Dumbass iTunes iPhone Questions

[Rex Kramer]

I bought a new 4S and want to use my old 3GS for an ipod. I have had it for 2 days and don't want to activate until i get some **** straight. My iTunes is a mess. We have 3 apple ids, one for my wife and somehow I have 2 tied to different email addresses. Questions (likely dumb ones from a tech idiot):

1) How do I transfer my photos from my old 3GS to itunes? I've synced plenty of times, but none of my phone photos appear in itunes. I'd like them on my new phone.

2) How do I consolidate apple ids? I don't care if my wife and I have one. Ever since I've had iPhones, I've used my wife's apple id to download apps and songs. I don't know how this happened but it is incredibly frustrating.

3) How does icloud work?

4) How do I keep my head from exploding?

 

[brntorng]

PC or Mac?

 

[Rex Kramer]

PC.

 

[brntorng]

On a Mac, iPhone photos automatically upload to iPhoto. Not sure on a PC.

 

[The Eyes of Texas]

I'm not an Apple guy, but from reading the responses I'm wondering if you are just looking in the wrong place for your photos...you keep mentioning iTunes, and the last response said his photos go to iPhoto....

 

[Rex Kramer]

Where is iPhoto?

 

[Dionysus]

If you are using a PC then the photos from your phone will first go to your photo management software on the computer (whatever that app is, I don’t know because I use a Mac), and then in iTunes you can select photos to sync from that app over to the iPhone.
So for now, think of your PC as the central repository for your images. Organize them there, then sync to other devices from iTunes. This is moving to a cloud option, see below.

As for the multiple Apple IDs question, I don’t have a quick answer but there are some threads on a few Apple Support forums that address it, Google is the best place to start. This is something that has been especially problematic. Apple didn’t do a good job of anticipating some of the complexity with moving to the App Store and how people will use their Apple IDs and iTunes accounts. I do expect they will improve this model soon simply because they have to.

iCloud

Physically, “the cloud” is just a data center with lots of servers connected to the internet.

Conceptually, the cloud is a central repository for data that syncs to multiple devices — like contacts, email, photos and documents, for example, that can sync among a computer, smartphone and tablet so that all devices have access to the same data. Change the data on one device and it syncs those changes up to the cloud, and then back down to the other devices.

Apple.com - What is iCloud

Apple.com - iCloud setup

 

[chango]

In reply to:

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[brntorng]

iPhoto automatically organizes your photos by "event". You can further organize them as you like, by face recognition, etc. I find it very easy to find photos in iPhoto, organize them, etc. While its editing tools are good, I prefer Photoshop Elements which integrates pretty well with iPhoto and offers more advanced editing capability.

 

[Dionysus]

The thing with iPhoto is to import and then immediately assign them to an event. You have to take a little time to organize what you import but it's easy to do and makes further searching and photo management much easier. It's a pretty good app, but like anything else you just need to familiarize yourself with a few things.