What in God’s name is iTunes Backing Up?! – [Updatedx2]

[Updatex2 – 02.09.08] – (15.07pm GMT)

There is however a temporary fix. The following instructions are how to completely disable iTunes from backing up your devices. Note: This is not an ideal solution by any means, and could mean, in the event of a system crash and/or factory restore, you may not have an up-to-date backup to restore from.

1) Quit iTunes
2) Open Terminal.app
3) Type (or copy and paste) the following command, then hit Return:

defaults write com.apple.iTunes DeviceBackupsDisabled -bool true

4) Open and run iTunes …

[Update – 02.09.08] – (13.38pm GMT)

According to Anuba of Mac Rumors

“The whole procedure is horrendously slow, and probably 99,9% redundant. iTunes on Mac is bad enough, but on Windows it’s just pathetic. And it’s not the PC’s fault, I mean no other application is that slow. Even the mother of all slow launchers, Photoshop, starts up faster than iTunes. You can click the icon and go out to lunch, and with a little luck iTunes will appear on the screen by the time you return. It’s just a damn media player, how hard can it be? Windows Media Player launches in like 2 seconds no matter how big your library is. iTunes takes like 30 seconds and once it finally appears, it syncs forever with the iPhone and/or any attached iPods, even when no data has changed. And it hogs more CPU cycles than a frickin’ 3D game. To keep iTunes reasonably responsive is an art form of its own, one wrong turn and it’s frozen for XX seconds, for no apparent reason. Is this how they want to attract business users with PCs? “Oh yeah, our smartphone works perfectly with Windows. Just install this big ass, slow-as-molasses media player (yes, we consider a media player the perfect platform for handling mail, contacts and calendars) and watch it grind your system to a halt everytime you want to recharge your phone”.”

Original Article:

Ok, I recently told you about the amount of problems that I, with the rest of the world, have been experiencing with our iPhone 3G’s. Today’s highlight is – back ups. With the introduction of software version 2.0, and with it iTunes 7.7, iPhone is now required to be backed up each time you sync the device.

Now, in theory, this can be great as every time you sync you’ll be making a backup thats up-to-date in the event of a restore, but it’s not that easy. Backing up takes, FOREVER. In this video by Gizmodo, which shows a time lapse of an iPhone sync with iTunes taking up to 8 hours, it is clear that this is now a serious issue for Apple, and they should have fixed it sooner. This is not Apple, or the Apple way-of-living – This, is a nightmare.

The question is, What is iTunes really backing up for it to take that long? – Well, just the usual, your contacts, photos, mapping data, bookmarks, call data, application data … At times though, It can feel like its backing up your entire family and their individual life stories -_-. This ‘issue’ cannot be said to be an issue with either iTunes or iPhone, it’s both. iTunes presumably has a bug which causes misrepresentation to the backup status bar, and iPhone has a bug within it’s current software which causes it to crash iTunes sporadically.

Now, this is not only affecting iPhone owners, it is also affecting the iPod touch. Lets not forget, Apple’s marketing is stellar, but they rely a tonne, on word of mouth. – If Mark wants to buy an iPod touch this Christmas and so happens to ask his friend Alan whether it’s worth it, and Alan reply’s “Sure, but you’ll be backing up for 6 hours at every sync …” – Do you think Mark will buy? – I doubt it. They are damaging their polished image of ‘It Just Works’ by rushing software out of the door.

Anyway I hope a fix, as promised by El Jobso himself, is on it’s way soon …
Otherwise I may just have to throw my iMac at the nearest wall.

R-Fly