NEW Apple Lady has a few questions (multiple answers encouraged) Can I please get some help?

[iMore Question]

NEW Apple Lady has a few questions (multiple answers encouraged)

Hi,

I am new to Apple and have been wondering what is the best way to put music on my iPhone.

I am used to the old drag and dropping method, but now with iTunes I see I can make playlists, choose by Album etc...

Best way to describe what I am asking I guess is, is it better to put them music in separate playlists, or just dump them one at a time to my phone.

I won't always want every song on an album so is the only solution to just drag the ones I want to my phone?

2. If and when I reformat my computer (I am on a PC) will anything be saved somewhere or will I have to start all over again at the beginning?

3. Do I keep backup to iCloud AND my computer on at same time? On my phone it has backup to iCloud on, and on my PC it has back up to this computer on.

Thanks for any and all help!

 

[MasterDarque]

Re: NEW Apple Lady has a few questions (multiple answers encouraged)

3. Lots of people do both. I mostly do iCloud backups, but every once in a while and definitely before major iOS upgrades, info an encrypted back to iTunes. Encrypted is the key because only encrypted backups save all your passwords, activity and health data (i.e., personal stuff you'd want encrypted).

Tl;dr Short version: multiple backups - both local (on your computer), and cloud based (in iCloud), could very well be an important data saving thing. ✌
Long version: I second the above advice about doing/having multiple backups - both a local backup, and an iCloud backup. From my recent experience, my only backup for my phone that I had was one on my computer - and it was either corrupted, or otherwise incompatible with the 6s Plus that I got on Friday. When I tried to activate the 6s Plus by restoring it from that backup of my old phone in iTunes, I got a message saying almost exactly that - that the backup was corrupted or incompatible with the device that I was attempting to restore it with. As a result (which was my fault for having only the one backup, and not enabling features such as Photo Stream) I lost everything - photos, videos, texts, and app data such as game saves/progress. Also, my phone activation ended up being borked during the restore process - to the point where my device ended up not having been registered with my carrier, so that my new phone was without cell service (where it normally says your carrier's name/signal strength/ network speed in the top left corner of the screen, it said 'no service' instead).
If I would've had additional backups, such as an iCloud backup, then I more than likely would still have some/most of this data intact, I think. In the end I wound up doing online chat with an Apple tech support specialist, and afterwards going to my carrier store, to have the no cellular service/activation issue resolved...
As well, one of the Apple tech's recommendations during the chat was to make/have an iCloud backup....
....Yeah, I definitely could have benefited from a 'Captain Obvious' type moment at some point before this all happened....