I bit the bullet and upgraded to iOS 5. I figured I'd either wait a couple of weeks for an untethered Jailbreak or just go tethered for now, since I rarely ever reboot the phone.

So, iCloud.... As far as backup goes I'm not feeling the love. It seems that it's not possible to set up your iOS device to back up to both iCloud and your iTunes-running computer.

This is a problem because iCloud offers only 5GB of storage which is, as far as backups go, not really enough for much of anything. My iPhone is 32GB and even when you discount the space take by apps, that's still a lot of space that can be occupied by stuff that needs to be backed up. When I first set it up immediately iCloud complained it didn't have enough space to back up the phone.

So that means having to turn off a bunch of stuff from backing up. Which means it doesn't get backed up at all. Being able to use both iCloud and the computer would allow really important stuff to go to the cloud daily with less important stuff going to the computer less regularly.

Arrgh.

There were a few other upgrade hiccups, such as some random email addresses from customers somehow getting into my contacts (address book) and three extra Google calendars somehow becoming enabled.

So far "Local Weather" doesn't seem to work and I'm fairly confident that my cellular (voice) connection is not as robust - the network keeps dropping out here at home.

Notification Center is most definitely not a suitable alternative to LockInfo (which requires a Jailbreak), and using the volume button for taking pictures with the camera kind of sucks. It has too much resistance and of course the camera lens is placed in a bad location, likely to be obstructed by a finger, when you hold the phone in the necessary orientation. They either need to add an additional button to a future phone (multi-use) or move the camera so it's more centered on the back of the phone.

Doing Syncs from iTunes no longer seems to lock the phone - you can keep using it while it's backup up, etc. Which can get a little confusing if you happen to forget it's in mid-sync.

Makes me wonder what is in your backups. My loaded to the brim 32GB iPhone is only sending a little under 500MB up to be backed up. The rest is all content that lives in iTunes in some form, like music files, podcasts, photos, etc.

On the iPad, the backup is a bit larger at a little over 2GB. Slightly over half of that is content from an app that shouldn't be in the backup category, since it's data it can just pull back down from the internet if needed.

I'll have to decide next June if 5GB will be enough or not. For now, I'm at 25GB total space, due to my MobileMe subscription.

Also can't say I've had problems with Local Weather. It's correctly identified what city I am in every time, and was quite handy to have when I was traveling recently.

Overall I'm happy with the upgrades, and look forward to more programs taking advantage of iCloud. If I had to find something to nitpick about, it would be iMessage on the iPad. I wish I had some way of letting it also receive any iMessages sent to my phone via my phone number. If people use my registered e-mail address, both devices get it and I can respond via whichever one is handy. If something comes in only via the number though, it forces me to use the phone.

Videos and photos take up a large amount of space. I was under the initial impression those wouldn't count. Any offline maps or data applications also have a large amount of data, the biggest for me being AllofWiki at over 5GB itself. Not something I want to back up to the cloud at all, since I can just download a new wikipedia dump, but something I'd like backed up on my Mac so I don'y have to download at all.

You can still backup to the Mac when backing up to iCloud. Just right click on the iPhone in iTunes and select backup.

So you can turn off iCloud backup for your wiki data and then still do a full backup to the Mac when you want.

Excellent tip Andy, thanks!

I've found a few more quirks. Wifi sync is supposed to be on-power only. However, if you unplug power from the iPhone after it shows up in iTunes, you can continue to sync for some undetermined amount of time. Putting the phone and/or the Mac to sleep doesn't seem to break this ability. But eventually it does seem to break and the iPhone disappears from iTunes and won't come back even if you plug it in to power again - need to restart iTunes.

My iPhone doesn't seem to hold the setting telling it to sync the address book to the Mac. I turn it on, I can do syncs, but at some point, the setting is gone. This means that the Address Book on my Mac doesn't get updates. If I upgrade to Lion I suppose its address book will also talk to iCloud and this point will be moot. But it's still an issue now.

I can't install the new iTunes Movie Trailer app. I add it to the phone and sync in iTunes, but it just disappears a second later.

Photos in the Photostream don't count, but those also don't stay more then 30 days in the cloud. The Camera Roll (if you aren't using Photo Stream) is backed up and counts. Photos synced via iPhoto aren't backed up.

Videos and Music synced via iTunes also aren't backed up. If you are using third party programs, they might have their content flagged to be backed up. Easiest way to check is to go to Settings - iCloud - Storage & Backup - Manage Storage - (Device Name). It should break out each app and the backup size, along with toggle switches to disable some apps. Sounds like you may have found this already, helpful for others though to know about.


You can initiate a manual sync even when the device isn't plugged into power, and same for backups. iOS will only automatically try and start a sync, or backup on it's own when it's plugged into power. Not sure why the device disappears for you though, mine remain visible in iTunes as long as they are on the home network.

YMMV of course with the jailbreaks.

My photos are all in the camera roll - as that was the only place they could be with all previous versions of iOS. I don't do any iPhoto sync as I use Lightroom. I manually import from the iPhone to Lightroom every now and then - it would be nice if Apple allowed other apps to plug into the photo sync process. I don't think I'll ever use iPhoto (quite dislike everything about it) nor Aperture (very backwards asset management).

No jailbreak ATM. I want to test everything first to get a baseline before I do that.

And I definitely could not start a manual sync (from the phone) without the iPhone plugged into power. Only after connecting it, then having it pop up in iTunes and then disconnecting could I get the manual sync button to stay enabled.

I thought I'd read that setup tip late last year after first getting the iPhone, or maybe even earlier when just playing around with my older iPod Touch. I can't recall why I didn't end up using it.

Do you know if it's a workable solution for pulling Camera Roll images from the iPhone as well?

What I would normally do is import manually to Lightroom and then empty out the iPhone at some point. Right now I have a hefty amount of images because I haven't empties the roll in a long time.

*checks to make sure Google.ca is working *

http://blogs.adobe.com/phosphors/2011/01/getting-photos-from-an-iphone-into-lightroom3.html

Tom, I've been doing that for over a year. Which is what I'd already said.

25 million already upgraded to iOS 5, and 20 million activated iCloud. Looks like developers will have an easy time targeting iOS 5 and utilizing iCloud for their apps.

The bump in internet traffic from people upgrading was very noticeable:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/oct/13/ios-5-update-internet-traffic-spike

ISPs will probably appreciate that iOS is back to doing delta updates going forward. On the Mac running Lion, the full OS 10.7.2/iTunes 10.5/iOS 5 stack was around 1.3GB worth of downloads.

They might, but it might easily be offset by the spike of people downloading their iCloud backups next time there is a new iPhone launched

Ahh. You said manually, wasn't sure if that meant you were using Image Capture, then moving the files into Lightroom. Sounds like importing to Lightroom is the same as importing into iPhoto or Aperture then.

As for an automatic way, it would have to involve iPhoto and PhotoStream. May be able to script something with folder actions, or some other Applescript work. I haven't dug into how PhotoStream works yet, nor do I currently know if it's something that another program could easily access.

Oh, with previous iOS and iTunes versions, I thought images were automatically sent to iPhoto when you did a sync in iTunes. That's not the case?

Nope, it's never synced photos off the camera roll into iPhoto automatically. If iPhoto is set to open when a digital camera is attached, it would also auto launch when an iOS device was plugged in with photos in the camera roll. From there a user has to select what photos to import, or click the import all button. Once the photos are in iPhoto, then iTunes will resync them back to the phone, usually at a lower resolution to save space.

And it does this replacing the original photos on the phone? Is it iTunes or iPhoto that's responsible for the deleting of the original photos? I'm not sure if Lightroom has the ability to remove images from the roll on the phone.

All my camera imports go into an incoming folder that gets a date-based folder hierarchy automatically created/applied and maintained by Lightroom. I'm not sure I'd be able to use that other Lightroom publish tip to keep the photos in sync back to the iPhone with this layout.

Woot, seems like my iPhone now shows the manual wifi sync option without ever plugging it in. Don't know why it wasn't working before, but it seems pretty solid right now as it hasn't dropped all afternoon.

It's super nice not having the phone locked up when doing syncs now too. Now if only Apple could get rid of the bloody system-modal windows when doing things like adding tracks to iTunes.

And FINALLY, the built-in music player (formerly "iPod") can deal with compilation albums (without polluting the artist list with a million one-off artists) *and* albums tagged with Album Artist (those with guest tracks, etc.) It still sucks at playlist management and there's no way to list all albums (showing covers) grouped by artist - why on earth would I ever want to see a list of all albums by all artists sorted alphabetically? But it's a big improvement nonetheless. Though I'm still looking for a good alternative music player. Tried a bunch last night and they were just awful.

iPhoto prompts at the end of the import if you want to delete or keep the photos. As does Image Capture.

Easiest way to think of it:

The iPhone acts just like a digital camera with removable memory. When you take a picture, the photo is stored in the "Camera Roll", whereas a normal camera would save the image to the SD card. The camera roll is part of the backup the iPhone performs via iTunes or iCloud, with the idea being these are photos that have yet to be backed up any other way, as they are in the preprocessed/presorted state.

For syncing the photos back, the iPhone then acts as a viewer only. Photos are synced from iPhoto or a folder structure, using iTunes as the transfer mechanism. These files are stores back on the phone alongside the music and other content iTunes syncs, and not stored in the camera roll. iTunes will downsize the photos to a resolution that still looks good on the phone and allows zooming, while saving space over the originals. These files are not part of the iCloud or iTunes backup, since they already exist on the computer and could be resynced. Apple assumes the files on the computer are being backed up via Time Machine or some other method.

The workflow for taking a picture, importing it into iPhoto, then resyncing back to iTunes was getting a bit old. If I didn't kick off a resync in iTunes right after the iPhoto import, the phone wouldn't have my most recent photos. I'm going to try out Photo Stream and see how it changes this. It should guarantee that my last 30 days worth of photos are always viewable, and anything older I need to look for the events synced in from iPhoto.

The "not part of the camera roll" was an important distinction. That makes more sense. I've not ever put images back onto the iPhone except in one case where I needed to take 2 or 3 images of my daughter to show a friend. I did find it a total PITA to accomplish this for 3 images. It would have been nice to simply drag the images into iTunes like with music or video and just have it copied to the phone.

Unfortunately there's no way to have Lightroom delete images from the original device during or after importing. And if the imported images are being merged into a large collection including images shot with other cameras, there's no practical way to get images back onto the iPhone (outside the roll) automatically either. The best alternative I can find is to make a duplicate of iPhone imports to an alternate folder. That would need to be saved as a preset and then that preset carefully applied (manually) only to iPhone imports so it doesn't duplicate images form other sources. Then that location would need to be set up in iTunes as an import folder.

Unfortunately this won't allow any image operations. To do that one would have to follow the other export/publish tip and instead handle it all in a more manual fashion. Do the import manually, then use Image Capture to delete all the images from the iPhone and then back in Lightroom perform the publish of your last imported photos. Then back in iTunes, Sync, including Photos.

Seems like a huge PITA. But then Adobe isn't exactly known for smooth workflows. Everything they create is a giant bag of hurt. In this case I'll lay some of the blame on Apple for not making it easier/more straight forward for other apps to integrate with iTunes as well. Unless of course the current mechanisms are able to be used and simply aren't being so.

iTunes still sucks and it's generally getting worse with every release as Apple are shoehorning more and more features into an old shell that was never designed to accommodate them.

The support for apps is abysmal and seems like a total afterthought, even after over three years. There's no way to link back to an App Store product page or developer's web site from any app listing anywhere in iTunes. No way to list recently added or synced or downloaded apps in the iPhone view - the master apps list from the source list does contain a modified date which can be sorted.

I just enabled ringtone sync and iTunes forced me to delete all music and video from my device. Can't recall if it said anything about photos, but I had already cleared those out with Image Capture. I can't think of any reason, good or otherwise, for this.

EDIT: Ok, I know why now. Enabling ringtone sync disables manual music/video sync. And it automatically turns ON auto music sync which is what causes your music to be deleted. Argh. This exposes (and seems to be the result of) state bugs in iTunes. If you turn manual music on in the summary tab in device view, and then flip over to the ringtones tab, it's still set to auto sync (and your music still appears in the meter at the bottom). Then if you go back to the summary tab, manual music is now off. So it instead of going back to the summary tab you instead press the APPLY button, you will get manual music sync with auto ringtone sync.

Here's another nice oddity. My credit card expired and I hadn't yet activated my new one. There was an issue activating and iTunes and the iPhone failed on the 3 digit security code. CC company says that will be resolved tonight at midnight. But, because I tried editing/updating the CC info during a purchase, now I can no longer download app updates or free apps. Putting in my login password immediately sends me to the billing update page instead of processing the download. Ugh.

I think I've just gotten around the billing thing by clearing out the credit card and instead choosing the NONE option for billing. Though now I'll have to re-enter everything tomorrow.

I am SO glad that I do not have to have anything to do with iTunes. Ever.

tanstaafl.

I thought when I read about creating your own photo albums on an iOS device that it was finally a way to create image folders. But I was wrong.

All images, be they photos captured from the camera, images saved from email or web or any other program, will still only be saved to your camera roll. Backasswards. Why on earth would I want images that were expressly taken with the built-in camera to appear in my "camera roll" ? That doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

Creating an album doesn't actually let you move anything into it either. It only creates a reference to an image from your camera roll (on device). Ugh. So your camera roll is still potentially stuffed full of stuff you don't want in there in the first place.

IMO, Apple still have the best OS, but they do not have any attention to detail. And for the most part, I still think their own built-in iOS apps suck.