Q: RESTORE FROM BACKUP does NOT restore everything. WHY APPLE?

Lawrence,

Thanks for the fast response.  However, I will be losing my computer on the same day - so no iTunes library on my computer.  I have my entier computer backed up to an external driver, so perhaps by iTunes library will be intact in there?  Photos in the photo app are also on the computer that I will no longer have.......  perhaps in the computer back-up agian?  And how about contacts?  Any way to back up all the people I have added to my iPhone?

A full backup of the computer will include the iTunes library and the iPhone backup. However, many backup programs only back up the Documents folder, which will not include the iPhone backup (but will include the iTunes library). But can't you copy those to a flash drive before you lose the computer?

The contacts on the iPhone will be included in the iPhone's backup, which can be on your computer, iCloud or both (I opt for both). If you have not set up iCloud backup yet that would be a good idea now. See: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5262

I haven't used the computer that I transfered these pictures onto my iPhone from in years, and I don't have it anymore. These pictures were taken with a real camera.

This whole time, I thought when I did a "complete" backup, it included all my pictures, including those I took with my real camera.

What your saying, is Apple specifically skips over pictures that you transfered off your computer, but backs up pictures taken with your phone??!!! And there's no clear warning about this?

Yes. That's exactly how it works. And it's well documented. It also doesn't backup music or other media stored on your phone since they either had to come from your computer to begin with or they can be re-downloaded from the iTunes store without charge.

Why should it back up gigabytes worth of stuff that already exists on the machine it's backing up to?

The iPhone itself is not a backup or transfer device.

"And it's well documented"

Not to be rude, but where? I'd be then far less than half, if not 1% or less of iPhone users would know this if you were to quiz users of the phone at random.

This is unacceptable on Apple's part

You can start here: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4946

I'll lay odds that less than 1% of people using MS Windows on their PC's at home even know what a backup is, much less perform one on a regular basis... Does that make it Microsoft's fault?

There is no reason at all to create multiple redundant copies of something you should already have. If you didn't back up the contents of the computer you used to sync the photos to your phone, that's your own fault, not Apple's.

No, all apps cannot be downloaded again, you can only download the most recent version of an app and only if it still exist (apps vanish, remember VLC?)

I have a iPhone 3G that was *full* with apps. Now I replaced it with a iPhone5, and set up the 3G as a new phone for my son. Surprise, almost all my apps in iTunes failed to load back - "The app was not installed because it requires a newer version of iPhone software." Panic. Restore. Well, you know what? The backup did not include apps. Still no apps.

I also sync a iPhone4 and iTunes and iTunes stores only the most recent version of each app... I think that's a big design mistake from Apple! I paid for content for a phone and they hosed it. I tried to resored the app IPO files from my backup (~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Mobile Applications) but my oldest backup is from Dec'11 and the games I have required 4.3+ already back then.

So, almost no apps for my 3G that just a few days ago was filled to the brim with nice games. I'm angry and sad!

I don't really expect there to be a duplicate copy of anything on my iphone, but I expected some type of reference file that would direct the restoring process to the things on your computer that should be restored to your iphone.

It is soooo annoying that the iTunes restore does not restore music. If I wanted to transfer all of my music, it would not matter. But, I have more music on my computer than my iphone. I've had two incidents (upgrading the iOs and getting a new phone) where I've had to go through all of my library and try to remember what music I wanted on my phone. I have >2,000 songs on it! I really wish they'd come up with a way to truly re-transfer exactly the music I had before upgrading!!!! Ahhhhhhhhh!!!

Autosync your iPhone rather than manually managing your music and it will do exactly what you want.

There is a trivially easy way. Create a Playlist in iTunes of all the music you want on the iPhone. Then turn off "Manually Manage..." and sync only that playlist. You have to create the playlist only once, then edit it as your mood changes and resync.

I got a bit of a situation here guys...
so my phone up top where the carrier said Verizon changed to Searching and it prompted me to restore my iphone via itunes...so as I was restoring, towards the end of the restoration it says unable to restore due to error message "-1". I followed the protocol but after the restore it prompts the same message over and over again. So now at this point I'm unable to use my phone cause it can't be restored and I've tried everything I can...any suggestions here?

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3694#error1

Thanks! I have started doing this, or rather, I am now un-checking anything I don't want synced to my phone.

I am having this same problem. I been googling going on 4 days now in search of a fix as I'm out of the country and can't just walk to the local Apple store. I'll keep watching your thread to see if you recieve advice to fix the problem.

This is no help at all. My phone was working fine until I tried installing the latest iTunes update. Having said that, how can it be a hardware issue as that link indicates?