Wednesday, September 08, 2010

App Management is Time Consuming Task

Everyday is like Christmas when you have free apps to download and try out for your iPhone and iPad.  The continued addition of apps for these devices grows to exorbitant quantities.   Sometimes it is worth taking the time to check out those newly added free apps or the ones that offer a price drop for the day only.

The thing that I have noticed last week is that my iPad and iPhone were taking forever to sync with iTunes on my Mac.  I tried deleting some of the numerous apps that I don't use, making sure the cable I was using to sync was the correct one and also restoring my devices as new devices.

So far the restore method is the only one that seems to speed up the sync.  It also gives me the chance to re-evaluate the apps I have chosen to sync and to eliminate some that are duplicates or similar to others.  I really wish there was an option to put notes about apps in the view window of iTunes in the comment field.  One can access the comment field using the get info for the app, but editing is not allowable.  I suppose they don't want us editing a field that is primarily locked by the developers of the app.  It would be nice to have some way to mark apps as 'favorites' with stars or ratings in iTunes so that it would be easy to know that a particular app was one that you wished to sync.

Is there an app or desktop application that would interface with iTunes and allow the user to list which apps are currently on their iphone?

With the latest update to iTunes 10, I am finding that when I try to sync my iPad with any new apps that I have downloaded for the day, that the 'automatically sync new apps' clickable square in iTunes is not functioning properly.  So I have to look at the apps that I downloaded for the day in the view window, sorted by date added and then copy that list to text edit or a notepad.  I reconnect my iPad to sync it and then search by name while in the Apps tab to find those newly added apps and manually check them to be synced. 

It is becoming a time-consuming task to sync new apps to my iPad.  I wish there was a means to keep track of apps a person likes and a folder that could store new apps on the iPad to test for inclusion or exclusion.  Well, back to cleaning off some apps from the iPad and syncing some new ones.

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