Shane isn't a big iOS fan, but he finds that the iPhone handles music and streaming much better than Android. Leo agrees, but says that Android has claimed they have finally solved their music latency problems. Even if they have, it's hard to beat how Apple handles their music. From higher resolution audio, to streaming from the cloud, to iTunes, it really is the top.
Frank wants to play his Amazon music on his Mac. Leo says he can do that with the Amazon Music Player and create a kind of 'iTunes Match' thing on Amazon Music. They offer free storage of 25,000 songs before he'd have to pay.
Ernesto finally got an iPhone 7, but he can't use iTunes with it because his Mac is too old. Leo says that if he wants to sync it via wire, then he'll have to update his computer. He could pay the $25 for iTunes Match, and that would put his entire music collection up in the cloud. Then he could access the music from his current Mac as well.
A third party solution is Vox. He can also manage his iTunes collection with DoubleTwist.
Mark hasn't updated his iPhone because he's worried that doing so will prevent him from syncing with iTunes on his old MacBook. Where can he go to see what updates will support what versions of OS X? iOS 10 requires iTunes 12.5.1 to sync, so Mark is probably not going to want to update it. What version will work on Snow Leopard? Leo says that Mark can probably use the new version of iTunes on Snow Leopard, but this is worth verifying before he does anything.
Doug is confused how iTunes works with backups. What is the "other" section of his iPad? Leo says that "other" in his iPad is cache files and other stuff that can't be deleted unless he does a restore. The trouble is that a lot of stuff gets saved there and it can build up over time. Leo recommends backing up his device, then erasing it and restoring it. It will then remove all those temp files. This is really the only way to do it.
Lori has an iPad and was backing up regularly to iCloud, but when she connected it to iTunes, it said she hadn't backed up since January. Leo says that the iCloud backups won't show up in iTunes. That will only show her the last time she directly connected it to the computer.
Larry is frustrated that he can't backup his music to the cloud through iTunes anymore. Is there a way around that? Leo says that any backup he uses that isn't Apple can backup his iTunes Backup.
Lori is having a problem with her iPad 2. She syncs it over Wi-Fi, but lately when she tries to plug it in to her PC, it won't let her sync. It just requests to restore to a backup. Jason says that the PC is looking at the iPad as if it's a new one and can't identify it. Updating iTunes on the PC and iOS on the iPad could help. The iPad 2 doesn't support iOS 10, though. She may be at the end of the line there. If it offers to set it up as a new iPad, that may be OK, as it pulls the data off the iPad and syncs it. That can be scary, so Lori should have iCloud backup enabled.
John wants to know if he can get an older iTunes Pro 7 version to work on his MacBook Pro. It's easier to use. Leo says that iTunes has become awful and it really needs to be redone from the ground up. It's just plain unintuitive and broken. Apple does offer older versions at support.apple.com/downloads/itunes. The oldest he can get is iTunes 9.2.1, though.
Sam used to have Windows Home Server, but since Microsoft killed it, he's been looking for an alternative and found Drive Bender. It uses a technique called Drive Pooling and it enables him to hotswap drives and rebuild them so he doesn't lose data when a drive fails.
