I’ve found myself in the same kind of nightmare – yet to be fully resolved, but I have an idea how to go about it. All methods seem tedious, time-consuming and nerve-wracking. Will I lose my contacts? Will I lose my paid-for apps?
While researching possible solutions I found a really pissy post on a forum that said that users who were upset by the difficulty of, say, adding a new song to an iPhone from a new computer, or who were worried about losing data, were missing the point. It is your responsibility to back everything up, he opined. The computer and the iThing have a master and servant relationship: the computer is the master, the iPhone or iPad is the slave. Back up your computer and all will be fine.
Except that’s not how it works in the real world. Most people use their iPhones and iPads much more than their laptops or desktop computers. You can download, buy songs, movies and apps direct to your iPhone and iPad. Photos are created on iPhones. The iPad encourages creativity more and more with apps like GarageBand (the iPad version of GarageBand is almost reason enough to buy an iPad, by the way – it is incredible). You can plug your digital camera into your iPad and download, edit and view photos – which you may then back up to your computer.
So really – which is the master and which is the servant?
I switched from managing my iPhone from my MacBook to my iMac earlier this year with no trouble at all.
How did you do it? I couldn’t use migration assistant as I used that to transfer stuff off my old dead PowerBook, rather than the netbook my iPhone was managed from.
Also spotted this just now: http://rackerhacker.com/2008/11/02/syncing-an-iphone-with-a-new-mac-without-hassles/
This is hilariously complicated. Wife’s iPad has loads of paid-for apps – backed up on netbook. Her iPhone has loads of contacts but only 1 paid-for app – backed up on iMac. My phone backed up on netbook. Merging / transfer hell!