By Richard Corzo
In May I explained how a local iTunes backup of your iPhone or iPad can be used to restore your apps and data to a new iOS device. When you sync your iOS device with iTunes you have the option of setting it up to do a backup to iTunes every time you sync. If you elect to do just an iCloud backup, this is a less complete backup compared to doing a backup in iTunes, so the iTunes backup is preferred, assuming you have a computer running iTunes. If you don’t set up the automatic backup in iTunes, you can do a manual backup, but this is less likely to be up to date if you need to do a restore.
Since I recently needed to replace my iPhone, the iTunes backup came in quite handy. I was able to restore all my apps and much of their data. In some cases I still needed to log in to the app in order to restore its former state.
The Android speaker last month implied that you would be out of luck if Apple (or more likely the developer) had removed an app from the App Store. If you have a local copy of the app, as would be the case with having an iTunes backup, you can still restore the app.
There was a question about whether it was possible to restore some music from an iPhone or iPod to a computer where the music had been inadvertently deleted. If the music was purchased from iTunes, it’s possible to re-download it using the iTunes in the Cloud feature. For other music, you would need to have subscribed to iTunes Match. If not, then you will need to purchase a third-party program like Senuti to restore the music to your computer from the iOS device.