TS1503 How do I clear the 'other data' on my iPhone 4S? It is using 25% of the available memory. I do not want to have to wipe it and then reset every thing I use. That's why I have restore. Except restore puts the other data back on the phone.

Question

I've come to the conclusion that Apple is no better than Microsoft.  There was a functional iTunes. I could sync music, playlists, etc; across my iPad and iPhone.  I can't now.  It now eats up storage on my devices with 'other data',  and Apple is silent on what is going on.   I currently have 2 iMacs, 2 iPads, a Macbook Pro, and an AirBook Pro.  I will stop purchasing Apple products.  It is a royal pain to fix anything.  This support page tries my patience to use.  I used to enjoy working with Apple products, simply because they functioned and where intuitive to use.  No more.  Music is impossible to sync across platforms using the same account.  Songs only, no playlists.  This is step back to the early year of systems.  No common data formats, zero portablity, and labor intensive. 
Way to go Apple,  you've destroyed your reputation!

Answer 1

Similar issue -- this is the third time in as many months that I've had to restore my iPad. It's a iPad Mini w/ 32GB (ME277LL/A), running the latest iOS8.1.2. The "other" data starts off about 1GB and will bob around that. I was careful about games this time, seeing only a slight rise in the data. Once it started to rise, I deleted all of the game and the data on Game Center. No joy -- the data stays about the same.
Then I noticed it was really climbing -- shooting up to about 10GB and sitting there, no matter what I did: sync it: nothing. Deleting music (on the off chance it was album art or some such: nothing. Deleted all the books in iBooks: no effect -- still 10GB. Cleared the iCloud storage, cleared caches repeatedly: nothing. Reset everything: no effect. Only Restoring the iPad -- which takes forever and is a gigantic pain in the @$$ -- gets it down. This is exactly the same thing that happened the other two times -- I lose about 10GB to "other."
I now suspect, thinking on what I was doing with the device, that pulling movies from iTunes seems to be the culprit. Deleting the movies might take the movie "off the iPad", but there seems to be a corresponding jump in Other. My guess is there's some glitch dumping the information elsewhere.
It makes a 32GB iPad pretty frickin' close to useless in a remarkable amount of time. I've not had this issue until this iPad (bought last summer) with the iOS8 upgrade. I don't see this happen on the iPhone 5S with the same OS...that's why I dialed down to iTunes (when is it not smack in the middle of issues?) and Video as the culprit; I don't watch movies on the phone.
I've noticed a massive amount of posts in support and around the web on this matter...it might be time for Apple to shift it and do something about the matter. If I'm going to be restricted to surfing the web, email, and little else thanks to the Other issue, it really doesn't make sense to stick with this device. I can doo all that on my laptop, can't it?