Oh, about those iPhone and iPod touch backups ... Yeah, that really is a feature

Indeed. It's crazy and excessive and annoying. Why has this never been necessary until now? They've gotta fix this. On the positive side, I barely have to sync the thing now with all the OTA PIM stuff.

pingback from www.winsupersitedailyapplebash.com :)

I don't understand. Doesn't my Palm Treo and Tungsten T3 backup everytime I sync? I thought that backing up was on of the reasons to sync. Why wouldn't you want to do this?

iTunes has always performed the backup step for syncing my iPhone. What has changed is how long it takes to sync since I installed the 2.0 firmware. I believe the reason for this is that it is now backing up the state & stored data for all of the applications installed on the iPhone. For example, I have been using the NetNewsWire application to read all of my feeds whose items are now stored locally on the iPhone. I think that iTunes is now backing up all of the news items stored by NetNewsWire, plus the stored data from every other application installed on my iPhone. Needless to say, the backup step is now taking an extraordinarily long time.

@ tayme said: Is this another example of Apple releasing the 2.0 stuff to meet a date and because it was "good enough"? I don't know, since I don't use either device...but I have seen more bugs(features, if you will) listed on this site and others since this release than ever before for an Apple product...except maybe the g1 AppleTV. --tayme My Comments: I believe you are right. There was no logical reason to compound their launch weekend with 3 product launches in the same week. It was a recipe for a problematic and disastrous launch. In my opinion, Apple's reputation for products that work out of the box and that they "just work" has been shattered. As I stated before, this was not a good weekend for Apple. Yes they have the money, but at what cost to their reputation?

Blackberry has managed the sync and backup functions very well since they introduced the 950 iPager years ago. Granted, the desktop app isn't sexy but it does the job. How did Apple miss making as easy as the BB? Therein lies my doubt about the iPhone in the enterprise. I've seen RIM switch out devices very rapidly for corporate accounts and their exceptional backup and restore functions make device exchanges a breeze. Will Apple meet RIM's service expectations set in the Enterprise? A disconnect for me is using iTunes in a corporate environment/ on desktop for syncing and backup. iTunes as seems to lack the gravitas required to be taken seriously by IT in the enterprise.

Gee how dare Apple actually try to protect user data, and do it automatically. Now that being said, WTF? How much time is it taking? 10 Seconds, a minute, ten minutes. Hey Paul how about some FACTS before you bash the product. As a previous poster pointed out the new third party apps might be responsible for the additional back up time that you didn't notice before? Further, Apple actually had a mea culpa. Paul of course didn't mention this because Apple might actually appear humble and actually appear to be trying to provide good customer service. Isn't it funny how when Apple tries to do the right thing, either Paul finds something else to bash Apple about it ignores it entirely. Here is a copy of the letter Apple sent customers. We have recently completed the transition from .Mac to MobileMe. Unfortunately, it was a lot rockier than we had hoped. Although core services such as Mail, iDisk, Sync, Back to My Mac, and Gallery went relatively smoothly, the new MobileMe web applications had lots of problems initially. Fortunately we have worked through those problems and the web apps are now up and running. Another snag we have run into is our use of the word "push" in describing everything under the MobileMe umbrella. While all email, contact or calendar changes on the iPhone and the web apps are immediately synced to and from the MobileMe "cloud," changes made on a PC or Mac take up to 15 minutes to sync with the cloud and your other devices. So even though things are indeed instantly pushed to and from your iPhone and the web apps today, we are going to stop using the word "push" until it is near-instant on PCs and Macs, too. We want to apologize to our loyal customers and express our appreciation for their patience by giving all current subscribers an automatic 30-day extension to their MobileMe subscription free of charge. Your extension will be reflected in your account settings within the next few weeks. We hope you enjoy your new suite of web applications at me.com, in addition to keeping your iPhone and iPod touch wirelessly in sync with these new web applications and your Mac or PC. Thank you, The MobileMe Team So Apple explains that they had problems, now since all you MSTARDS, argue that Apple is arrogant and never listens to criticism than simply through introspection they tried to do what is right. OR They realize that the launch of iPhone 2.0 was a bit of a mess, largely due I would argue to overwhelming demand, noticed that people like Paul et al. were complaing, (so much for Apples free ride) and decided to do something about that. Gee has MS ever given free stuff when the f-upped? Oh yeah it was XP SP2. Regards Joe Dokes

Jeez, @joe_dokes, we are really lazy today, now aren't we? By just clicking on the link in Pauls post you could have read the fact that Backup took the guy writing about it up 74 minutes to complete. And that a colleague spent more than 2 hours of his precious lifetime waiting. Although i'd bet you'll find that a good thing, too, since the IPhone is certainly charged to the rim afterwards....

So, you're criticising Apple for giving users backup...? Yes, it's annoying that there are huge variations in the time it takes - but fairs fair - that's gotta be a bug. To call out the whole idea of backing up as a bad idea seems a little overly critical. Surely a device carrying so much data might actually /need/ a backup? Most users aren't going to remember to do this by themselves anyway, making it automatic seems like a good idea.

Personally, when I sync at the end of the day, my phone stays in tthe cradle/connected for charging overnight, so no big deal. Also, since your info gets sync OTA several times a day, no one really needs to back it up until the end of the day, which is when it would need recharging anyway. So I think that this complaint is irrelevent. Why would you need to sync in the middle of the day, every day? The point is, from all of your comments and what I've read, you won't need to sync in the middle of the day and can wait until day end, when you need a charge anyway, so the backup time of 30 to 74 minutes is irrelevent, IMHO. Also, remember, I don't own it, so it's just what I would do if I did, since that is exactly what I do with my Treo, which has the backup app turned on when I sync, but does not take long for it's 64MB memory.

As with many others, the whole 3g iPhone experience has been very frustrating. I've personally have had problems with content not fully transfering over to the new phone, slow email sending and receiving using Yahoo mail, Mobile Me calendar not importing entries correctly and then not working at all and last but not least having to update the most current version of v2.0 software. Apple wants us to trust them with Cloud/Connected computing? I don't thinks so. This performance proved once again that Apple is not ready for the Enterprise or have the ability to provide Enterprise level support. Additionally , what get's me, is if Microsoft was behind such a release they would be getting flamed by every Blogger and Tech writer out there. Where's the articles/blogs holding Apple accountable for such a poor rollout? I'm not seeing it.

Just got a voice mail from my buddy in Florida. He bought or ordered an iPhone. He does not own a Mac. Why can you pre-order from local ATT store but not from the local Apple Store? Does that seem dumb to anyone else? Anyway, that's what he told me. I really need to replace this darn Treo. [And I keep mis-typing on this Dell latop because of the dang trackpad, dang-it!!!]

Man, 74 MINUTES! That's a really terrible feature. How about letting YOU decide to backup on a schedule? I mean - that's just ridiculous. By the way, I appreciate the legitimate criticism without the additional "iYouKnowWhat" nonsense.

@joe-dokes- Pls. keep in mind the people use their iPhone to communicate with their customers, they use it so that they can be contacted if something happens to their kids. Bricking phones and not providing communications as to why and what to do is unacceptable. How would you feel if your phone got bricked and you missed a call that cost you thousands of dollars because of the outage or that your kid was hurt. Apple needs to setup and recongnize the importance of doing these things right and that includes clear communications early on and consistently when their are problems so that people can review their options based on full disclosure.

@joe-dokes We differ in opinion. Past good deeds by Apple does not cut them slack or any vendor for that matter when they have a problem like this. The issue is in their handling of the problem and lack of communications early on. It is not acceptable for people who rely on their phone to loose access to it because the could not sync it with Itunes to register it because the bought a 3g or upgraded their older phone to 2.0. This should never happen. Apple over reached on this one and got burned. Their a great company don't get me wrong but they wrong the customer with this rollout and need to be our in front of this and they failed to do so. Like I said in my first post, I am both an Apple and Microsoft fan. I just feel that Apple is getting a pass to some degree by media and bloggers. If this was Microsoft, there would be much more flaming going on.