kristin221
Level 1 (4 points)
iPhone

Q: Cannot access iTunes to restore iphone

Have just purchased an iphone 6s for my daughter and she is trying to restore her contacts from her last itunes backup (she never used the cloud).  But when she plugs her phone into her desktop iMac, she gets a message that says that her iphone requires the most recent version of iTunes.  We went to itunes.com and downloaded the most recent version - which appears to be 12.2.2.25.  We restarted the computer - still getting the same message.  I had a long long phone call and screen shadow session with Apple support, and she told me that the most recent version if itunes is 12.5, but she could not figure out why that update wasn't available for our computer.  Computer is from 2009 - could that be why?  OS system is OX 10.7.5 and there are no updates available when I check for updates.

 

Apple support advised that my daughter should simply log into her iTunes account on another device that has most current itunes.  We tried that on my laptop, and the only backups we found were those for my phone - even when she was logged in to her iTunes account.

 

Does anyone have any guidance?  One thing is for sure, she will be using the cloud for backups this time around. . .

Thanks in advance!

iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.2)

Posted on Sep 29, 2016 7:48 PM

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kristin221

Q: Cannot access iTunes to restore iphone

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  • by braden85,

    braden85 braden85 Sep 30, 2016 7:07 PM in response to kristin221
    Community Specialists
    Sep 30, 2016 7:07 PM in response to kristin221

    Hi kristin221,

     

    Welcome to the Apple Support Communities!

     

    We understand that your daughter’s iPhone 6s is not able to sync with iTunes because of the error indicating that iTunes needs to be updated. I can try and explain this situation for you. 

     

    For the iPhone 6s to sync with iTunes, it does require the later version of iTunes 12.5. The reason you are not seeing the update on your Mac is because you are running Mac OS X 10.7. iTunes 12.5 requires at least Mac OS X 10.8.

     

    To remedy this problem, we will need to update your Mac to a later version of the operating system. The current version of the operating system is macOS 10.12 Sierra. This can be accessed through the App Store on your Mac. The process is also explained in the following article: 

     

    How to get macOS Sierra - Apple Support

     

    If your Mac cannot support Sierra, you may still be able to download the previous version of Mac OS X, 10.11 El Capitan. This information is also in the previous article.

     

    Learn more

    • If your Mac doesn't meet the Sierra requirements, you might be able to upgrade to El Capitan, the previous version of the Mac operating system.
    • If you previously downloaded El Capitan, Yosemite, Mavericks, or another earlier version of OS X, you can download it again from the Purchased tab of the App Store.

     

    Cheers!