my son recently gave me his old macbook i have tried to download my pictures from my iphone to the new macbook and it will not download. Do I need to register the computer to me before it will recognize my phone?
iPhoto should be able to import photos from iPhone even if you don't have iTunes. If you want to use iTunes to connec to iPhone, you need at least version 9.2.
Once you plug in the iPhone, iTunes will tell you that the phone is synced with another computer (if it is). You're going to have to erase the phone if this happens.