Backup from iPhone fills up my poor Mac.

Question

I have a lot of applications on my iphone, and some of them are big, I guess, as they are photo and video editing applications. When I connect my iPhone to my Mac, for instance to transfer some pictures, automatic backup starts. I have around 8 GB just with applications on my iPhone, I don't need all those to fill up my poor little white MacBook! How can I stop this happening. I don't need to backup applications, most of the applications are cheep or not hard to loose.
If there was an easy way to direct the bakcup elsewhere, I would be glad. I could open a new iTunes on a extern hard drive, true? And direct the update to there? Or is it alway only the present iTunes Library on the Mac that counts?
Other solutions?
Thanks!
sverremac
Norway

Answer 1

By design, the iphone will sync itunes content with one computer at a time. Any attempt to sync such content with a second computer will result in ALL itunes content being first erased from your phone & then replaced with the content from the second computer. This is a design feature and cannot be overridden. Because your computer was replaced, your phone, will of course see any new computer as a "new" computer. The itunes content sync is one way: computer to phone. If you have photos that were synced to your phone or music ripped on your own that were not backed up, you will first have to extract them from your phone using third party software, before you do anything else:
http://www.wideanglesoftware.com/touchcopy/index.php
Once you've done that, do the following in the order specified:
1. Disable auto sync when an ipod/iphone is connected under preferences in itunes.
2. Make sure you have one contact & one event in Address Book & iCal. The entries can be fake, doesn't matter, the important point is that these programs not be empty.
3. Connect your phone, itunes running, do not sync at this point.
4. Store>Authorize this computer.
5. File>Transfer Purchases(To make sure all purchased content on your phone will be in your itunes library).
6. Right click(Control Click) in the device pane & select reset warnings.
7. Right click again and select backup.
8. Right click again & select restore from backup, select the backup you just made. When prompted to create another backup, decline.
9. This MUST be followed by a sync to restore your itunes content, which you select from the various tabs, You'll get a popup regarding your contacts & calendars asking to merge or replace, select merge.
That's as good as it gets without a backup of your itunes library and other important data...I'm assuming you don't from the wording of your post.