Do you really need iTunes to use an iPhone?

Because Apple is such a large and complex ecosystem, urban legends often appear that can confuse those users who might consider buying a device from the Bite Apple company, considering it too complex or restrictive. So, at Applesupportphonenumber we have decided to be the knights errant in this crusade to eliminate the legends and restore the truth about this ecosystem.

Most of us who read and write in this blog know that Apple is not just a company that manufactures electronic devices, but it is something more. Apple is an ecosystem that encompasses lots of devices, software and people who live and enjoy every piece of engineering in this company. We also know that, the bigger an empire is, the bigger the enemies that surround it, and that, together with the ignorance of the masses, makes that urban legends can arise around the products that this empire manufactures, and that is what happens around Apple.

To give you an example: talking to a colleague the other day about the ease of use of our mobile devices (I have an iPhone 4S and he has a Galaxy S4) brought up, as an inflexible point that would collapse all my arguments, that what hurts the iPhone the most is the obligation to use iTunes for almost everything we want to do with our mobile. This is not the first time I hear this argument, so I would like to start this series of articles with this urban legend.

As you probably all know, the iPhone appeared in 2007 becoming a real icon for the telephone industry . From this device, all the smartphones that appeared ended up looking like the little one with the bite of the apple. However, although it was a real wonder to use it, compared to what we had at that time, did have the great advantage of having to connect it to our computer constantly to synchronize the music, photos and everything we wanted to put on it. Even to turn the phone on for the first time we needed to connect it to a computer with iTunes, something we could kindly do in the same store where we bought it.

But time went by (to be frank, too much for my taste), and iCloud and iOS 6 appeared, and we could completely forget about connecting our iPhones to our computers, not even to turn them on for the first time. iOS 6 includes a system in which we can activate our phone with Apple’s servers (something mandatory to use them, in another article we will see why) from the same terminal, without having to connect it to a computer .

And what about music and photos? Do we have to connect to a computer to synchronize them? Of course not, iCloud will make the music we have officially bought available to us , and if we have “unofficial” music, we can buy iTunes Match which will “legalise” all our music for just 24.99 euros a year , making it available wherever we want, without having to download it to our device. With photos, it’s exactly the same: as soon as we take a photo, if we have streaming photos activated, it is copied to any other device on which we have this free service active, either on another portable device or on our Mac.

The same applies to documents. Practically all iPhone applications are configured with iCloud , so documents created or edited on one device can be finished on another. This article is completely written in Pages for iPad, and thanks to iCloud, I have been able to complete it in my iMac without having to connect it. You don’t even need a computer to print any document, just a printer with AirPrint to print over the wifi. And yes, there are already many wifi printers that have this protocol.

As you can see, the urban legend that to use an iPhone you necessarily need a computer with iTunes is completely false . In the next article we will talk about another well known urban legend as well: Macs are incompatible with Windows . And you, do you know any urban legend related to Apple?

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