iPhone: The Missing Manual, 2nd Edition

Chapter 13. Syncing the iPhone

When you get right down to it, the iPhone is pretty much the same idea as a PalmPilot: It's a pocket-sized data bucket that lets you carry around the most useful subset of the information on your Mac or PC. In the iPhone's case, that's music, photos, movies, calendars, address book, email settings, ringtones, and Web bookmarks.

Transferring data between the iPhone and the computer is called synchronization, or syncing. Syncing is sometimes a one-way street, and sometimes it's bidirectional, as you'll find out in a moment.

This chapter covers the ins and outs—or, rather, backs and forths—of iPhone syncing over a USB cable. (Syncing wirelessly, over the airwaves, is a treat reserved for MobileMe and Microsoft Exchange people, as described in Chapters Chapter 14 and Chapter 15.)

Automatic Syncing

So how do you sync? You connect the iPhone to the computer. That's it. As long as the cable is plugged into your computer's USB port, iTunes opens automatically and the synchronization begins. iTunes controls all iPhone synchronization, acting as a software bridge between phone and computer.

Note

Your photo-editing program (like iPhoto or Photoshop Elements) probably springs open every time you connect the iPhone, too. See Shutting Down the Importing Process for the solution.

When the iPhone and the computer are communicating, the iTunes window and the iPhone screen both say "Sync in progress."

Unlike an iPod, which gets very angry (and can potentially scramble your ...