Need Help, Transfer iphone PC user to new Mac

[spacepower7]

I need help transferring a PC using iPhone 4 owner to a Macbook Pro purchased today.

My curiosity stems from a situation that happened in December. At that time a friend had an iPhone 3GS that had never been sync to any computer for over a year. The phone was a replacement for a broken iphone. Apparently the people at the Apple Store never told her that she needed to sync the iPhone with iTunes every so often.

When she finally sync'ed it in December, iTunes did not recognize the iPhone (since it was never sync'ed) and wanted to start it as a new phone. The iTunes sync kept all her apps, emails, and contacts but deleted her music and over 1 years worth of photos, including the behind the scenes photos of her own wedding.

She was very pissed and it's a flaw in the iTunes/iPhone environment that Apple needs to clarify. That catastrophe would never have happened on Android or RIM phones.

So back to the question, how do I make sure that my other friend that bought a Mac today doesn't make this mistake and start hating Apple from day 1.

Does she need to transfer her whole iTunes library from PC to Mac? Will this transfer all of her iPhone backups? should she import her iPhone photos into iPhoto before syncing with iTunes on the Mac?

Any advice?

 

[Interstella5555]

I need help transferring a PC using iPhone 4 owner to a Macbook Pro purchased today.

My curiosity stems from a situation that happened in December. At that time a friend had an iPhone 3GS that had never been sync to any computer for over a year. The phone was a replacement for a broken iphone. Apparently the people at the Apple Store never told her that she needed to sync the iPhone with iTunes every so often.

When she finally sync'ed it in December, iTunes did not recognize the iPhone (since it was never sync'ed) and wanted to start it as a new phone. The iTunes sync kept all her apps, emails, and contacts but deleted her music and over 1 years worth of photos, including the behind the scenes photos of her own wedding.

She was very pissed and it's a flaw in the iTunes/iPhone environment that Apple needs to clarify. That catastrophe would never have happened on Android or RIM phones.

So back to the question, how do I make sure that my other friend that bought a Mac today doesn't make this mistake and start hating Apple from day 1.

Does she need to transfer her whole iTunes library from PC to Mac? Will this transfer all of her iPhone backups? should she import her iPhone photos into iPhoto before syncing with iTunes on the Mac?

Any advice?

Ok, I'm a little confused here.

Friend buys phone and starts using it
For whatever reasons, chooses not to sync for over a year
Gets a replacement phone without backing up (ok, really, I've never been to an Apple store where they didn't ask me first thing if I had backed up prior to coming into the store. Which is additionally displayed on the web page when you make an appointment)
Takes the phone home and syncs with her computer which would pull all the info from her last sync and put it on her phone, effectivly wiping out anything that was on there.

Here's where I get a little confused...How was she (or you) expecting the photos and music to be there after a fresh sync? The pictures weren't backed up anywhere in my understanding, so how could they be expected to be either on the computer or the new phone? I can't imagine that if I went and purchased an android phone, set it up, took some pictures didn't sync the phone for a year, then got a replacement phone, that I'd expect the pictures to be on the phone or my computer. I mean, where would they be?


ANYWAY, on topic, when I upgraded to SL I just cloned my HDD, backed up the iPhone backups separately, installed SL, then manually went and put the backups where they should be. Transfer everything over, and make sure you keep the XML file with iTunes. Upon sync it should act normally as long as, you know, she backed it up first.

 

[h1r0ll3r]

Just backup the entire iTunes folder on the PC and then load it onto the Mac. that should maintain all the music and iPhone backups for that laptop. Once you put everything back in its place on the Mac, then the syncs shouldn't be an issue. As for the photos, yes, she should sync them up with something whether it be iPhoto, Dropbox, anything.

For whatever reasons, chooses not to sync for over a year

You'd be surprised at how some people can't even do this. Bro had a 3G for 2 1/2 years...never...synced...once. So guess who got pissed when he decided to update and lost all his goodies

 

[JonLa]

Most people wouldn't ever need or expect to connect their phone to a PC - and they certainly wouldn't expect it to wipe it! It's only the iphone that requires this...

I'm about to migrate from PC to a Mac and would like to avoid having to wipe and reinstall. I know how to copy the library, but there's another folder in Win7 (App Data) that I'd like to know where it goes on a Mac

Windows Easy Transfer allowed me to avoid this when I reinstalled Win 7 recently - the new installation just needed to know where the library file was to find the music, but it had already located the account details and backups.

 

[Interstella5555]

Most people wouldn't ever need or expect to connect their phone to a PC - and they certainly wouldn't expect it to wipe it! It's only the iphone that requires this...

I'm about to migrate from PC to a Mac and would like to avoid having to wipe and reinstall. I know how to copy the library, but there's another folder in Win7 (App Data) that I'd like to know where it goes on a Mac

Windows Easy Transfer allowed me to avoid this when I reinstalled Win 7 recently - the new installation just needed to know where the library file was to find the music, but it had already located the account details and backups.

Crazy considering the first 8 pages on the manual go over it. I mean, are people really hand entering all their contacts and downloading apps OTA? Seems crazy to me to have a mini-computer that you're just using as a phone.

 

[err404]

You'd be surprised at how some people can't even do this. Bro had a 3G for 2 1/2 years...never...synced...once. So guess who got pissed when he decided to update and lost all his goodies

I get that, but in order to actually lose data you need to not backup and then also ignore the warnings that data will be erased if you continue. If you don't have a backup, this is a good indication that you should stop. Going forward shows a blatant disregard for your data and it's hard to sympathies with the loss.

Unfortunately people get it in there heads that the data on their phone IS a backup of iTunes. It's not. There is no easy way to recover your music from your phone if you lose it from your PC. The iTunes paradigm places your PC as the master source for your data.

 

[err404]

I'm about to migrate from PC to a Mac and would like to avoid having to wipe and reinstall. I know how to copy the library, but there's another folder in Win7 (App Data) that I'd like to know where it goes on a Mac

Install the latest version of iTunes on both machines. Make sure that you backup your iPhone on your PC. Stop iTunes on Both and then just copy the iTunes folder on your PC (Typically: C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\My Documents\My Music\iTunes) to the home directory on your Mac under Music/iTunes. Connect your iPhone to your Mac and you should be all set.

 

[spacepower7]

Install the latest version of iTunes on both machines. Make sure that you backup your iPhone on your PC. Stop iTunes on Both and then just copy the iTunes folder on your PC (Typically: C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\My Documents\My Music\iTunes) to the home directory on your Mac under Music/iTunes. Connect your iPhone to your Mac and you should be all set.

That's what I was thinking.


Just some thoughts,

Non techie people are not used to the concept of connecting their phones to a Mac/PC. I would guess that less than 50% of all Blackberry owners have ever connected their phone to a Mac/PC.

Many people have their contacts' info on the SIM cards which was imported into an iPhone. They may have been using Blackberries for years, therefore the are only adding new contacts manually.

Some people exchange info through apps like Bump.

As for the confusion of the first situation.

The first phone broke but the data (contacts etc, not photos) was transferred to the current phone. This new iPhone was activated at the Apple Store and never sync'ed for the first year. The phone was not associated with any computer. When finally connected to a computer for the first time, iTunes wanted to pair the PC with the iPhone but did not state it would erase the photos or offer to back them up. It did not erase email, contacts, etc... only photos and music. IMO it's a stupid situation.

I ended up jailbraking the iPhone, installing the terminal and doing sudo dd over sftp, but since they were leaving the same day, after 7 hours I only got 1GB out of 16GB transferred over sftp over wifi. That first dd dump was all part of the iOS (icns and framework files, the photos are much further on the physical hardware.)

Also, who reads phone manuals?

Thanks all

 

[SidewaysTakumi]

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I'm about to migrate from PC to a Mac and would like to avoid having to wipe and reinstall. I know how to copy the library, but there's another folder in Win7 (App Data) that I'd like to know where it goes on a Mac

Install the latest version of iTunes on both machines. Make sure that you backup your iPhone on your PC. Stop iTunes on Both and then just copy the iTunes folder on your PC (Typically: C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\My Documents\My Music\iTunes) to the home directory on your Mac under Music/iTunes. Connect your iPhone to your Mac and you should be all set.

This is exactly what I did and it worked like a charm.

 

[JonLa]

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This is exactly what I did and it worked like a charm.

Aha! - on a PC it doesn't work unless you find the Apple/Itunes folder in the Roaming subdir of Appdata and copy that too - that's where Windows puts your iphone backups and sync data. So on a PC to ensure you don't have to wipe and refill your phone when you connect, you need to have copied them all. Are you saying on a Mac you don't need to?

Many thanks- this sounds easier than I'd thought

 

[Interstella5555]

That's what I was thinking.


Just some thoughts,

Non techie people are not used to the concept of connecting their phones to a Mac/PC. I would guess that less than 50% of all Blackberry owners have ever connected their phone to a Mac/PC.

Many people have their contacts' info on the SIM cards which was imported into an iPhone. They may have been using Blackberries for years, therefore the are only adding new contacts manually.

Some people exchange info through apps like Bump.

As for the confusion of the first situation.

The first phone broke but the data (contacts etc, not photos) was transferred to the current phone. This new iPhone was activated at the Apple Store and never sync'ed for the first year. The phone was not associated with any computer. When finally connected to a computer for the first time, iTunes wanted to pair the PC with the iPhone but did not state it would erase the photos or offer to back them up. It did not erase email, contacts, etc... only photos and music. IMO it's a stupid situation.

I ended up jailbraking the iPhone, installing the terminal and doing sudo dd over sftp, but since they were leaving the same day, after 7 hours I only got 1GB out of 16GB transferred over sftp over wifi. That first dd dump was all part of the iOS (icns and framework files, the photos are much further on the physical hardware.)

Also, who reads phone manuals?

Thanks all

Ok, I get that, and it sucks, but it's still the end users fault that everything got erased. As a previous poster stated, you need to go through at least two confirmations that everything will be erased on the phone. It's like saying non techie people aren't used to backing up their computer. It's fine if that's what they want to do, but they can't really expect to retain any of their information if something (inevitably) goes wrong.

 

[err404]

Computer: Continuing will erase all data from you device, including un-synced Photos and Music.
User: I don't understand what you mean. Ummm.... Continue?
Computer: All data on your device, will be deleted. Are you sure?
User: I'm still confused. So... Yes, I'm sure.
Computer: Device restored.
User: WHAT! Where's my data? How was I supposed to know?!

I admit that it is more difficult then it needs to be to get you phone synced after a year, but erasing your phone despite the warnings is the user's fault, not Apple's.

 

[Tarzanman]

Ah, iTunes.... 75% of the reason I will never own an iDevice

 

[Interstella5555]

Ah, iTunes.... 75% of the reason I will never own an iDevice

Why, because it allows users to confirm multiple times before it erases anything? Yeah, I hate software like that as well.

 

[err404]

Ah, iTunes.... 75% of the reason I will never own an iDevice

Ah, iDevices.... 75% of the reason I use iTunes.