iPhone 5 Portable Genius

Synchronizing Information with Your iPhone

If you step back a pace or two to take in the big picture, you see that your iPhone deals with two broad types of data: media — all that audio and video stuff — and information such as contacts, appointments, e-mail, websites, and notes. You need both types of data to get the most out of your iPhone investment and, happily, both types of data are eminently syncable. I get to the media syncing portion of the show a bit later. For now, the next few sections show you how to take control of syncing your information between your iPhone and your computer.

Syncing your contacts

Although you can certainly add contacts directly on your iPhone — and I show you how to do just that in Chapter 10 — adding, editing, grouping, and deleting contacts is a lot easier on a computer. So, a good way to approach contacts is to manage them on your Mac or Windows PC, and then sync them with your iPhone.

However, do you really need to sync all your contacts? For example, if you only use your iPhone to contact friends and family, then why clog your phone’s Contacts list with work contacts? I don’t know!

You can control which contacts are sent to your iPhone by creating groups of contacts and then syncing only those that you want. Here are some quickie instructions for creating groups:

Contacts (OS X Mountain Lion) or Address Book (earlier versions of OS X). Choose ...