Why is the concept of syncing so impossible for me to understand?

[jkaz]

I am just speechless right now.

I don't recall the first time I ever attempted to "sync" a mac product- i know it's many years now- but what I am 100% certain of is that I have never ever had a good experience with it.

I started using Apple computers in the 80's (II+) and have been using X since its debut. I achieved certification on a pro application and I consider myself to be somewhat skilled with computers.

But I can't figure out syncing.

I wanted to drag some video's I created for work to my phone so I could show coworkers and clients video's at a moments notice.

I've long realized that my phone is not a device a la external hard drive and that i have to jump the hoops via iTunes.

So I jumped hoops and long story short, I turned syncing off for videos, at the cost of deleting all of them (why???) and am currently waiting for the videos I dragged and dropped to reload on my phone. Oh, and it turned syncing back on?!?!?!?

utterly confounded,

j

 

[iHateMacs]

Why did you turn video synching off?

It's not a toggle that says "Please synch videos now" and "Don't synch any more for now" it's more like "I want my videos Synched" and "I DO NOT want them synched". SO by turning it off you are telling iTunes you no longer want them synched so, it's undoing what it did.

If you turn it off and expect the videos to remain on your phone, how do you think iTunes will cope trying to sync next time when you have videos on your phone that it doesn't know about.

The only way it keeps track of what is on your phone is through synching. Leave it on and it will be fine. Turn it off and iTunes has no option but to remove the videos it's put on there.

It makes perfect sense to me.

 

[jkaz]

I couldn't even put these videos on my phone until I got to my home computer, apparently so it could 'sync'.

why the extra steps?

To me, my phone is a computer that has a hard drive. What I put on that hard drive will determine what I can do with it.

So if I want to watch videos, why must sync be a part of the process?

It just feels like there is probably a switch somewhere(likely in front of my face) that if I found it would allow for a simplified user experience.

Is there a switch like this?

 

[thenerdal]

I couldn't even put these videos on my phone until I got to my home computer, apparently so it could 'sync'.

why the extra steps?

To me, my phone is a computer that has a hard drive. What I put on that hard drive will determine what I can do with it.

So if I want to watch videos, why must sync be a part of the process?

It just feels like there is probably a switch somewhere(likely in front of my face) that if I found it would allow for a simplified user experience.

Is there a switch like this?

Nope, you have to stick with iTunes when using iDevices.

 

[himynameiscody]

Nope, you have to stick with iTunes when using iDevices.

so i cant drag songs out from my iphone song list or delete them? i have to uncheck then hit sync? some times it says apply, sometimes it says sync



also maybe i want more songs on my pc than i do on my phone....where can i view my pics that are on my phone? tru itunes?

 

[Mobile923]

simple:

Check off 'Manually manage music and videos"

Drag and droppable media to your iPhone will be possible... through iTunes.

 

[scaredpoet]

I couldn't even put these videos on my phone until I got to my home computer, apparently so it could 'sync'.

Not entirely true. You could've e-mailed the video to an address on your phone. If you have a mac, you could've sent the video to photo stream via iPhoto. Or you could put it up on the web. There are multiple ways to get a video playing on your iPhone without having to sync it.

To me, my phone is a computer that has a hard drive. What I put on that hard drive will determine what I can do with it.

Your phone is a storage device (not a hard drive, but a storage device), with an operating system on top of it that has a specific workflow for how videos, music and certain other content get stored. You can't drag and drop through your phone's filesystem (without jail breaking anyway).

It just feels like there is probably a switch somewhere(likely in front of my face) that if I found it would allow for a simplified user experience.

The sync paradigm IS supposed to be the "simplified user interface." And again, there are other cloud-based and e0mail based options for getting a video on your phone.

 

[Zxxv]

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simple:

Check off 'Manually manage music and videos"

Drag and droppable media to your iPhone will be possible... through iTunes.

This is what I do. It Just works. iTunes is the hard drive. Put what you want in there. Connect phone it shows as a USB storage device in iTunes. Drag what you want onto phone.

 

[jkaz]

Thanks for all the responses.

I guess I'm just too stubborn.

I wanted to drag them off a folder in my office mac and drop them into my iPhone.

Guess I'm out of luck.

Thanks

 

[himynameiscody]

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Thanks for all the responses.

I guess I'm just too stubborn.

I wanted to drag them off a folder in my office mac and drop them into my iPhone.

Guess I'm out of luck.

Thanks

You can drag em all to iTunes then plug jn your phone. Then in iTunes grab em and drop em to your phone

 

[Stealthipad]

I couldn't even put these videos on my phone until I got to my home computer, apparently so it could 'sync'.

why the extra steps?

To me, my phone is a computer that has a hard drive. What I put on that hard drive will determine what I can do with it.

So if I want to watch videos, why must sync be a part of the process?

It just feels like there is probably a switch somewhere(likely in front of my face) that if I found it would allow for a simplified user experience.

Is there a switch like this?

Welcome to the world of Apple. They MAKE you do some thing through iTunes. Apple leaves little freedom.

All this can be done with ease on my Android SG2 and it is what I like about Android, it is much more open for you to decide how to do things.

This is why they (Android and Samsung), in current advertisements, make fun of the Apple people, who are all molded into what Apple wants you to do, like robots!

 

[sammich]

If you have apps that have storage enabled (apps that let you add files to them via iTunes) such as Goodreader or VLC, you can plug your iDevice into any computer with iTunes installed and drag your media (or use the file viewer to select) to your device and it'll copy immediately like a file copy. It's at the bottom of the 'Apps' tab.

 

[BiggAW]

It syncs your iTunes library down the to device. The computer is the master, device is slave. Not sure what's so hard to understand?

 

[andyACEcandy]

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This is what I do. It Just works. iTunes is the hard drive. Put what you want in there. Connect phone it shows as a USB storage device in iTunes. Drag what you want onto phone.

+1

This is the easiest way to sync your stuff because you get to pick and choose what you want exactly.

 

[Invid]

Welcome to the world of Apple. They MAKE you do some thing through iTunes. Apple leaves little freedom.

All this can be done with ease on my Android SG2 and it is what I like about Android, it is much more open for you to decide how to do things.

There is a reason for the way Apple has set up media handling on iOS devices.

If you've used Gingerbread, then you've no doubt noticed that there is a pause after the gallery has loaded while the program enumerates all of your media and generates the folder structure and thumbnails. The more media you have loaded on the phone, the longer the file system crawling takes. That happens every time the app loads from scratch, and if you have a lot of media on the device, it can take a few seconds with stuttery performance while the inventory completes. Many Android users don't notice this because a) Android devices tend to have less available storage to begin with, and b) I think they tend to use their devices a little differently than iOS users.

iOS does not do this. When you sync files to iOS, iTunes updates the media database, so that when you open the iPod app, or Photos app, the apps just read the database for the metadata and thumbnails very quickly instead of crawling your entire 20-30 GB media collection on the phone. The result is much improved performance on a media centric device where it's reasonable to expect large amounts of media to be present (up to 64GB on current iDevices!).

The most likely reason for the different approach is the expected use of the device by the OS developers: iOS is very likely to be used as a media device, and the media handling is optimized for performance accordingly. If you used drag and drop, you'd have to update the media database on-device with the poor performance that comes with the updating, only worse, because it would be slow only some of the time when the database is updated, but fast other times, leading to inconsistent performance. Apple will not do that.

Android, judging from the performance and media handling of the gallery app, has a different focus, and a different expected use pattern. Not wrong per se, but it does come with a different set of compromises.