iOS 9/iTunes 12.3 not syncing app through devices

When I do that iTunes does not transfer updates to the several other devices associated with the iMac. It appears to be device specific as far as updates go. Tech Support has been less than helpful.

Does not work for me. My iTunes does not sync updates to any device.. Obviously I do not want to delete iTunes and redownload it to see if it is corrupted Because Tech support tells me this is the way it is supposed to work which may be bad advice even though it is from a senior support person. I really need a solution to solving bandwidth issues while updating multiple family iPads and iPhones.

I found it annoying that most of my recently downloaded Apps would not back-up to iTunes, nor would the existing Apps in iTunes update.

However, I was able to manually update my Apps already contained within iTunes and could manually download the missing Apps into iTunes from the App Store.

When I carried out a factory reset of my iPhone 4S and restored from the back up, all of the previous Apps appeared greyed out on the iPhone display and then the iPhone then downloaded them again over my wifi.

Ultimately, whilst this was a more long-winded process, no actual harm was done as I did not lose any data or settings.

Hope this helps.

TE

If I understand correctly the harm done is requiring use of additional bandwidth to download apps and updates again. For those of us with bandwidth constraints and multiple devices it is a real "harm".

Yes, that is a valid concern if you don't have access to unlimited wifi and ideally superfast wifi.

Unfortunately, that's the way it's going to work going forward.

They've chosen a software kludge, App Slicing, to try to mitigate the questionable decision to limit their base iDevices to 16GB storage...in 2016.

Transfers to iTunes have been disabled because a slimmed version downloaded to a particular device wouldn't be "universal" and couldn't be re-distributed via iTunes to other devices a user may have.

On the flip side, apps downloaded via iTunes are the full "universal" versions, so transferring them to every device would negate any potential benefit App Slicing has, and is therefore discouraged, if not entirely disabled (yet). I don't think iTunes has been given the wherewithal to manage the many possible permutations, so they've decided to just shift the duty of app acquisition to the devices via the cloud.

Yet, because they couldn't entirely remove the app backup and purchase mechanisms from iTunes, it remains, albeit in a crippled and probably temporary form.

Considering that the majority of users never sync their devices to a iTunes or a computer, it's highly unlikely that addressing this would be a priority for them, even if they desired to keep such functionality intact for the users who do. At one time, Apple was a company that catered to its users. Now that they've attained a position of market power, they can freely dictate to users what they believe is best. The company that cared and looked out for the little guy is gone. They've become the company they mocked in 1984.

Actually, this is not a problem. Transferring purchases from devices with iOS 9 has been disabled by Apple. This is the response they gave to submitted bug reports regarding this issue:

Apple Developer Relations 18-Sep-2015 02:51 PM

This issue behaves as intended based on the following: Apps are no longer transferred from iOS 9 devices. We are now closing this bug report. If you have questions about the resolution, or if this is still a critical issue for you, then please update your bug report with that information.

This is because of the App Thinning feature Apple introduced in iOS 9. Basically, a different version of each app is downloaded on each device. So, apps downloaded on an iPhone cannot be used on an iPad. See image below taken from App Thinning page in iOS Developer Library.

I Have authorised and everything, its backing up successfully, but the apps on my iPhone are not synced to the itunes, whats the solution ?

SO if i want to update to new iphone, what will happen to apps on the previous one ?

As long as you backup your old phone you can restore that backup to a new phone. Any apps that were on the old device and aren't in your local library will be queued up for download from the iTunes Store over Wi-Fi, as long as they haven't been removed from the store.

tt2

So riddle me this...

If I can no longer back up apps to my Mac (which looking at my Mobile Applications folder confirms that nothing's been modified since September 2015...surprise, surprise!), then I should be able to delete every .ipa file from my Mobile Applications folder and gain back over 40GB of hard drive space, correct? And this should not affect my iPhone or iPad, should it?

That's about the size of it. There is a minor risk that you can no longer redownload an app that has been removed from the store, but there are hints that the rules in the store may have changed slightly too.

tt2

So is there a work around for this so we can install brand new Apps from our iPhone/iPad to iTunes?

Does Sync automatically over wifi not work? This could be a workaround?

If you have this checked in Summary on the computer whenever you purchase a new App will it not download into iTunes?

App synching is now a one way street, if you download to computer then you can sync to any iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch. You cannot synch it from iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch to computer. If I've interpreted previous responses correctly this is because the download of the app on device is often smaller depending on the device you download to. Different models and different capacities seem to affect exactly what downloads for each app so rather than force a large download on to a 16 Gb iPhone 4 so it synchs to computer, if you download to a 16 gb iPhone 4 the app that downloads will presumably be slightly different size to one you download to an iPhone 6S plus of whatever capacity.

I've always bought the largest capacity devices so for me it would not be a problem to download the full app on any of my devices and sync it to my PC and then synch to each device. To avoid having to download each app three times I now download direct to my computer and sync to device.

If, like other posters on here, you are no longer synching to your computer but only downloading direct to device, there's little point keeping apps on your computer, but as pointed out this can mean that apps deleted from the app store are no longer available to you if you have to reinstall, upgrade, or with a smaller capacity phone remove an app but want to re-add it later, hence my own decision not to use the cloud back up but to continue using my computer for download and back ups (and I back up the back up).

All of this would matter less if iCloud backup would not fail consistently. I have absolutely no faith in iCloud.