iTunes 12.7 released

squerble · 13 Sep 2017 at 11:42

As expected, there's a new iTunes release today. An interesting thing is they've got rid of App syncing via iTunes:

If you previously used iTunes to sync apps or ringtones on your iOS device, use the new App Store or Sounds Settings on iOS to redownload them without your Mac.

So now I'm curious what will happen to the local "store" of applications, and how this affects backups. I guess iTunes 12.7 can just take a backup of the app data from the phone, and store that. Then, when you restore a phone from backup, it just downloads the latest version of the app and restores the appdata on top - I believe it couldn't store the app data from apps that weren't downloaded to the Mac in previous versions, meaning that if your local "store" wasn't up to date, it couldn't back up the data for that app.

While this does remove bloat from iTunes (a tiny bit, at least), this is extremely annoying for people like myself who have slow internet connections (I have 2Mb at home), as the 100Mb limit for downloading over cellular data is still there, plus I only have 20GB a month to play with.

Broken Hope · 13 Sep 2017 at 12:26

iTunes hasn’t been restoring apps directly since iOS 9 and the app thinning.

Feek · 13 Sep 2017 at 13:40

So what happens if I want to reinstall an app that's no longer on the store?

russell664 · 13 Sep 2017 at 13:50

Feek said:
So what happens if I want to reinstall an app that's no longer on the store?

I would assume that you can't, unless it is now a hidden menu.

Broken Hope · 13 Sep 2017 at 14:24

If you have the ipa file you can drag and drop it.

squerble · 13 Sep 2017 at 14:25

Feek said:
So what happens if I want to reinstall an app that's no longer on the store?

Apple support article. Check out the last section, "Manually add items from your computer". Tl;dr: you can drag and drop.

Feek · 13 Sep 2017 at 15:08

Thanks. I can see all the application files are still there. Of course it means that the locally stored files will never get updated but that's not the end of the world.

Scythe · 13 Sep 2017 at 22:10

Well, mine updated tonight without any user interaction or notification. Usually when my MacBook is plugged in it'll download and install updates but usually I get a notification. Shame really I was going to wait until High Sierra.

squerble · 14 Sep 2017 at 08:22

Broken Hope said:
iTunes hasn’t been restoring apps directly since iOS 9 and the app thinning.

I've just been trying to read up on this. If that's the case, why does my iTunes still download the full versions of the apps to my Mac (as app updates)? Surely that's a good few gigabytes I could be saving on hard drive space?

Deleted member 77746 · 14 Sep 2017 at 12:11

Use and

Feek said:
So what happens if I want to reinstall an app that's no longer on the store?

Don’t update, simples. Unless they enforce versions. Oh boy!

IT Troll · 17 Sep 2017 at 10:29

They also removed the Book Library and book syncing in iTunes for Windows. I have a large PDF library which I would selectively sync to iBooks on my devices as required.

You can use the manual drag-n-drop method on each individual device but this is rather clunky. Clearly Apple want to discourage you using any content which has come from their stores.

Deleted member 138126 · 17 Sep 2017 at 11:11

IT Troll said:
They also removed the Book Library and book syncing in iTunes for Windows. I have a large PDF library which I would selectively sync to iBooks on my devices as required.

You can use the manual drag-n-drop method on each individual device but this is rather clunky. Clearly Apple want to discourage you using any content which has come from their stores.

You could probably use Dropbox to achieve the same result?

Bony Maloney · 17 Sep 2017 at 13:29

rotor said:
You could probably use Dropbox to achieve the same result?

Also iCloud drive for PDF's

IT Troll · 17 Sep 2017 at 16:20

rotor said:
You could probably use Dropbox to achieve the same result?

Yes, just a a little convoluted. Upload to Dropbox, download to Dropbox app, export to iBooks.

Bony Maloney said:
Also iCloud drive for PDF's

This at least gives you a way to automatically sync between devices, but will of course eat into your iCloud quota.

Deleted member 651465 · 19 Sep 2017 at 21:28

Stupid question: where is the app section of iTunes? It's totally missing on my system. Doesn't even seem to be a section in the store for apps :confused:

Edit: never mind, found out that it’s been removed

IT Troll · 23 Sep 2017 at 00:43

Yeah, apparently you don't need an app, book or ringtone library anymore. Apple decided this for you.

beachBOYken · 23 Sep 2017 at 09:28

IT Troll said:
Yeah, apparently you don't need an app, book or ringtone library anymore. Apple decided this for you.

Isn't that what the App store is for?

No-One · 23 Sep 2017 at 13:03

beachBOYken said:
Isn't that what the App store is for?

And if you have ringtones/books saved on your pc which weren't acquired from apple that you want to load into your iOS device?

IT Troll · 23 Sep 2017 at 16:56

beachBOYken said:
Isn't that what the App store is for?

App store is OK until the app is removed or the developer stops paying their fees.

iTunes 12.7 released

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