iPhone 5

[Piobaire]

It's not a joke fanbois will find funny.

 

[Douglas]

now i have a live phone with none of my **** in it.

 

[the shah]

Native intellectual power of an exalted type, such as is attributed to those who are esteemed greatest in any department of art, speculation, or practice; instinctive and extraordinary capacity for imaginative creation, original thought, invention, or discovery.

 

[Jr Mouse]



now i have a live phone with none of my **** in it.

Did you try the hard reset I mentioned Douglas?

 

[Douglas]

yes and no.

My phone is synced to my home computer. I tried syncing it last night but I had somewhere to be and could only give it about 30 minutes. It would not sync. It looked like it got most of the way through but hung up on Angry Birds, according to what I thought I was seeing on the status bar at the top of the screen.

(I guess I can try killing Angry Birds and trying again but I didn't have time to get that far.)

I gave up and went to my appt. When I got home, I decided backing up to iCloud made more sense anyways, so I started playing with that, but it was hanging up. I figured maybe since it was the first time, I'd let it run for a while. I went to bed.

Woke up, phone was hot, still had not really begun backing up. Status bar on the phone was like 2% of the way filled and it said "calculating time remaining" or something like that.

I turned the phone on and off a few times (did not do a hard reset - I thought it was the same thing) and tried again. Still hung. But at that point I had to come to work.

Got in, tried to download new iTunes to try backing up to my work computer. I'm still not sure if that will pave down my phone or not. If it's a matter of killing my iTunes library that's fine, I can live without the tunes for a day til I can get home and put my songs back on from my home computer... though if the phone's "main" computer is the work one, it may not let me do that, right? But I don't want to lose all my apps either, and if they're not backed up (I think most of them are from whenever my last backup would have been, but I don't recall when that might have been... months? And did it finish properly, given the issues I'm having now?).

I figured it couldn't hurt to try, so I downloaded the new iTunes. Clicking "look for updates" in iTunes would tell me to download iTunes, I'd click OK, and.... nothing. Tried that a few times, shut down iTunes, tried again, still nothing. So no problem, I think, I'll go to iTunes.com and redownload thru safari. Which went fine, until I tried to run the .exe file. Install hung up. So I cancelled and tried again, this time it went through.

I open my new iTunes, and crash goes the computer. I've never seen this before: I got a giant green screen. Nothing on it, just green.

Destructive restart.

(In the meantime, I hard re-set my iPhone 4).

Try to backup to the work computer, thinking it will probably give me some kind of warning if it wants to destroy all my data. Status bar says "Step 1 of 4, Backing Up..." Status bar is at like 4%. Aannnnnnnd..... remains there for like 10 minutes. I give up, cancel, unplug, frustrated.

In the meantime, service has switched over to the new phone, which I turn on and set up as a new phone.

I have now given up. When I get home, I will try making sure iTunes on the home computer is up to date, try hard re-setting the 4 again, and working with it for a while to back it up. Then I will restore the 5 from the existing phone, as there are currently no settings on it and paving it down is no matter.

I love the iPhone, I think it's the greatest device in my life. But this is not the first totally aggravating experience I have had with the world of syncing and setup. It is misery, every time, and really gives the lie to the myth that Apple products and software are seamless and easy to use and don't crash. Obviously, the competition sucks too, but it's the smug "it just works" attitude that is demonstrably false in my experience that would keep me from every being a Piob, err, I mean, fanboi.

 

[Rambo]



I love the iPhone, I think it's the greatest device in my life. But this is not the first totally aggravating experience I have had with the world of syncing and setup. It is misery, every time, and really gives the lie to the myth that Apple products and software are seamless and easy to use and don't crash. Obviously, the competition sucks too, but it's the smug "it just works" attitude that is demonstrably false in my experience that would keep me from every being a Piob, err, I mean, fanboi.

not to throw wood on the fire, but Android phones don't have these ******* sync issues.

 

[Douglas]

how are contacts, apps, music, settings, etc. backed up if not through some kind of "sync," even if by another name?

 

[Rambo]

no, they sync, but they don't have the same issues with using multiple phones/profiles/etc..

 

[Piobaire]



how are contacts, apps, music, settings, etc. backed up if not through some kind of "sync," even if by another name?

I do not have any paid apps on my Samsung. I do have an account on AppBrain which seems to keep track of what I have installed so I assume on my next Android it will d/l those for me. As to contacts, etc. that is all handled through my work Exchange server. I do not keep video or music on my phone as I keep an iPod in the car and do not have the need to listen to music off my phone.

Another thing is my very cheap 16 gig expansion memory card in the Samsung. Hundreds of pics on it and I just pop the card out and plug into my laptop to d/l. I think Apple's stranglehold on external memory is a ******* crime in several dimensions.

 

[Jr Mouse]

Ok that's a lot to sort through.

1. You won't loose your apps, backed up or not. Your iTunes account records what you bought and you can always download the apps again for free.

2. You are saying you have never done a back up before? To iCloud? No matter what happens here, I would make sure your iPhone is set to do that from now on. It's a seamless process that happens in the background when you are on Wi-Fi. It will do this every night when you charge your phone at home. Don't take offense to this, but the fact that you were not backing up your phone is your own fault.

3. What version of OSX are you running? Also, what version of iTunes did you try and install? That sounds like a major bug to me for it to crash like that.

My overall advice here is to take your old iPhone and new iPhone 5 into an Apple store. You can make an appointment online via Apple's website so you won't have to wait. You just bought the iPhone 5 and are well under warranty. They shouldn't charge you for the tech support. I know people like to make fun of the Apple store staff, but they are there for a reason and are your best chance of getting this resolved.

In terms of your iMac, it may not be under any type of warranty depending on how old it is. If you can't resolve the issue there, I would take it with you and leave it in your trunk when you go to the Apple store to fix the phone. Mention how it's related to the iPhone's problems and won't back up to iTunes. The guy helping you may agree to take a look at (and your iTunes install) while working on your phone. I have seen them do free tech support on cases like this in the past.

I love the iPhone, I think it's the greatest device in my life. But this is not the first totally aggravating experience I have had with the world of syncing and setup. It is misery, every time, and really gives the lie to the myth that Apple products and software are seamless and easy to use and don't crash. Obviously, the competition sucks too, but it's the smug "it just works" attitude that is demonstrably false in my experience that would keep me from every being a Piob, err, I mean, fanboi.

While "it just works" is good marketing and PR, no one really expects products from Apple to be perfect. The company fully acknowledges that things can and do go wrong. The reason Apple gets a good rep in this area is not because they have no problems, but because they typically have a lot less then their competition. This goes for their iOS products and computers. Overall, the experience provided is better.

 

[Jr Mouse]



not to throw wood on the fire, but Android phones don't have these ******* sync issues.

This is a bullshit generalization, Rambo. Douglas is having issues, that does not mean all iPhone users are having these issues. You may not have had any issues with your Android phone, but I have a bridge to sell you if you honestly think no one with an Android phone has had issues relating to backing up and syncing of various data types via local hardware or the cloud.

No platform is perfect.

 

[Piobaire]

It's true, Android is not perfect. For instance, when I enter an appt. on my handset it does not sync OTA to my Outlook calendar. I wonder if I had not cancelled my Scuff-phone if that problem would have been solved.

 

[Jr Mouse]

Apple is very much a victim of their own success. Whenever they launch a new hardware or software product they get an enormous amount of attention. Products are talked about all over the news and various media. Other companies would kill for the amount of attention and product buzz they get. Yet, the downside here is that whenever their is an issue with one of Apple's products it also gets a lot of attention. Antennagate is a prime example of this. So is the new version of Apple Maps. What other smartphone has their issues talked about on Good Morning America? That doesn't mean they don't exist, but they are just not considered as newsworthy.

Take this recent bug discovered on some Samsung Android devices. The fact that your cell phone could be remotely wiped from a webpage running certain HTML code is a big deal. Yet this didn't get much mainstream media attention at all. Nor did the recent news that this bug may not be limited to just Samsung's Android phones. Now it's a bug. Those happen and I really don't hold it against Samsung or Google as long as they do their due diligence in patching it up, but I would bet if it was an iOS bug you may have had a better chance of hearing about on the evening news.

 

[Douglas]



Ok that's a lot to sort through.
1. You won't loose your apps, backed up or not. Your iTunes account records what you bought and you can always download the apps again for free.
2. You are saying you have never done a back up before? To iCloud? No matter what happens here, I would make sure your iPhone is set to do that from now on. It's a seamless process that happens in the background when you are on Wi-Fi. It will do this every night when you charge your phone at home. Don't take offense to this, but the fact that you were not backing up your phone is your own fault.
3. What version of OSX are you running? Also, what version of iTunes did you try and install? That sounds like a major bug to me for it to crash like that.
My overall advice here is to take your old iPhone and new iPhone 5 into an Apple store. You can make an appointment online via Apple's website so you won't have to wait. You just bought the iPhone 5 and are well under warranty. They shouldn't charge you for the tech support. I know people like to make fun of the Apple store staff, but they are there for a reason and are your best chance of getting this resolved.
In terms of your iMac, it may not be under any type of warranty depending on how old it is. If you can't resolve the issue there, I would take it with you and leave it in your trunk when you go to the Apple store to fix the phone. Mention how it's related to the iPhone's problems and won't back up to iTunes. The guy helping you may agree to take a look at (and your iTunes install) while working on your phone. I have seen them do free tech support on cases like this in the past.
While "it just works" is good marketing and PR, no one really expects products from Apple to be perfect. The company fully acknowledges that things can and do go wrong. The reason Apple gets a good rep in this area is not because they have no problems, but because they typically have a lot less then their competition. This goes for their iOS products and computers. Overall, the experience provided is better.

1) I am quite certain this is bullshit, as I have lost music I paid for when I lost a phone that I had not backed up terribly recently. iTunes showed I had bought it, but I was SOL to download it again. Ever since, I have been paranoid to make sure I click "transfer purchases" or whatever, which does not apparently happen automatically when you sync.

2) I have backed up, but not to iCloud. I just don't remember how recently. Yes, I needed to back up to iCloud, I do realize that, but as we can see, when I tried, it did not work.

3) I have no ******* idea, I am not lookign forward to hauling my iMac in to the ******* apple store.

More trouble in paradise:

I checked into maps for the first time, and, lo and behold, the phone thinks I am about 20 miles (according to google maps on my desktop, ha ha) from where I am now. It provides a very precise location for my blue dot, but it is very, very wrong.

I tap "Report a Problem" and it gives me several options, one of which is "Pin is at incorrect location." I tap that, and it shows my pin (was a dot before, not a pin, but same difference I guess) on the map and says "drag pin to correct location."

Unfortunately, I cannot drag it, because touching the pin and moving my finger moves the whole map, not the pin.

Piob, I believe you probably made the right choice.

 

[Rambo]



This is a bullshit generalization, Rambo. Douglas is having issues, that does not mean all iPhone users are having these issues. You may not have had any issues with your Android phone, but I have a bridge to sell you if you honestly think no one with an Android phone has had issues relating to backing up and syncing of various data types via local hardware or the cloud.
No platform is perfect.

well, i was specifically talking about syncing multiple phones, which is a monumental hassle in itunes ecosystem. obviously, android has its issues, but itunes is and will be a major hassle for people continuing down the road. like Douglas always says, once you're locked in, you're fucked.