By Michael Evans
INSTALLING a new iPhone as a replacement for a previous model is a fairly painless experience. iTunes attempts to do everything for you and, provided you've remembered to back up the old phone before connecting the new one, all your stuff will be restored. There are still a few hours of work to get through, despite Apple's best efforts. Strangely, one of the most annoying is the need to rearrange all your applications on the new phone. I hear welcome rumours that the next version of iTunes will allow sorting of applications from within the Mac application and it will remember where everything goes.
Another minor task is to re-enter your passwords for applications such as Evernote, Momo and set up synchronisation with the likes of OmniFocus and 1Password. It would be nice if such updates could be made automatic, as they are to a large extent when setting up a replacement Mac.
The biggest hassle, though, comes from having to re-enter data. Bloomberg takes most time because I have to manually re-enter stocks and shares, searching every time for the details of an individual stock. I have to set up my accounts data-entry program, Pocket Money, and this takes time. One of my little apps, WeightBot, which records daily body weight data, is a paragon of how to do it. The daily data backs up automatically to the WeightBot server and it is a simple matter to restore the history to the new phone.
All in all, it takes several hours of concentrated work to get the new phone back to where you left the old one and a bit more automation would be welcome. Despite this, the iPhone is a paragon of virtue compared with, say, the setting up of a Windows Mobile phone.