Filed under: iPod Family, iTunes, iPhone, App Store
Thoughts on iPhone Apps Management
I don't know about you, but those new longer iPhone syncs are just killing me. Once an App has been backed up, I don't see why Apple doesn't just back up the Documents and Library data rather than backing up entire applications every single time the iPhone connects.
What I've been doing is keeping just one or two apps on the iPhone at a time. That's fine for when you're developing and reviewing apps but it absolutely stinks when you want to carry the iPhone around and actually use your applications on demand. After all -- why bother buying them if you have to keep taking them off in order to save on sync time?
The worst offenders are the games. Full of yummy sound effects and graphics, they take up the most room during syncs and generally the software I least want to take off my iPhone.
You can disable automatic syncing for iPhones and iPods in the Preferences > Syncing settings pane in iTunes but it's an option with high risk, especially when updated data is important to you.
Here's hoping that Apple smartens up its backups and starts storing just changed data rather than every bit of every application.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Jon said 7:18PM on 7-14-2008
Uh yes! This is ridiculous. I was scowering itunes looking for a checkbox that would allow me to not backup my iphone when i sync to no avail. I really hope this gets changed soon. How can you release software and not think of this when the solution does seem pretty easy (as TUAW pointed out): just backup changed data or have an option to backup on the users prompt. Now i find myself manually updating my podcasts and other things that would traditioanlly sync because it takes 10+ minutes to do so now.
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cmb said 8:43PM on 7-14-2008
TRY THIS.........I just x off the backup in the status screen while syncing and then it goes on to the next part of the sync, Problem solved!
fishbert said 4:24AM on 7-16-2008
Problem not solved... now you have no recent backup to revert to when things get messed up.
And with how often apps crash on startup, I want that parachute available! (I just wish it didn't take 20 minutes to pack.)
BossyBoss said 7:19PM on 7-14-2008
I completely agree. By the way, I don't know if this has been commented on elsewhere, but has anyone else noticed that there seems to be a slightly increased delay when opening up apps now? I am not referring to apps that need internet access. The delay is probably only 1-2 seconds but it's noticeable. Just curious.
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Jon said 7:21PM on 7-14-2008
Yes! I find that address book is slower, it hiccups when i try to select a name.
Jesse said 9:34PM on 7-14-2008
I think the slowdown in app's when they load such as Address Book is the app syncing the push data. It seemed to slow down just after I turned on pushing.
Aaron Berk said 7:19PM on 7-14-2008
Amen!! The thing that really kills me is how long it takes to install or backup a .5MB app. It takes way longer that it would to simply copy it over. It must be doing something than just copying it over, and whatever it is, it's not doing it efficiently.
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TuxToaster said 7:30PM on 7-14-2008
I too have noticed the slowdown, but I have to wonder if the apps are the sole cause of it. The funny thing is, I started noticing a significant slowdown on Thursday morning, but I didn't upgrade my phone until Thursday afternoon.
Yes, I am syncing with my G4 flat panel that does not have USB2... but normally I can plug in my iPhone and it takes about five minutes (+/-) on average to fully sync. But the other morning when I synced it started taking much much longer, and that was before I had finished downloading the update and way before I had a chance to play with any apps. Makes me wonder if there were some changes in the iTunes 7.7 release that affected it as well.
But I agree, I really don't want or need ALL of my apps backed up EVERY time. That's just plain annoying. Especially if I just restarted iTunes for an iToner update or unplugged and replugged my phone, and therefore just barely got done syncing for 20+ minutes. It should at least be smart enough to know if there have been any changes since the last sync, but instead it's taking a full backup of my phone every time.
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YodaMac said 7:32PM on 7-14-2008
Thanks for posting about this!
I was seriously wondering if my new iPhone was "bad" or something, since it takes considerably longer to show up in iTunes than my old iPhone.
At least now I know why the spinning beachball of doom is there. :P
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Dripps said 7:33PM on 7-14-2008
I've noticed that when you see status as backing up iPhone....just hit the X on the right side of the progress window to stop it. Then it will continue to install whatever you've set up! Also, I think the backup only happens the first time you plug it in. So, for instance, I sync to install an app I downloaded on iTunes...it goes through the backup and then sync. Then...I haven't closed iTunes and download something else and hit sync...it doesn't try to backup.
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mike said 7:34PM on 7-14-2008
The article should be renamed to something along the lines of "iPhone syncing under 2.0 sucks balls," because it does.
Seriously, what the hell? I dock my iPhone to update my play counts in iTunes, and I am sitting here for 10 minutes while the phone backs up. To top it all off, I look under Disk Activity in Activity Monitor and the data written per second peak is 35 kb. 35 kb a second!??! There is no reason I need to be sitting here for ten minutes while my data "backs up" at 35 kbps.
I also bought Super Monkey Ball on my iPhone, and transfering it to iTunes took an insane amount of time. It took so long, I figured it must have been hundreds of megabytes. After it FINALLY synced, (I wasn't sure it hadn't just crashed), I Get Info and see that it is only 35 megs.
I love the App Store and think it is revolutionary, but Apple put some seriously buggy software out there. They need to rectify this in a iPhone update immediately and an iTunes update to fix all the buggy code introduced in 7.7.
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mike said 7:34PM on 7-14-2008
The article should be renamed to something along the lines of "iPhone
syncing under 2.0 sucks," because it does.
Seriously, what the hell? I dock my iPhone to update my play counts
in iTunes, and I am sitting here for 10 minutes while the phone backs
up. To top it all off, I look under Disk Activity in Activity Monitor
and the data written per second peak is 35 kb. 35 kb a second!??!
There is no reason I need to be sitting here for ten minutes while my
data "backs up" at 35 kbps.
I also bought Super Monkey Ball on my iPhone, and transfering it to
iTunes took an insane amount of time. It took so long, I figured it
must have been hundreds of megabytes. After it FINALLY synced, (I
wasn't sure it hadn't just crashed), I Get Info and see that it is
only 35 megs.
I love the App Store and think it is revolutionary, but Apple put
some seriously buggy software out there. They need to rectify this in
a iPhone update immediately and an iTunes update to fix all the buggy
code introduced in 7.7.
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mike said 7:35PM on 7-14-2008
Thanks for destroying my comment. I'm sure lots of people are going to read it now.
Brett said 7:36PM on 7-14-2008
There definitely needs to be an option to backup manually, however, if you simply click the "x" to the right of the status bar in itunes when it says it's backing up, it will cancel the backup and then sync any apps. All your normal data syncing will be quick as usual.
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NutMac said 7:37PM on 7-14-2008
This is the price to pay for keeping each application fully sandboxed. All of application's settings and data are contained within the application's package. Apple could have enforced storing of data and settings to be within specific location within the package, but alas, that did not happen.
I think bigger problem is memory leaks and/or instability caused when quitting an application.
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roz said 8:21PM on 7-14-2008
is this really the case? that does not sound good.
Bridger Maxwell said 10:09PM on 7-14-2008
Umm, not quite. You have a little sandbox to play in, but the application package is not able to be changed, only the documents and library folders next to the application (but within the same sandbox) can change. There is no need to backup the whole application package.
Devon said 12:35PM on 7-15-2008
I don't see how that makes any difference. The only thing they need to change is to check if the app has been modified since the last backup instead of just downloading everything all the time.
bryan said 7:57PM on 7-14-2008
Is anyone else having trouble with the contact and calendar sync now too? Mine is broke.
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Tracy said 9:33PM on 7-14-2008
Interestingly for me, at least one contact on my computer doesn't get synced to the phone. It was a company. I don't yet if any other contacts are randomly missing.