“iCloud Backup”

I recently had a problem with corrupt file system (that's what I initially thought, but right now I think the disk is dying). Anyway, what I did was re-partition my 750 HDD and installed Mountain Lion in another volume. Then, I copied "~/Music/iTunes" AND "~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync" folders from the (supposedly) corrupt ML to the new ML, and the next time I attached my iDevices to the Mac, they synced back without a problem and I didn't lose a single item. Of course, I also had iCloud sync set up before hand (and now I learned that I can use both the iCloud and manual backup to my computer, which is extremely convenient).

It was a little off-topic, but I just thought sharing that little story with others might be beneficial. I searched a lot before doing that but couldn't reliably verify I can move my Synced data between multiple installations, so maybe others in the same situation find it useful.

The iPhone since its first version will only ever pair with one iTunes database on one computer. Although, yes, you can still backup your phone to any computer with iTunes, just on restore you won't be able to reinstall apps and music until you sync with the original computer. This is a political policy put in place and not any kind of limitation of iTunes Sync. I and several people have filed Radars on it over the years explaining why this was a bad policy but it always went into the black hole that is iTunes Radars saying "By Design".

The issue is moot now that you can back your phone up to iCloud completely avoiding the iTunes step. It's slow and could be costly if you have a lot to backup, but at least it moves things in the right direction overall.

Honestly I never trust Apple with iCloud. Still need to do backup with iTunes regularly. I wish iOS has better integration with Dropbox because I trust it. But again, if Apple takes over DB, then I would lose my trust. This guy isn't for web service except for music/app downloading.

Yes you would be annoyed. Chutes and Ladders consists of activating a spinner, moving a piece along a path based on the number pointed to by the spinner, going 'up' if you land on a ladder or 'down' if you land on a chute, and you 'win' when your piece lands exactly on the last spot. You would probably get as few as 3 and as many as a half dozen 'buzzes' as you figured it out.

So you should try the test (or try it on an unsuspecting test candidate) my experience has been that no matter how 'simple' the game is, the fact that it seems completely orthogonal to the person, their ability to 'shift gears' and learn a new thing so that they can get on with the desired thing is blocked. It is especially true if you put a time limit on getting the desired thing done.

The challenge is that a number of things seem to have an assumption about your basic skills that may not be valid. An acquaintance went nuts when an app required that he cut and paste something on his phone. He had never had a reason to do cut and paste before so to complete the task he had to learn cut and paste. He was making zero progress on that goal. I did it for him, then later went back and showed him in a non time-constrained / outcome-desired setting how to do it. That worked fine of course, and now its part of his tool kit.

His expectation sounds reasonable but part of that is he's not an objective third party -- he's presumably writing to emphasize the reasonableness.

We really don't know what happened between when his 87 year old grandfather walked into the Apple store and when he walked out with a restored machine. I can think of a lot of ways this ends up "just not working". Maybe grandpa used the word "restore" at some point not aware of it's specific meaning, heads were nodded and miscommunication happened.

Wife and I were planning to get her mother a tablet to video chat with before she passed unexpectedly a year ago. Had we done so and had we been in a similar situation I doubt I would have sent her to the Apple store with only the words "icloud backup" scrawled on a piece of paper. I mean it's total speculation but I think I would have had an email explaining exactly what to do or told her to wait until we were there to handle it.