Tutorial to use iTunes 11 with our iPad (1th Part)

After the launch of iTunes 11 we have found a more visually attractive application, and with better performance, but it is still not a very intuitive application, so we are going to create a complete guide to use iTunes 11 with our iPad, which will be divided into several chapters, to see each and every one of the functions that we need to have our device ready.

First I'm going to give you two setup tips. They are not essential, but I think they make things easier, so unless for any reason you do not want to configure it like this, I recommend that you configure it as the images show. We go to iTunes> Preferences (Mac) or Edition> Preferences (Windows) and the configuration window appears.

Two tabs are important: Devices, where I recommend that you check the option "Do not allow automatic synchronization of iPod, iPhone and iPad"; Advanced, where I recommend marking the first two options, "Keep the iTunes Media folder organized" and "Copy files added to the library to iTunes." What do we get out of this? Well first, that our device will synchronize only when we press the button, not automatically, and thus we avoid bad surprises. And second, all the files that we add to iTunes (music, movies ...) will go into the «iTunes Media» folder and we will have a perfect backup.

We return to the main iTunes window, which shows us our music library. To access the functions that have to do with our device, we must connect it to our computer and select it at the top right. Once this is done, a window in which we have a lot of information and several options.

At the top we see several tabs (Summary, Information, Applications ...). Today we are going to analyze the tab «Summary», which is not little. In it we can see several parts, such as the information of our device (1), where we see the model, capacity, battery and serial number. if we click on the serial number it changes to the UDID number, the identifier. These are numbers that you won't normally use, but that you may need to check your warranty, or register the device as a developer.

On the right we see the update options (2), where there are two buttons, Check for update / Update and Restore iPad. What differences are there? Although they seem the same, they do not. if we update, we will have our device with the new version, and everything we had inside (photos, settings, WhatsApp conversations ...). If we restore, we will leave our device as factory, clean, and with the latest version available. It is true that once we restore we can recover a backup copy and we will have it again as before. What is better? My personal opinion is that if you have Jailbreak, always restore and do not recover backup, the same as when we change version (for example from ios 5 to ios 6). It is the best way to avoid accumulating "junk" that causes stability problems or excessive battery consumption.

Just below, we have the options of Backup (3). You can select iCloud, so that once a day, when the iPhone is plugged into charging and connected to a WiFi network, it will send a copy to Apple's cloud service. Or you can also select to do it in iTunes, when you synchronize, you can even encrypt that copy for more security. On the right you have the manual options, to make a copy in iTunes right now, or to restore an old backup.

If we go down in the same window, we find more options (5). Check and uncheck the options manually as they interest you. There is an option that I personally do not like to mark, which is the WiFi synchronization, because causes more battery drain of the device, but I leave that to your choice. And just below we can see a graph that shows the storage of the iPad, each category with a different color.

More information - Apple launches iTunes 11