.

It's just insane that people trust Apple iCloud for everything.
 
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Backing up to iCloud and backing up to Mac/PC take pretty much exactly the same effort—open an app, check a box, then it automatically backs up whenever you charge your phone. They’re both “set it and forget it”. But each have their own other advantages.

Advantages of backing up to iCloud:
- you can back up and restore when your iPhone and Mac/PC aren’t on the same wifi

Advantages of backing up to a Mac/PC (assumption is that the Mac/PC has its own good backup system):
- you don’t have to pay a subscription if say you have a lot of devices/data
- you don’t have to entrust all your private data to two or more companies (communication network and data server)
- you can make versioned backups of your phone data
- you don’t need internet access to back up or restore

The importance of each of these advantages will differ from person to person.

If your Mac/PC doesn’t have a good backup system, then obviously you’d want to back up to iCloud. But if you have valuable data on your computer, hopefully it has a good backup system.
 
Not necessary these days. iCloud syncs my messages, email, etc.... contacts. Things I would not want to lose. Anything else like music and stuff I can easily sync that to my laptop if ever I get another phone. Its just photos that need to be backed up so I usually back up my pics after a trip. I don't need to sync pics of random stuff I take pics.
 
Been backing-up to iCloud since it was available. Can't remember when I last connected to my Mac.
 
I do the cloud thing nightly but still, about once a month, do an encrypted backup to my MacBook Pro.
 
aPple nErd said:
I still use local (encrypted) backups. I don’t trust cloud services…

I don’t backup weekly, but i import photos from my iPhone about that often.
Click to expand...
100% exactly the same. I don't trust my full backups in the cloud.
 
iCloud backups here for redundancy and convenience. I rarely keep anything super important on my phone, that stuff is kept in 3 different physical locations.
 
Icloud backs me up from 2010 - no failures so far. Of course if you value your content then you also need a backup NAS. So far so good - 10 bucks a month saves me from headaches of transitions from phone to phone or laptops.
 
Sync to mac every morning. I prefer to download my podcast on my mac and sync it to my iPhone.
 
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