Backing up contacts from iPhone to MacBook

DCD

Registered
Have been using my iPhone together with my MacBook for a year. A few weeks ago I spilled a cup of coffee on the MacBook and fried it. Got a new MacBook now but I'm shocked there is no way to get the contacts from my iPhone into the Address Book of the new laptop. What on earth am I supposed to do....do this kind of thing manually?? Surely not?!

Help please!
 
It may also help to understand how Apple envisions (read: how they programmed it) the iPhone/iPod universe to work...

The iPod and iPhone are meant to be used as devices that hold a subset of the data on your computer. If the data is on your computer, then it is possible to put it on the iPhone/iPod. If the data is not on your computer, then it will not be on the iPhone/iPod.

Many people have the idea that MP3 players (among other portable devices) can hold music that is not present on their computer -- many times, people will copy a bunch of music to their MP3 player, then delete that music from their computer... kind of like storing the music permanently on the MP3 player. This is not the case with the iPhone/iPod. The iPhone and iPod are meant to be used as "pods" -- allowing you to take some or all of your media on your computer at home with you on-the-go. If you delete a song from your computer, poof -- it's deleted from the iPhone/iPod.

This is a one-way synchronization for the most part -- music and media go onto the iPod from the computer, but not the other way around (for the most part -- the iPhone complicates this a bit).

It's intuitive and easy to grasp this model, but some people insist on working against it. They want to copy media to their iPod, then delete it from the computer but retain it on the iPod. While this is possible, it's a freaking headache, and is counter-intuitive to the way the iPhone and iPod ecosystem work. Many view this as "limiting" their abilities, but Apple goes for simplicity over other traits quite frequently, allowing novices to pick up and use their products from the get-go without having to learn a whole bunch of stuff first.

Ok, so that's the whole idea behind the "pod" ecosystem that Apple has created... music on your computer equals music on your iPod. Music not on your computer equals music not on your iPod.

The iPhone complicates this, as stated earlier. Contacts, phone numbers, mail, etc. is synchronized two-way -- make a change to a contact on your iPhone, and that contact's information is updated on your computer automatically (in the case of a MobileMe subscription) or manually (manually syncing with iTunes).

The good thing about MobileMe, if you have it, is that you would simply get a new computer (or repair the existing one), then have that computer sync with your MobileMe account -- all mail accounts, contacts, iCal events, etc. will be downloaded to the new computer, and syncing will occur normally after that with your iPhone.

Like Giaguara said, the best way would be to simply restore the data from the backups that you religiously keep. Barring that, MobileMe would help a bunch. Barring that, a recent hard drive clone would allow you to retrieve that information. Barring that, well, if you have no backup plan, then you're flying by the seat of your pants and getting that data back will be a bee-yatch, to put it simply.

Are you saying that the only place that data exists now is on your iPhone?
 
Yep all of the contacts are only on the iPhone. With the new software update coming up this week I guess I will have to get pen and paper out and do this "manually"

Ahhh...you just got to love technology!
 
Back
Top