How To Use An iPhone Or iPod touch as Back Up

How important is portability for Mac users and iPhone owners today? Very. The new MacBook Pro models come with an SD card slot.

That’s a perfect way to store four or eight gigabytes of files in a very portable device. Except there’s one problem. It’s not so easy to read or view any of the files on an SD card without a computer.

Unless you use an iPhone or iPod touch. No, they don’t read the SD cards. Yet. But both devices are excellent places to store valuable files that need extreme portability.

Think about it. The iPhone (and iPod touch) are excellent portable devices with plenty of storage available for extra files. My 16 gigabyte iPhone has music, movies, photos, and 148 applications, utilities, and games.

And it still has over six gigabytes of extra unused storage. How can I use that storage? Add PhoneView to a Mac and use your iPhone or iPod touch to store files.

What kinds of files? And why?

The iPhone becomes a disk attached to your Mac and various files can be stored, or moved back and forth from Mac to iPhone.

For example, you can send text files, PDF files, even Microsoft Word files to the iPhone’s Notes application so you can read and edit without your Mac.

It’s just as easy to grab your iPhone camera photos and drag them to your Mac, bypassing iPhoto. Ditto for music and movies.

Since your iPhone is a cell phone that keeps track of your calls and text messages, you can use PhoneView to view and export your phone’s call history, or view and export your text messages.

Even contacts and notes can be moved off your iPhone or iPod touch, to your Mac as an exported file.

PhoneView consists of a simple iTunes-like utility which displays what’s on your iPhone or iPod touch. That includes files, contacts, notes, phone call log, text messages, TV shows, movies, audiobooks, podcasts, ringtones, and photos.

The toolbar makes it easy to move files back and forth. Click an icon for a new folder. Click an icon to Copy to iPhone, or Copy from iPhone.

Click to Delete, or click to Send to iTunes.

PhoneView appears when you plug in your iPhone or iPod touch to your Mac.

What happens when your iPhone dies? Get another, sync it to iTunes and you’re ready to go, right? What happens to valuable files when your Mac dies? Use PhoneView to move files from your iPhone back to your Mac.

PhoneView is one of those simple, elegant, handy utilities that Apple should build into OS X but does not.