Watch with iPhone 6s

You are screwed. This is high on my soap box of absolutely asinine Apple design.

The backup and restore process is all or nothing. So, if you setup as a new phone, you lose all health data, and you lose all the watch history. I wish Apple had the design prowess to allow users to selectively restore app data to a new phone. Alas, some of their developers must be mere children in the land of adult coding.

 

TRUE! Hopefully Apple will start capturing this data on iCloud so next year we can do a clean install and pull data in.

 

I am feeling the woes of this now as well. Health data should be a completely separate part of iCloud that you can pull in to whatever device you want. Blarg.

 

That is extremely unlikely to happen as US law has executive prison sentences for companies that let people's health data escape into the public domain...

 

Microsoft Health?

 

This anal retentive practice of setting up as new has got to stop anyway and is actually the asinine part.

However, what's also asinine is you're screwed if you do suffer a corrupted backup.

 

This is Apple's recommendation when a phone gets a problem they cannot figure out. I believe that iOS gets cluttered after many version upgrades and device upgrades over time. A fresh rebuild was the only remaining solution for my dad's phone, my brother's phone, and my phone at different times when we had major battery consumption problems. I wanted to choke the Apple clowns that told me to do it, but it worked.

Apple has an imperfect OS that degrades with upgrades. Their asinine directive is to set a bad phone as a new device. Their further asinine design limitation is that there is no way to restore phone-only data (like Health and Activity).

 

No, the practice of always setting new iPhones up as new is NOT Apple's recommendation but it's the anal retentive practice of many forum members. What Apple does recommend when you're having problems is set it up as new to rule out corrupted backup as a culprit.

You're incorrect that iOS normally gets cluttered after many version upgrades. My wife and I have backups going all the way back to the original iPhone. It poses a problem only if something becomes corrupted along the way and this is not a given.

 

This is my first-hand testimony versus your skepticism. Both Apple phone support and their Geniuses recommended this exact solution to me, my father, my wife, and my brother on different occasions. Friends have told me similar. So, I have deduced from my first and close second-hand testimonies that this in fact an Apple recommendation.

I agree that there are people that there may be people who unnecessarily do fresh rebuilds.

Until last year, I had apple iOS updates dating back to the 3rd gen iPod touch. In my cases, Apple did not use the term "corrupted backup," they explained that apps and the OS can develop issues through repeated updates.

I think it is naive to assume that iOS does not degrade with years of upgrades. Windows does, OSX does, and I have seen iOS do it. You might want to consider the anal retentive route and refresh your phones. You will probably experience improved speed and battery life. I know that I did after dealing with major battery issues.

 

Again, Apple's recommendation is to set up as new only if you're having problems. That's the difference.

As for your first-hand testimony regarding iOS getting cluttered after many version upgrades, my (and my wife's) new iPhone 6s running perfectly fine with backups going all the way to the original iPhone are also first-hand testimony.

They're trained not to use terms like "corrupted backup," "crashed," etc. (I know this because my sister is an Apple Store manager). "Can" (emphasis mine in your quote) isn't the same as "will." Just because it can develop issues doesn't mean it will.

 

Sigh, I guess I am not going to get attached to my watch data or app layouts. When upgrading to the 6s, I sold my old 5s back to Apple and the Apple Store employee didn't have me unpair my watch before erasing the old phone. I restored from a backup on my 6s, but the watch pairing doesn't come with the backup. (Doh!)

So I had to erase my watch and re-pair.
Super.

Apple will eventually have to address that issue, because what if I had my phone stolen? Then I couldn't unpair, and all my watch data has to get erased to pair with the new phone.

 

No, you can always reset the Watch by doing an erase all content and settings from within the Watch. You can then re-pair to the replacement iPhone which will have the most recent automatic backup of the Watch (unless of course you set it up as new).

 

You are correct, I got the data back once I reset up the watch, although that wasn't obvious that was going to occur.