Syncing iPhone with new computer?

[jent]

I'm wondering what to do with this situation… my girlfriend has an iPhone that she originally synced with her old PC. She no longer has access to it, and she just got a nice MacBook Pro. I used iTunes to transfer purchases (mainly apps), Senuti to pull the songs off the iPhone, iPhoto to copy the photos to her Mac, and MobileMe to pull contacts, calendars, et cetera.

That leaves text messages and app data (like game saves). Is there any way to get those on the Mac? Am I wrong in thinking that I can't sync her iPhone with iTunes on her Mac without restoring? Or will it only force her to erase music and movies?

Thanks!

 

[Watabou]

iTunes will probably ask you to restore the iPhone but there is a way to backup text messeges, movies/videos but you need the iPhone to be jailbroken, at least for the text messages part.

If you are willing to jailbreak it, then all you gotta do is download iPhone Explorer from this link: http://www.macroplant.com/iphoneexplorer/.

So to backup your text messages, go to /var/root/Library/SMS/ in iPhone Explorer and backup the "sms.db" file by moving it to the computer.

You can easily replace the sms.db to a new iPhone, provided that it's jailbroken too.

Using the same app, you can also backup your videos too if you like.

As too the app data, I'm not too sure of this but I think you can backup the "save.dat" file found in some games and stuff. Again, I'm not too sure on this one.

 

[Anapplecsr]

When you connect to a new pc it will not ask you to restore.... To get that data onto the device just create a new backup on the mac. No need to do any fancy jailbreaking.

Check out http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1766 for the full list of items the backup creates.

Also you can have the backup on as many computers as u want.

 

[steve knight]

I just changed accounts on my mac. make sure all the games and music is already in itunes. when it says all the games will be erased it will not erase them as long as they are on itunes. I did not loose anything but the music had to be re synced.

 

[jent]

I just changed accounts on my mac. make sure all the games and music is already in itunes. when it says all the games will be erased it will not erase them as long as they are on itunes. I did not loose anything but the music had to be re synced.

So you're 100% sure that she won't lose her texts or apps/app data? I've already done "Transfer purchases," which brought over all the apps. I also got all of her music back into her iTunes library via the Senuti demo. She wants to fully ditch the PC lifestyle and start syncing her iPhone with her MacBook Pro.

So connecting her iPhone (which was originally synced to a PC) to iTunes on her Mac will just remove and re-sync the music and apps? Instead of a full restore, it's just a re-syncing of music, videos, and podcasts? I'd love some definitive info on this so I can go ahead and help her go all-Mac. Thanks for further help!

 

[steve knight]

it dos not erase the phone only the apps and music depending. I never lost any of my app data. the rest of the phone there were no changes at all.