Moving your iPhone to a new Computer

Having recently got myself a new desktop I needed to get my iPhone sync’d up with it – ideally doing so without losing all the applications I’d purchased and configured.  With iTunes surely being one of the most widely installed pieces of crapware, I had no confidence in it making this an easy or reliable process.  I spent some [wasted] time looking through the support articles on Apple.com without finding anything to reassure me that this was really something Apple had thought through.  Some more time spent reading through forums confirmed these suspicions.  Cobbling together other folks experiences I came up with a plan, which I’m happy to say worked - the only casualty being the order of my application icons.  This is what I did.

1.	Authorise your iTunes Account Store > Authorize Computer…
2.	Disable iTunes auto-sync Edit > Preferences > Devices
3.	Connect your iPhone Wait for it to show up under devices in iTunes
4.	Backup your iPhone Right click it under Devices and select Backup Just in case things should not go to plan…
5.	Transfer Purchases Right click it under Devices and select Transfer This will copy all your purchases (read: Apps) off your iPhone into the iTunes library on your new computer.
6.	Re-enable Sync'ing for Apps Select your iPhone from under Devices Select Applications Tab Check ‘Sync Application’ > Apply iTunes will warn you at this stage that this will delete all the applications on your iPhone - danger?  Fear not, transferring your purchases in Step 5 means you should be ok. For some reason it completely messes up the order of your app icons after this step, but otherwise everything appeared unchanged for me.  Application data and configurations were intact.
7.	Re-enable Sync'ing for Music Select your iPhone from under Devices Select Music Tab Check ‘Sync Music’ > Apply [I’m presuming at this point you’ve already copied all your music to your new machine and added it to your iTunes library.] Select Erase and Sync – iTunes will then lock up and become unresponsive whilst it deletes all your music from your iPhone.  But don’t worry; it’ll free-up again when it starts copying it all back again. This is a good point to make yourself a cup of tea and reflect on how Apple gained their reputation for usability.
8.	Re-enabled auto-sync (if you want) Reverse Step 2

I’m happy to report this worked for me without any ill effects (apart from messed up app icon order).  So thanks to all those forum folk and to Apple who’s developers obviously only ever buy 1 computer in their entire life.  I will say this though – iTunes sucks and I hate it.

Usual caveats apply: this is just a guide, use it at your own risk, don’t blame me if your iPhone runs off with your best mate.