My iPhone went on the blink yesterday. This is my rant.

I got this screen that shows a USB cable connecting to iTunes. Took me a couple of hours to fix and get rid of this screen. This happened when iPhone was doing one of its updates. Made me furious. Friggin' time thief and I wanted to smash the phone with a mallet

Rant over. Have a nice day!

Just means DFU mode - what did you do?

Usually a hard reboot will fix....guess you were trying to update to 6.1 before the JB is released later at noon time?

Reboot, no. Restore, yes. Also meant dowloading and installing iTunes again. The Restore takes forever. T'was a time thief. Also various web searches provide conflicting remedies.

definitely a frustrating experience, but at least you still have a working phone

Maybe it's time for you to go to craigslist and get a Motorola MicroTac. A whole lot less complicated.

Martinis, your problem has happened to me 3 times in several years of iPhone usage (My first iPhone was the iPhone 3GS.)

The problem itself isn't the biggest pain point for me:
Biggest pain point for me: "restore" never did restore my apps in the folders where they were.

I just see a "restore failed" message.

What the use of taking all the time to backup and sync the iPhone if restore always fails?

(I have had restore work on NEW (almost empty) iPhones and iPads when I was specifically experimenting with it. But when I really need restore to work because of a problem like above, it never has worked.)

And like many travelers, I have a lot of apps (1 per city or country) and have always maxed out the maximum storage on my iPhone. Currently: I have 3gb free on a 64gb iPhone 5.

I asked on MacRumors for a iTunes internals person to please tell me the name of the file(s) that contain that info (it's just analagous to directory structure of the iPhone), but no one knows. I make backups of the 2 key directories that contain all my iPhone info from syncing. So if the Restore is failing for another reason, perhaps I wouldn't waste the time in manually moving my apps back into folders.

When this error happens, I go from: having all my apps nicely arranged in folders across 10 screens (the max)
to: 10 screens of single app icons

I can see the other 5 screens only when connected to iTunes.
Then I have to manually with my mouse move each one into one of the main 10 screens.

This makes me drool as my brain cells decay. This makes me want to smash perfectly good, defenseless apples with a hammer.

Any guesses as to how long it takes to put the apps back into their folders after restore fails?

^ ^


I just download the app again.

This happened to my iPad when downloading the latest iOS update. My iPad stalled mid-updated and would not reset - eventually I got the blue screen of death. Something similar happened to one of my prior iPhones.

I went to an Apple Store appointment to make sure there was nothing physically wrong with my iPad. They refused to show me the diagnostics results and simply indicated it was a software problem. I guess they can make pretty looking hardware but don't make such great software.

In any case, the full reset process annoys me, as well. I have 400+ apps and it will take me hours to re-download them and reorganize them. So much for great customer service, great products and an enjoyable user experience!

Good reason to backup frequently to my laptop.

Yes it is frustrating but look at the bright side - you can always go to an apple store in person to get free help.

Try calling Dell or Lenovo and getting a competent tech support advice in the first half hour. And then having them remotely diagnose the issue and provide the correct answer.

The only restore issue that I've had was when the program overwrote all of my old notes. Fortunately I had an older backup (thank you time machine) that could be restored at the genius bar. The lesson here was to use evernnote for anything important, and apparently to ensure that notes are backed up to my email.

Restore is painful, but losing everything is much, much worse.