Friday 19 June 2015

iTunes Library and iPhone the one to one relationship hated by all

I have clients that have iPhones. They love them, they use them to make calls, store contacts, browse the web and listen to music.
This is where the fun starts.

Since they listen to music they usually end up using iTunes to sync purchased and downloaded music and playlists with their phone. So they can buy new music on their phone, or set playlists and it will sync to their PC and vice versa. All works well for a while.

You see most people I find who love the iPhone don't understand that in Apple's view you can only have one iPhone synced to one iTunes Library. So in the event that your iTunes Library is no longer available due to computer update, computer crash, stolen computer etc when you try to sync your iPhone to a new Library iTunes prompts you to delete all the music content on the phone and sync to this new iTunes Library.
wtf.... there are no words.

Now, for someone who is not technical this would come as a true wtf? moment, as in their mind they have had songs on their iPhone working happily but since the Library is gone they are being asked to erase and sync with this new Library that is possibly empty.

Apple has lengthy discussions on its forums regarding this very issue, but save some time and just go get TouchCopy ($30 USD at time of post, well worth it), which is an application for Mac or PC which will allow you to plug in your existing iPhone, iPod and import the content from the phone direct into your iTunes Library. You can then keep the content on your phone which you had previously and start syncing again with your new computer. I know, Apple needs to make you jump through a few hoops so iTunes doesn't enable piracy, but this also makes it difficult for the people who have no intention to pirate to begin with.