iPhone/iTunes sync question

[desertman]

A friend of mine just got an iPhone 5 and the store where he bought it transferred all phone numbers from his wife's iPhone to it and on top he also put some more numbers in manually. When he now synced his own contacts from his Mac (with OS X 10.6) to the iPhone via iTunes (not via iCloud) all the numbers that were already on the iPhone got deleted.

Was this deletion unavoidable or how could he have avoided it?

Should not iTunes have done a backup from the iPhone first before it put the new data on it? If there is a backup how can the old date on the iPhone be restored (without deleting the contacts on the Mac)?

Thanks for your help (if there is one)!

greetings - desertman

 

[desertman]

Is this really a question that nobody can answer?

 

[Small White Car]

Had he synced through a service like GMail or iCloud I think it's supposed to ask "Do you want to replace or merge the contacts on this phone?"

What did he do? Did he set it to just copy from iTunes over the USB cable? I've never done that, I guess it's possible that doing it that way treats it as a straight up pave-over wipe. But I'm not sure.

 

[YaBoiD]

I'm having a similar issue. I have manually sync checked on both my PC laptop and on my Mac Air and whenever I sync on one, it erases all my media content. It will provide me with either an option to erase & sync or to cancel. All music, ringtones, iBooks, and Video are then deleted. It's very frustrating. Apple needs to provide a more streamlined solution.

 

[Interstella5555]

I'm having a similar issue. I have manually sync checked on both my PC laptop and on my Mac Air and whenever I sync on one, it erases all my media content. It will provide me with either an option to erase & sync or to cancel. All music, ringtones, iBooks, and Video are then deleted. It's very frustrating. Apple needs to provide a more streamlined solution.

It's because you're syncing with multiple computers, iDevices haven't been able to do this since the iPod classic.

 

[desertman]

iDevices haven't been able to do this [syncing with multiple computers] since the iPod classic.

As it seems, at least not via iTunes. According to Apple it is supposedly possible through other ways:

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1474

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1202

I do not really understand what Apple is trying to convey in these links and I also do not understand why it is not possible in general to sync contacts from multiple computers to one iOS device. I actually resent this. It is another example of Apple controlling iOS users in a rather appalling way.

 

[YaBoiD]

As it seems, at least not via iTunes. According to Apple it is supposedly possible through other ways:

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1474

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1202

I do not really understand what Apple is trying to convey in these links and I also do not understand why it is not possible in general to sync contacts from multiple computers to one iOS device. I actually resent this. It is another example of Apple controlling iOS users in a rather appalling way.

I have to agree. By Apple limiting this functionality it makes for an extremely frustrating experience. Hopefully this will be solved somehow in the future either through Apple or a 3rd party...