[paulbrock]

Originally Posted by zapod

Yet paradoxically, despite having a file system, there is no simple way of backing up an entire Android device (by which I mean settings, apps, app data, ringtones, wallpapers, photos, videos etc).

iTunes does all this in a couple of clicks.

no way 'out of the box' but plenty of apps will do it for you. Mind, its reached the point now where everything I have on my phone or tablet is synced already (music, photos, texts (3rd party app for this one), contacts, documents, calendars, apps); Could quite happily factory reset right now without backing anything up.

[Stuart_h]

Originally Posted by zapod

Yet paradoxically, despite having a file system, there is no simple way of backing up an entire Android device (by which I mean settings, apps, app data, ringtones, wallpapers, photos, videos etc).

iTunes does all this in a couple of clicks.

Well much of this is backed up without clicking at all ....

Photos go off to the cloud straight away, as do contacts and most of the settings. Also if I flash my phone any installed apps automatically start re-installing themselves from the Play Store.

The thing that IS missing is app data (ie game states etc).

(clicking is so 90's )

[paulbrock]

Originally Posted by Stuart_h

(clicking is so 90's )

That's the problem with backups. If they're not done just before you lose your data, you'll still lose something.

Even my desktop now has most of the data cloud based...

[kidspud]

Originally Posted by tdenson

Oh but it is. As you all know full well I am firmly planted in the Apple camp, but the thing I most dislike about the Apple environment is the problem of getting files to and from my iDevices. Woe betide you if you need to add a couple of photos to an iPad that are not part of a synced iPhoto library. Or if you want to get an audio book onto your wife's iPhone which is synced with a different library. In the latter case it is necessary to erase the entire music collection to add an audio book ! Why ? It's fine if you don't stray from the tightly coupled libraries on the PC/Mac sync'ed to equivalent libraries on the iDevice, but not if you want to do anything slightly ad hoc.

Cannot comment on audio books but I copy photos between my iPad and NAS drive all the time.

[Stuart_h]

Originally Posted by kidspud

Cannot comment on audio books but I copy photos between my iPad and NAS drive all the time.

try having 4 iPods (yes we did all have apple products once ) with different content !

On windows version of itunes that required 4 different windows logins if you wanted to retain the standard tick to add process !!!

Regardless of the hardware, itunes is bloomin' awful

[kidspud]

Originally Posted by Stuart_h

try having 4 iPods (yes we did all have apple products once ) with different content !

On windows version of itunes that required 4 different windows logins if you wanted to retain the standard tick to add process !!!

Regardless of the hardware, itunes is bloomin' awful

Well I don't use iTunes much, but I have a single windows login on my NetBook and manage 2 iPads (my wife and mine) that have very different content. I agree that iTunes is slow but not really had many problems, but as I say, don't really use it much.