Do I Need iTunes?

[thetrainman]

I run Windows 7.
If I connect an iPhone to the machine, will it just show up as another drive like Android/Windows Phone? Or do I need to install iTunes?

 

[bandofbrothers]

I use iTunes mainlyto create back ups and carry out playlists.

Ref your question : Hook. It up and see. #

 

[Applejuiced]

It will not show up as a drive and you cannot copy and transfer files back and forth like other devices.
You can view and copy the pictures from the camera but that's the only thing you can do without itunes.
You need itunes for everything else as far as syncing music, videos, ringtones, apps, backups and everything else.

 

[rigormortis]

It will not show up as a drive and you cannot copy and transfer files back and forth like other devices.
You can view and copy the pictures from the camera but that's the only thing you can do without itunes.
You need itunes for everything else as far as syncing music, videos, ringtones, apps, backups and everything else.

i gotta comment on this.

umm no longer having a DCIM folder to read / write photos with explorer or finder is a new innovative feature of iOS 8. i personally think it sucks, i think we should all write apple feedback telling them that was a bone head idea.

if you want to access photos you must use iPhoto ( and itunes i presume)

if you want to keep your pictures forever you must use iPhoto (and itunes i presume) to back up your pictures or you must pay apple anywhere from $0.00 to $19.99 a month to keep ALL your pictures on iCloud


if you rely only on photo stream then only 1000 pictures are kept and the rest are deleted from the cloud

when i say you need itunes " i presume " i mean i think its itunes's helpers that talk to the phone and do the unlocking and all that, then it gives iPhoto access to your pictures.

i have no way of proving that itunes is not needed for iPhoto. because i don't think with yosemite itunes can be removed.


on a windows computer without itunes and the iPhone unlocked with your pin and with you clicking on trust. you no longer have a way of accessing the photo storage on any iOS devices running iOS 8 or later.

you MUST use itunes

a third party utility might work, but i don't use those

 

[Applejuiced]

I just copied a bunch of pics to a folder on my windows 7 pc. But I also have itunes installed. So you're saying if I didn't have itunes I couldn't access the pics folder of my iphone?

 

[rigormortis]

I just copied a bunch of pics to a folder on my windows 7 pc. But I also have itunes installed. So you're saying if I didn't have itunes I couldn't access the pics folder of my iphone?

i haven't tried it WITH itunes on windows 7

but if you do not have itunes the DCIM folder in explorer does not show up at all

even with finder the DCIM folder does not show up at all

the DCIM feature was removed in iOS 8

if you see DCIM or Digital Camera in Explorer with iOS 8 on Windows 7, it is because its something iTunes has turned on.

this was not the case with iOS 7

 

[maliu]

i gotta comment on this.

umm no longer having a DCIM folder to read / write photos with explorer or finder is a new innovative feature of iOS 8. i personally think it sucks, i think we should all write apple feedback telling them that was a bone head idea.

if you want to access photos you must use iPhoto ( and itunes i presume)

if you want to keep your pictures forever you must use iPhoto (and itunes i presume) to back up your pictures or you must pay apple anywhere from $0.00 to $19.99 a month to keep ALL your pictures on iCloud


if you rely only on photo stream then only 1000 pictures are kept and the rest are deleted from the cloud

when i say you need itunes " i presume " i mean i think its itunes's helpers that talk to the phone and do the unlocking and all that, then it gives iPhoto access to your pictures.

i have no way of proving that itunes is not needed for iPhoto. because i don't think with yosemite itunes can be removed.


on a windows computer without itunes and the iPhone unlocked with your pin and with you clicking on trust. you no longer have a way of accessing the photo storage on any iOS devices running iOS 8 or later.

you MUST use itunes

a third party utility might work, but i don't use those

There are other ways to back besides iCloud. I simply use an external hard drive to back up my photos from iPhoto. No monthly cost and since I keep a backup of my computer anyway like anyone who wants to lessen the chance of losing data, doesn't cost me any more.

----------

Oh and you can always export the photos from iPhoto and save them anywhere you like.

----------

But yes, you need the "i" stuff to get photos off your phone.

 

[rigormortis]

There are other ways to back besides iCloud. I simply use an external hard drive to back up my photos from iPhoto. No monthly cost and since I keep a backup of my computer anyway like anyone who wants to lessen the chance of losing data, doesn't cost me any more.

my post was a warning that the DCIM disk drive feature was disabled in iOS 8. it wasn't meant to address anything else

 

[Applejuiced]

Interesting.
I didn't know that.
Guess they're trying to push iTunes even more.

i haven't tried it WITH itunes on windows 7

but if you do not have itunes the DCIM folder in explorer does not show up at all

even with finder the DCIM folder does not show up at all

the DCIM feature was removed in iOS 8

if you see DCIM or Digital Camera in Explorer with iOS 8 on Windows 7, it is because its something iTunes has turned on.

this was not the case with iOS 7

 

[azhava]

...if you want to access photos you must use iPhoto ( and itunes i presume)

if you want to keep your pictures forever you must use iPhoto (and itunes i presume) to back up your pictures or you must pay apple anywhere from $0.00 to $19.99 a month to keep ALL your pictures on iCloud...

I don't do Windows, but on a Mac the above is not true. You can use the Image Capture app to download photos from your iPhone and save them to a directory/folder of your choice (iPhoto not necessary).

[ETA:] Getting photos from your computer to your iPhone, however, is a whole different thing. For that, you do need iTunes (unless you want to e-mail/text each one to yourself).

IIRC, the reasoning behind the iPhone working the way it does came from when Apple originally started selling music on iTunes. The record labels wanted assurance that you couldn't just plug your phone into somebody else's computer and download their entire mp3 collection (or let others do the same with yours), hence the one-way transfer and inability to view/use it as a mass storage device accessible by computer. If Apple hadn't put those restrictions in place, the record labels never would have signed off on having their music on iTunes. All iTunes music also used to be protected by DRM (digital rights management) baked into the mp3 file, so even if somebody else was able to access your music collection, they wouldn't be able to play it on any device other than yours.

 

[thetrainman]

And this is what puts me off Apple and iPhones.

They (Apple) should understand the majority of iPhone users will run Windows and want simple plug and play.

Now I'm having to install needless bloat just to transfer photos?

Awful

 

[rigormortis]

I don't do Windows, but on a Mac the above is not true. You can use the Image Capture app to download photos from your iPhone and save them to a directory/folder of your choice (iPhoto not necessary).

i believe the image capture app will fail if you do not have iTunes installed.

it is itunes that gives access to image capture.

 

[rigormortis]

And this is what puts me off Apple and iPhones.

They (Apple) should understand the majority of iPhone users will run Windows and want simple plug and play.

Now I'm having to install needless bloat just to transfer photos?

Awful

well we all saw what happened with the iCloud celebrity hacking. maybe having your DCIM folder locked down to everything except iTunes (Which in turn gives that access to iPhoto / Image capture ) is supposed to be a good thing. so no one else has access to your photos.

with www.cloud.com you can access all of that stuff. if you want your photos on iCloud forever you have to pay at least 99 cents a month, or you use some other cloud based thing.

you can probably do without itunes all together. but it will be hard to put tv shows , movies, music, on your iPhone.. unless you purchase it.

i found out that you can upload movies to an iPhone using airdrop. and they go to your photos app

when owning an iPhone , backing up to iCloud backs up a lot of stuff. from your phone book, to all your purchases, and your settings and everything. but you have to pay for anything overt 5 gb..

the average itunes backup is 7 gigs


backing up pictures is the weak point. of all the things that apple keeps safe, they don't really keep all your pictures on the cloud for free. you have to pay for that. photo stream only holds 1000 pictures.

you could technically erase your entire phone and just about everything you can download again from apple, without even needing itunes. except photos or any videos you recorded from the camera

if you lost your iPhone and you erased it and had to buy a new one, and you didn't have an itunes backup, all you would be out if your pictures, videos, and wifi passwords. i had a talk with apple and iCloud keychain doesn't save wifi passwords.

stuff you would be able to get back is stuff ( without itunes installed ) you bought apps ( tv shows, music, movie), phone book, calendar, notes, your web passwords. pages, numbers, etc etc etc.

apple even keeps stuff you bought. if you bought something that apple later banned, you can erase your phone and you can erase your itunes library and beat up your hard disk with a hammer, and you would still be able to download
banned apps., when no one else can

i wouldn't dismiss itunes. i wouldn't decide not to buy a iPhone solely based on having to use itunes.

heres an idea. keep your windows 7 pc clean of iTunes. BUY A MAC!! and use iTunes on that!! thats a great idea. the base mac mini is only $499 at the apple store.

they have older ones for sale on eBay, going for cheap but you need mavericks. ( os x 10.9)

iOS 8 requries itunes 11.4 and mavericks.

 

[Applejuiced]

And this is what puts me off Apple and iPhones.

They (Apple) should understand the majority of iPhone users will run Windows and want simple plug and play.

Now I'm having to install needless bloat just to transfer photos?

Awful

Unfortunately it's needed.
But without it you would not be able to perform backups, restore from backup, app, music, videos iphone firmware updates, syncing and customizing and many other things.
A simple file explorer with drag and drop couldn't perform all the functions needed for the device.

 

[Cmd-Z]

the DCIM feature was removed in iOS 8

I don't think that's correct. My iPhone 6+ (8.1.2) syncs to my Mac (Yosemite) at home but my work computer is a Windows 7 box and it sees the DCIM folder just fine in Explorer. This PC used to have iTunes, but it does not now, so perhaps the key is the Apple Mobile Device driver needs to be installed for the iOS device to be recognized at all.

So one could install iTunes just to get the driver, then remove iTunes if you don't want it (it leaves behind Apple Mobile Device Support). Doing that will still allow you access to the DCIM folder via Explorer.

But the DCIM folder is alive and well in iOS 8 ... you do have to have something in Camera Roll in order for DCIM to show up, and the necessary device driver from iTunes, but it is there.

 

[rigormortis]

I don't think that's correct. My iPhone 6+ (8.1.2) syncs to my Mac (Yosemite) at home but my work computer is a Windows 7 box and it sees the DCIM folder just fine in Explorer. This PC used to have iTunes, but it does not now, so perhaps the key is the Apple Mobile Device driver needs to be installed for the iOS device to be recognized at all.

So one could install iTunes just to get the driver, then remove iTunes if you don't want it (it leaves behind Apple Mobile Device Support). Doing that will still allow you access to the DCIM folder via Explorer.

But the DCIM folder is alive and well in iOS 8 ... you do have to have something in Camera Roll in order for DCIM to show up, and the necessary device driver from iTunes, but it is there.

its gone. it does not show up unless some fragment of itunes is installed.

it used to show up as a disk drive to anything

i removed itunes from my windows 7 box, and the dcim folder does not show up at all. i haven't checked to see if mobile sync was removed though

everything was fine until i installed iOS 8

i have 1 windows machine, 3 macs and 1 iPhone and 1 iPad and i have not seen dcim since iOS 8 was installed

 

[Cmd-Z]

I just demonstrated that it is there in iOS 8. You just have to have something in Camera Roll for it to show up, and you (probably) have to have AMDS installed (which remains after you remove iTunes).

 

[thetrainman]

Who did you demonstrate to?
Yourself

Please outline the steps you took.

It's one reason Windows Phone is great.
If I took some photos of something at work, I couldn't then quickly transfer them to the work PC which is rubbish. Why Apple don't build their software to work with Windows instead of against the biggest PC OS, I will never know.

 

[Cmd-Z]

Please outline the steps you took.

It's not rocket science ... I connected my iPhone to my Windows 7 PC (which is not what I normally sync to) and then navigated the contents using Explorer to find the DCIM folder. Note that this PC does not have iTunes installed (it did once upon a time though). This is the same as it was in iOS 7, not sure what rigormortis is going on about.

When iOS 8 was first released Apple had eliminated "Camera Roll" in favor of something called "Recently Added". So perhaps at that point in time the DCIM folder went AWOL, I don't know, but my PC, without iTunes, sees the DCIM folder on my iPhone 6+ just fine.

It's one reason Windows Phone is great.
If I took some photos of something at work, I couldn't then quickly transfer them to the work PC which is rubbish.

As with any USB peripheral, you need a driver for Windows to connect to it. The driver for an iPhone is installed with iTunes, but as I indicated above you can install and remove iTunes and it leaves behind the necessary driver that Windows needs. Now, some employers won't let you install iTunes or other software, so in that case you have to use other approaches (e.g. email photo to yourself).

Why Apple don't build their software to work with Windows instead of against the biggest PC OS, I will never know.

iTunes and iOS have for the most part played nice with Windows for me over the years. I converted to a Mac a year ago but still use PCs at home and work extensively. Most problems I've seen have been between the chair and keyboard

----------

everything was fine until i installed iOS 8

Since iOS 8.0 did not have "Camera Roll", I wonder if DCIM was not accessible then? Apple reinstated Camera Roll, so that may have brought back the DCIM folder. It is definitely there now with iOS 8.1.2.