207      iPhone_iPad_Mac_apple

12.7—Much Ado About Nothing

Why all the fuss? It makes sense to have digital media—videos, TV, music—managed in iTunes on the Mac, because these files are usable on the Mac and iPhone/iPad. iOS apps, not so much. After all, they don't run on a Mac. Imagine if it were the other way around—the Mac App Store were on iOS and after downloading a Mac app to your iPhone/iPad you had to sync to get it on your Mac. And keep a copy on your iPhone, though your iPhone couldn't run the app. Doesn't make sense.

What makes sense is for the iOS device to manage—buy, download, install, archive in the cloud—iOS apps via the iOS App Store app on the device without reference to Mac OS.

Backup your apps? iTunes never backed up your apps. It kept a record, a list of your apps so that they could be retrieved from the cloud in case of need. That hasn't changed. Delete an app by accident? Open App Store on your iPhone/iPad and re-download. Where's the beef?

Some people are overthinking this, making it complicated where it is not, renting their raiment, desperately seeking to regress to older, dumber iTunes versions. The bottom line now is that Mac OS manages Mac applications, iOS manages iOS applications. How simple can it get? If you step back and think about it, Apple has only removed a middleman—iTunes—from the iOS app experience, streamlining the experience in the process. That is eminently sensible compared to the practice of managing iOS apps in two places—the device and iTunes.

And yes, you may delete the Mobile Applications folder from your iTunes/iTunes Media folder. You have no further need for it. I recovered 50GB on HD space by deleting mine.

Enjoy and be glad.

Yeah, it makes sense that now we have to sync our devices twice (once to the computer for music/photos and another one to the cloud for apps)

Also, makes total sense that people like me that have more than one (my house has 7) iOS devices have now to download 7 times all the app updates instead of downloading them all just once.

And then it makes sense to download all this over wi-fi instead of wired connection.

Sure, this is nothing. We're just whining for nothing.

Yeah, it makes sense that now we have to sync our devices twice (once to the computer for music/photos and another one to the cloud for apps)

iCloud can't sync photos and music? In any event, it makes sense because music/photos/videos are shared between Mac and iOS, i.e., playable on both. iOS apps are not; a separate matter that ought to be handled by iOS, not Mac OS, IMO.

(my house has 7) iOS devices have now to download 7 times all the app updates instead of downloading them all just once.

Here and above you make it sound as if downloading data to iOS thingies is a manual process, perhaps requiring hours of operating a heavy hand crank. Isn't it easier to touch seven displays than to download to the Mac and connect and sync each of the seven devices? I find it to be, and I've got nine iOS thingies—five iPads, two iPhones, two iPods. Thing is, you probably don't use all of your devices at once, so you don't have to sync and update apps in marathon sessions. And it's still done with a touch of the display rather than a heavy crank.

What will you do when the day comes—as it surely will—when iOS is completely divorced from iTunes and all syncing is done from the device via the cloud? Don't blame the messenger; that's what's coming, eventually. I live that way now; I back up my iOS thingies to a Mac with a 19th-century-style electric wire from time to time (maybe not often enough), but all other transactions are handled via the cloud. Works.

I have several apps that are no longer available to download from Apple, even though they still work on (some of) my devices. If I delete my Mobile Applications folder, won't I be destroying my only copy of those apps?

最后更新：2017-09-19 16:19:51

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