How to transfer content between iPhone SE and MacBook with OS X Lion

[ashjamben]

So the great thing about Macs is they last a long time. The problem is Apple stop supporting them after a long time, which is understandable. Eventually hardware has to give up so they can improve the software I guess.

I've had 'hand-me-down' phones for the past few years and luckily the last couple happened to be iPhones. The last one, a 5C was working well but now it's broken so I bought myself an SE. The problem is it doesn't work with my MacBook, because the latest OS I can run is Lion and the newest iTunes that is compatible with the SE requires Mountain Lion.

So I was wondering if anyone had any tips on how to get content from my MacBook to my SE? Such as music, books, etc? I think VLC has an option to transfer via safari so is gonna check that out, but I'd prefer to play music through an app that is a little more user friendly.

Any help would be great, thanks!

 

[Nicky G9]

I also met this issue and I guess it could be a bug of iTunes.

 

[eyoungren]

Hmmm…that's interesting. I say that because the latest I knew was that iOS 9 is no longer supporting Snow Leopard.

So, the SE requiring the latest iTunes, which then requires no less than ML throws a new wrinkle into this.

PS. OP…I am typing this on a 2001 PowerMac G4 Quicksilver. I own a 2003 era 17" PowerBook G4 and a 2006 era 17" MacBook Pro (the only Intel Mac I own). Both PowerMac and PowerBook are running Leopard 10.5.8 (max) and my MBP runs Snow Leopard 10.6.8 (max).

I feel your pain as I have owned an iPhone 5, a 6+ and now a 6s+. I find other ways to sync my phones.

 

[ashjamben]

Hmmm…that's interesting. I say that because the latest I knew was that iOS 9 is no longer supporting Snow Leopard.

So, the SE requiring the latest iTunes, which then requires no less than ML throws a new wrinkle into this.

PS. OP…I am typing this on a 2001 PowerMac G4 Quicksilver. I own a 2003 era 17" PowerBook G4 and a 2006 era 17" MacBook Pro (the only Intel Mac I own). Both PowerMac and PowerBook are running Leopard 10.5.8 (max) and my MBP runs Snow Leopard 10.6.8 (max).

I feel your pain as I have owned an iPhone 5, a 6+ and now a 6s+. I find other ways to sync my phones.

Thanks for the reply!

Ours Macs are classed as "Obselete" by Apple but I guess they're still going strong!

Also, please let me know how else you manage to sync your phone. Through iCloud? Other apps?

I've been doing some searching and experimenting and found I can send music/videos from my Mac to the iPhone via VLC using a web browser which is good. I'd usually use VLC for videos anyway but guess I'll have to get used to using it for music too. Unfortunately it doesn't add the media files to the phone's "media library", so no other apps can pick it up.

Also, I've found iCloud has come to the rescue. I've not really used iCloud much before so it's new to me. I've found I can upload .epub books via a web browser and then download it via the iCloud Drive app into iBooks so that's a good workaround.

I need to look into iCloud some more for a way to get my photos from my iPhone and into iPhoto on my Mac. I'm sure there'll be a way via iCloud that hopefully doesn't compress them. Perhaps Image Capture on the MacBook will still work with the SE? I'll give it a go tomorrow.
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I also met this issue and I guess it could be a bug of iTunes.

Unfortunately it's not a bug! iTunes 12.3.3, I believe, is what's required for the SE. And 12.3.3 requires Mount Lion 10.8. Which really sucks! Not just because I can't sync my new iPhone but it also means I won't be getting any new iTunes updates.

 

[eyoungren]

Also, please let me know how else you manage to sync your phone. Through iCloud? Other apps?

I cheat. And I don't use iCloud.

My single biggest sync item is my contacts. It's the only thing that changes at all consistently. For that I use Google. Google contacts works on almost every platform including my old Macs. iCloud doesn't work for me, although I do use it for regular scheduled backups of my phone.

Next would be ringtones. Well, I'm jailbroken. So, it's a simply matter of putting my ringtone in Dropbox, opening iFile and copying it over to my phone then using Bridge to import the ringtone.

I don't store music on my phone, I use the Google Play app. My Snow Leopard only Mac uses Google Music Manager to may sure that my iTunes music library is synced (including playlists) to Google Play. I can stream my entrie library to my iPhone or iPad and I don't have a single song stored on either device.

Books (PDFs) and video don't really change for me so they were synced once and left alone.

A jailbreak tweak also allows me to load the file system of my devices as a network drive on my Macs/PCs so I can transfer files directly from my device and my computers.

Which leads me to when I do need to actually use iTunes to sync. And that's the cheating part.

I work for a small business (less than ten people) so I have a lot of freedom and my work Mac is a Mac Pro running Yosemite. Until I got my MBP this was how I synced - using the MP at work. Now that I have my MBP though, I installed Windows 10 on a separate partition. If I need to sync now then I boot my MBP into Windows 10 and use iTunes in there.

And last but not least, my wife has a Win 10 laptop that we've used in the past.

So, kind of a series of workarounds, but I rarely need to sync anything because most of the content I need is either accessible in the cloud or already on my phone. Since I mainly use my phone for calling/texting/email and light social browsing my Macs handle movies, music, books, etc.

One final note. Things aren't completely gone either. I found AirServer over the weekend. I can do Airplay of music from my iOS 8.1 iPad to my PowerMac and I can do screen mirroring of my iPad to my Snow Leopard MBP. But only with devices running iOS 8 or less. Which is fine because the only video/music streaming I would be doing is from my iPad which has 8.1.

Hope something there helps you.

 

[ashjamben]

I cheat. And I don't use iCloud.

My single biggest sync item is my contacts. It's the only thing that changes at all consistently. For that I use Google. Google contacts works on almost every platform including my old Macs. iCloud doesn't work for me, although I do use it for regular scheduled backups of my phone.

Next would be ringtones. Well, I'm jailbroken. So, it's a simply matter of putting my ringtone in Dropbox, opening iFile and copying it over to my phone then using Bridge to import the ringtone.

I don't store music on my phone, I use the Google Play app. My Snow Leopard only Mac uses Google Music Manager to may sure that my iTunes music library is synced (including playlists) to Google Play. I can stream my entrie library to my iPhone or iPad and I don't have a single song stored on either device.

Books (PDFs) and video don't really change for me so they were synced once and left alone.

A jailbreak tweak also allows me to load the file system of my devices as a network drive on my Macs/PCs so I can transfer files directly from my device and my computers.

Which leads me to when I do need to actually use iTunes to sync. And that's the cheating part.

I work for a small business (less than ten people) so I have a lot of freedom and my work Mac is a Mac Pro running Yosemite. Until I got my MBP this was how I synced - using the MP at work. Now that I have my MBP though, I installed Windows 10 on a separate partition. If I need to sync now then I boot my MBP into Windows 10 and use iTunes in there.

And last but not least, my wife has a Win 10 laptop that we've used in the past.

So, kind of a series of workarounds, but I rarely need to sync anything because most of the content I need is either accessible in the cloud or already on my phone. Since I mainly use my phone for calling/texting/email and light social browsing my Macs handle movies, music, books, etc.

One final note. Things aren't completely gone either. I found AirServer over the weekend. I can do Airplay of music from my iOS 8.1 iPad to my PowerMac and I can do screen mirroring of my iPad to my Snow Leopard MBP. But only with devices running iOS 8 or less. Which is fine because the only video/music streaming I would be doing is from my iPad which has 8.1.

Hope something there helps you.

Thanks for the help. It seems like it's a little easier with a jail broken iPhone!

I already use Google for contacts from when I had an android phone so plan to keep using that.

Google Play music sounds really good. The unfortunate thing is I'm currently living in China, so anything Google I have to use a VPN for which isn't too much hassle. The good thing is data over here is super cheap so streaming is a viable option. I looked into Apple Music but don't want to pay each year for it. I don't listen to music that much on the go anyway so Google Music sounds good.

Thanks for the tips. They're a big help

 

[ashjamben]

Just a heads up if anyone else finds this thread and is in the same situation. The SE still works with iPhoto on my Mac with Lion, so I can still transfer all of my photos to iPhoto like I used to.

 

[TeaEarleGreyHot]

Hi ashjamben, you have my sympathies with your dilemma. I recently had my phone replaced by Apple and ran into a similar problem. Although I'd been backing up my iPhone5 (iOS9.3.1) to iTunes 10.x on my 2009 Macbook running SnowLeopard (10.6.8) without apparent problems, when I tried to restore the new iPhone5, I received a message that a newer version of iTunes was required. Why iTunes 10 (?) could create backup files that it can't restore is a mystery to me.

Software update lyingly said I had the newest version of iTunes for SnowLeopard, but I found iTunes 11.4, and downloaded that. Two things happened: (1) Still not able to restore the new iPhone on my SnowLeopard Macbook, and (2) 11.4 automatically updated my iTunes library folder, so it could not be read by the previous iTunes version, and all my music was gone. I had to go back to a TimeMachine backup to retrieve my old iTunes library. What a mess.

In the end, I used someone else's newer Mac with ElCapitan, created a new user account on it, copied my iTunes folder (~Music>iTunes) and my most recent iPhone backup file "xyz" (~Library>Application Support>MobileSync>Backup>xyz) to the ElCapitan user, and then launched iTunes, logged in with my AppleID, and then restored the new phone from iTunes 12.3.3. Worked perfectly. But now I can't backup my phone to my own laptop because iTunes 11.4 is smart enough not to make a backup that it cannot restore. So I'm stuck backing up to an encrypted file on someone else's Mac until I can afford to upgrade my hardware. Really sucks.

I can't use iCloud because I don't have wired internet at home, and the data on my phone is very expensive--this being the USA. It really irks me that Apple is forcing Mac users to upgrade hardware just to make backups of their iPhones, when Windows users can use iTunes on an old version of Windows without problems. Grrrrrrr.