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How can I get songs off my Apple iPhone?

I had my old Mac laptop, an iBook, stolen and now that I have a new one, I realize that I can't get the music off my Apple iPhone which is driving me crazy! Is there some way to sync the iPod music and video portion of my cellphone without having to start from scratch again?


Dave's Answer:

Now that I've been moving everything onto my Macbook Air (which I love!) I am facing the very same issue: when I plug my iPhone into my Air, it just wants to reformat it and start me over from scratch. Not good!

However, all the standard utilities I tried couldn't see the iPhone, which was super frustrating until I bumped into the latest beta release of Senuti, a slick free application that lets you copy music from your iPod onto your computer, even if the two aren't paired.

I downloaded 1.50.2b3 (beta 3 version of 1.50.2) and was thrilled and delighted that programmer Whitney Young has clearly been experimenting with just this capability. When I installed it and plugged in my iPhone, it worked great!

First off, one of the terrific features of Mac OS X is that if you have an app that you downloaded from the net, the first thing you see is this:

Mac iTunes Copy Senuti: Run Downloaded Application

Great feature! Click on "Open" and now you'll get to step through the first run configuration options. I don't make any changes other than to select the following:

Mac iTunes Senuti: Copy Music to iTunes Music Folder

Since it's your intention to also copy the music from your iPhone back into your iTunes library, you'll also want to select this option.

Finally, the app's ready to run and when I plug in my Apple iPhone, here's all my music:

Mac iTunes Senuti: Apple iPhone Library

To copy everything, I just selected it all and clicked the green "Transfer" arrow. Now the transfer started: you see a tiny progress bar on the lower left, but if you click on the little "i" info icon, you get a more informative progress window:

Mac iTunes Senuti: Copying Harry Potter AVI movie from iPhone to Mac iTunes

after a while - depending on how much music and how many movies you have (here, notice, I'm copying the Harry Potter movie from my phone to my Macbook) - you'll finally see this:

Mac iTunes Senuti: Done Copying Music and Video Movies from iPhone to iTunes

Hurray! Copied. Sure enough, go into iTunes and:

Mac iTunes Senuti: iTunes showing music copied with Senuti from an Apple iPhone

That's the answer. In terms of grabbing your address book, SMS text, and related, I haven't yet found a solution for, but perhaps someone else can offer up a suggestion?



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Comments

If I could figure out how to get music onto my iPhone and manage it without having to use iTunes, I would be a very, very happy man. iTunes is one of the least usable and most commercially irritating computer applications I have ever had to face... it makes Internet Explorer 6 look like a saint.

Any ideas on how a Mac user can use an iPhone without iTunes at all? SongBird has an iPod module, but it doesn't work with iPhone (yet) due to Apple's encryption and obfuscation efforts.

Posted by: brett borders at March 5, 2008 1:26 PM

This worked great for songs, but how about photos?

Posted by: IG at March 15, 2008 10:34 AM

this seems great, but help! when i plug in my iphone it doesn't seem to recognize it, and NOTHING pops up. please help

Posted by: haley at April 13, 2008 9:58 PM

excellent. this is just what i had been looking for.
i am traveling and just bought a mac. to my dismay itunes wouldnt let me download stuff from my iphone.

will keep checking your page. good stuff.

Posted by: eskimo at April 18, 2008 3:10 PM

hi. thanks for all that but i have a similar problem :( senuti does not recognize my iphone. please help! thanks a ton.

Posted by: sandeep makam at April 24, 2008 11:12 AM

Make sure you get the *BETA* version of Senuti: the production download doesn't yet include this capability, from what I can tell.

Posted by: Dave Taylor at April 24, 2008 11:26 AM

I have a lot to say, but ...
Starbucks coffee cup I have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but most of all I'd like to say thank you for all your efforts on this Web site by buying you a chai!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!









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