I’ve spent today wrestling with dll issues and builds of Windows XP at work. It’s been frustrating and like looking for a needle in a haystack. By the time work was over I had the feeling the problem i solved but needs some testing. However I was cursing dll’s, the registry and Windows in general and looking forward to a night away form PC hassles.
So I plugged in my iPhone at home to get some podcast updates. After 10 minutes I realised the iPhone was still syncing. That’s not right! So I took a look at the iPhone in iTunes. Ohe feck – that’s definitely not right!
Why is iTunes uninstalling applications. Then the iPhone rebooted and the sync continued. When t finished I had no third party app’s on the iPhone. I checked the app’s tab in iTunes and all the app’s were deselected. I selected them and sync’d and sure enough they were installed on the iPhone. However they were all in different screens, some had lost their settings and some games had lost their saves.
Drat, drat, drat.
Feck, feck, feck.
This is the first issue I’ve had since the 2.1 update fixed all my previous application issues. I’m hoping it’s a one off. My app’s are all up and running but losing some games saves is a real kick in the nuts. Looking at the Apple discussions on applications it looks like there are a lot of people that still have issues with iTunes and/or applications running properly.
Still, I can’t help but feel this is karma. The revenge of Bill Gates. A reminder that no matter the platform you will get issues from time to time. I just hope that the last lesson for a while.
That's the only unplugged weakness that's still severe on the iPhone/iTouch. Installing app updates, or removing and re-installing apps (intentionally, or by a sync issue) more often that not wipes your data – annoying if it's game progress rather than login details. On a hookie firmware you can install AppBackup which selectively backups up and restores app data, which is well handy. Shouldn't be necessary though, and wouldn't be if the data to backup wasn't contained within the .app container – it should be in a user directory instead. Remove an app, you remove the data.