The Bandwidth Needed to Restore an iPhone
Because iTunes no longer manages apps, you have to redownload potentially tens of gigabytes of stuff. If you have music and photos in the cloud, you have to download some of them, but the apps alone make this process painful.
In addition, you can’t pause the process; you can only put the phone into airplane mode. So if you do need to use the phone to make calls or use data, your connection is saturate, and you’re limited for the several hours it takes to get everything downloaded.
Designed for a California network connection.
Previously: iTunes 12.7 Drops Apps and Ringtones, iCloud Photo Library Re-uploading, Most of the Web Really Sucks If You Have a Slow Connection, Protecting Your Network From Photos Uploads.
Update (2018-10-05): Brian Stucki:
Absolutely. A cache server saves the day on iOS/iPhone/iPad release days for sure.
I blew through my ATT data allotment.
I started restore at my desk and after it was ‘done’ I left for lunch and the phone kept downloading things. Blew through 8 GB. I was both furious and stuck. ATT didn’t do anything wrong; couldn’t go to them and Apple wasn’t going to care.
Previously: When macOS High Sierra’s Content Caching Isn’t Working.
6 Comments RSS · Twitter
We need Time Capsule for iOS devices. There used to be an iCloud caching option in OSX Server, not sure if it is there or not anymore, which speeds things up quite a bit.
But basically Switching to a new iPhone is such as pain it is the reason a lot of my friends are hesitant getting on to a new phone.
If Apple execs were forced to live on 3 megabit dsl like millions of Americans in the hinterlands, a big chunk of their software roadmap would be scrapped. The notion that bandwidth is limitless and unmetered permeates every level of decision-making. Part of the rationale for killing the Time Capsule program was that "people can just use iCloud."
Truly unfortunate. I used to be able to extol the virtues of iOS devices because they used to be so easy to upgrade when new products came along or replacement products were required. Restoring from the cloud has always seemed like a solution designed expressly for display models with minimal amount of data. With an iPhone and more than 100GB of data - photos, documents, etc. - restoring from the cloud is horrible, and impractical. And photos never every appear to re-download properly. For this reason alone I switched to Mylio for a few years and then, later, to Google Photos.
Related, the hidden "special version" of iTunes that could manage apps won't install on Mojave: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208079
You mean “Designed in California for a Bay Area internet connection.” I live in California about a three hour drive from Apple Park (if I left at 1 am to avoid traffic). The fastest internet I can get is 2 Mbps. Every time Apple makes a decision they make it harder for me to continue using their products. But you know what? They don’t care. People in my situation are no longer in their target demographic. Removing app management from iTunes was a big middle finger pointed straight at us.
Mike B: On his blog, Kirk McElhearn pointed out that he writes content for iMazing and that it can’t help with restoring an iPhone.
