Man I miss Warren Zevon, but no truer words have been spoken when it comes to backing up your iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad or main machine. I can tell you from my experience with my Apple clients and my friends at the Apple Genius Bar that the sound you never want to hear is “kerplunk!” as your device falls into the toilet, bathtub or puddle. It happens frequently and without a back up you have to reconstruct all your favorite music, contacts, photos etc. from scratch to a replacement device. Always sync your device to the latest version of iTunes. iTunes backs up to your local machine. If you have to restore your device to the way it was, you restore from this back up. There are other strategies and methods to employ.

Calendar/Contacts: Get an Apple iCloud account it’s free. This enables you to sync your calendar and contacts between all your Apple devices and desktop machine or laptop. Because everything is in sync it also becomes an easy way to restore your calendar and contacts to a new device or machine.

Apps: By backing up to iTunes on your desktop or laptop when you restore your device it will also add your apps back in to your device. Also did you know that when you purchase an app on either your iPhone or iPad and then delete it, you can always go back to the app store and re-download the purchased app for free.

Photos: I always like to transfer my iPhone and iPad photos to Aperture 3 or the latest version of iPhoto when I sync. That way when I back up my desktop machine I also have a back up of my photos. Like the photo below taken with the wide-angle lens from the iPro Lens that I took on my walk last night. Loving that lens setup and the artistic filters in iPhoto on the iPad.

Music: I have over 1TB of music in my iTunes library and carry between 1000-1200 songs at any given time on my iPhone. I listen when I take my daily walks, driving to clients and when I’m cooking (using AirPlay). Because I like to rotate new and old tunes on my iPhone I created a playlist in iTunes on my main machine called “iPhone”. It is that list that I sync to my iPhone and thus manage what music ends up on my iPhone. Music moves in and out of that list frequently. That way if I have to restore a damaged iPhone to a new one I have a fast and easy way to keep the music the same.

Coming up next week: My Neighborhood! Plus a cool new app SnapGuide that Rick and I dip our toes into.