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setting up new 5s from a backup is still glitchy

E

eye.surgeon

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jul 12, 2007
409
28
California
I've had every iteration of the iphone from day one, and I'm always surprised at how glitchy the restore process still is after all these years. For example, yesterday I did a full manual backup of my 5 in itunes, and then immediately activated my 5s and restored it using that backup. Easy, right? Well, here are the problems:
1. multiple apps were missing
2. many (>40) apps needed immediate updating, despite the fact they were all up to date prior to my backup.
3. all my wifi passwords were gone. why??


Surprisingly glitchy, especially for a company that brags that "it just works". I'm not overly upset and the problems were rectified with some time and effort, and I'm still an unapologetic fanboy. It just surprises me there are problems like this after multiple years to perfect the process.
 
Restoring from backup wasn't quite as bad as your experience, but I also had some missing apps, notably, Messages. Even the messages option in settings was missing. Had to do a reset and setup as a new phone to get it back.
 
Restored mine from iCloud. An iPhone 5 I had close to a year ago and I had zero issues. Maybe use iCloud instead of iTunes.
 
eye.surgeon said:
2. many (>40) apps needed immediate updating, despite the fact they were all up to date prior to my backup.
Click to expand...

iTunes stores the Apps locally. Check your iTunes App list, and it will show all of the apps that are present but not current (have updates available). They need to be current in iTunes to be restored as current. Otherwise the old version gets installed. Once itunes has an app locally it will not get the later versions from your device. It maintains the copy locally, and only updates if done so through iTunes.

eye.surgeon said:
3. all my wifi passwords were gone. why??
Click to expand...

I have always thought this was for security. Email, WiFi, all passwords are not stored in a backup I don't believe. It may also have to do with how the 5S stores the WiFi passwords compared to the previous device (guessing on that one).
 
I have realized that restoring from iCloud works better than from the computer. It just seems to be much more seamless. Less problems with out to date apps ever because iCloud doesn't save the actual app to the cloud instead it saves what the app was and where on your menu it was located and downloads it fresh from the App Store. This was the easiest restore I've ever done! I will never do it from a computer again.

Oh and the passwords are never saved for security reasons.
 
eye.surgeon said:
3. all my wifi passwords were gone. why??
Click to expand...

Intentional. Passwords aren't saved in your backups for security purposes.

As for the rest, I don't know. 4 iPhones in my house and none of us have those issues. I wonder if there's a hardware issue with your iTunes box.
 
Is the advice to still setup the 5s as a new phone first, then restore from backup - in order to get the free iWork apps ?
 
if you "Transfer Purchases" when you're doing your backup your iphone will send all current versions to itunes.

On a Mac the option is at: File> Devices> Transfer Purchases from "iPhone name"
 
eye.surgeon said:
I've had every iteration of the iphone from day one, and I'm always surprised at how glitchy the restore process still is after all these years. For example, yesterday I did a full manual backup of my 5 in itunes, and then immediately activated my 5s and restored it using that backup. Easy, right? Well, here are the problems:
1. multiple apps were missing
2. many (>40) apps needed immediate updating, despite the fact they were all up to date prior to my backup.
3. all my wifi passwords were gone. why??
Click to expand...
IIRC, a full manual backup alone does not sync new (or updated) apps from your iPhone back to iTunes in your computer.

So if you didn't do the manual sync as well as the manual backup, when you got to the part of the store that copies the apps from iTunes on your computer to your iPhone 5s, it would copy the versions of apps from your last sync back (whenever that was, which can put old versions on if you haven't synced in awhile), and would leave apps missing that had never been synced back to iTunes.

Also, in iTunes, did you have the "Encrypt local backup" box checked? That's required for iTunes to be able to backup passwords.
 
Worked great for me and iCloud put, any app I wanted from
the old phone and all my music, right back. Heck it even
restored my safari history.

Went just as smooth as when I did my 4S when I first got it.
 
eye.surgeon said:
1. multiple apps were missing
2. many (>40) apps needed immediate updating, despite the fact they were all up to date prior to my backup.
Click to expand...

Were they updated on the computer you restored them from? Copies of apps are not retained in the backups, though the backup file does note which apps were installed and attempts to re-copy them from what you have locally stored. If it's out of date, you get the out of date copy. If it's not there, you have to download it on your phone.

3. all my wifi passwords were gone. why??
Click to expand...

iTunes and iCloud do not keep copies of your e-mail or wifi passwords, EXCEPT for encrypted iTunes copies. If you had encrypted your backup with a password, then it would have kept them.

This is to placate people who would otherwise freak out that Apple is arbitrarily storing all your e-mail and wifi passwords in the cloud and in the clear for the NSA to steal, or locally in the clear where anyone with file system access can get at them.


Surprisingly glitchy, especially for a company that brags that "it just works".
Click to expand...

While it wasn't what you wanted, it actually did work as designed.

Next time, keep your apps up to date on your computer, make sure you've downloaded them all, and encrypt the backup file.
 
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