OS X Mountain Lion Bible

Syncing via iTunes on a Mac

Although iTunes is generally designed for managing and playing music and videos (see Chapter 15), it also acts as the central manager for other information in the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch: e-mail accounts, calendars, contacts, and Safari bookmarks, as well as for any mobile applications on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch. Of course, iTunes' controls for music, podcast, video, and photo syncing available to other iPods work the same way with the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch, as Chapter 15 explains.

When you connect an iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch to your Mac (or Windows PC) and select the device from the Devices list in iTunes' Sidebar, the Summary pane appears. You also see a list of tabs for other panes.

Tip

I strongly recommend that you sync as much as possible through iCloud rather than iTunes. If you have an Internet connection, using iCloud assures that your information is quickly synced to all other devices using the same Apple ID. iTunes is best used to sync data with applications that don't support iCloud, such as from Quickoffice on an iPad to Word on your Mac, by transferring the file via iTunes from the iPad to the Mac.

The Info pane

The Info pane contains controls for syncing items between your Mac and your iOS device. Note that if you use iCloud, Exchange, Gmail, or another service that syncs over the Internet directly to your iOS device and other computers, these options do not affect those syncs. The local sync is mainly meant as a ...