iTunes wants to update my already up-to-date iPhone

Thank you for this explanation!

I have been wondering for some days when iTunes says there are updates to our iPad and our iPhones and the device itself says there are NO updates available. Hopefully more people will find your explanation.

Yes... thank you.... thank you.... thank you, all.

I was going to say I don't have security apps and USB otherwise works fine.

Lawrence (and others)... the explanation is brilliant. I have another two questions based on this scenario:

- I have four phones between my wife and work phones.

- Three of the phones have 14B150.

- One phone has 14B100.... of course that is the phone that asks me to update when I plug into mac/itunes - and your explaination says why, thank you.

So I have two questions:

1. I updated all four phones over the air... why did one phone not update to 14B150?

2. Like others says, on phone it says software is up to date (even when it doesn't have 14B150) - of course if you plug into itunes you can get the most recent update by downloading in itunes when it gives you the warning and syncing phone. So, then... one would not be able to get the latest update over the air, right?

Thanks again.

If the phone already has 10.1.1 the only way to update to 14B150 is through iTunes. However, if you update from a version lower than 10.1.1 over the air it will install 14B150. I don't know why OTA doesn't work for 10.1.1; it could be that the OTA update feature of iOS doesn't recognize different build numbers.

Interesting. Thanks for the clarification. Since every single time I have updated iOS 10 on my iPhone 7, it has resulted in a prolonged reset with a very scary "attempting data recovery" message, and it updates just fine over the air, I refuse to use iTunes to update my devices. I'll wait for the next update that can be done via wifi.

Thanks again Lawrence. Interesting because I noticed this happened on iOS 9 too. And it would 'correct' itself after the next update version. But never thought to look deeper at the OS version numbers. Now we know ;)

Tigervision wrote:

Thanks again Lawrence. Interesting because I noticed this happened on iOS 9 too. And it would 'correct' itself after the next update version. But never thought to look deeper at the OS version numbers. Now we know ;)

Yes, there was one slipstream update for iOS 9.something also. Those are the only two I recall in 9 years.

BTW... I always thought that when you update ios from Itunes that it clogs your computer and itunes with extra junk that is sometimes several gigs big (the ios update that is dead weight after the update has occurred on the idevice)... . Is this true? That's why I thought updating over the air was better. Thanks.

The update image is about 2 GB. It is deleted from your computer after the update completed.

Thanks. I'm not sure if it is deleted after the update. Two things make me thing it is not.

1. It's never in the trash can.

2. If I plug another phone into itunes to sync - even days later... it asks me if I want to update... not download and update (as if the file remains in itunes).

??