[kimolas]

No money is needed to get the devices to communicate, because the devices are no longer expected to communicate. iOS has been fully independent of macOS (to end-users) for half its life.

[biktor_gj]

I'm sorry, but that's simply not true. Millions of iPhone users have been migrating their phones from 4, to 4s, to 5 or 5s up to the iPhone 7. They have all their photos since 2010 stored in there and have inherited all the crap from every single unexpected reboot, failure and app residues, building up gb's of 'other files' as shown in iTunes. Most of iPhone users have a 5Gb iCloud account where not even a whatsapp backup fits, and they still need a computer to migrate all the data. Tell me again how are you going to migrate a 64 or 128 gb of data from one phone to another without using USB. That, and the fact that you're still unable to put music inside an iPhone if you don't a) buy it from the app store or b) using iTunes

[evan_]

you can connect to itunes over wifi just fine, you can do everything you can do with USB except wirelessly

[madeofpalk]

ahh haha come on. I mean, I never transfer data between iPhone and computer any more, but iTunes WiFi Sync just does not work nearly as reliably as it should.

It fails so frequently that it's just not able to be used.

[tomovo]

Don't you first have to make a wired connection to enable this?

[soccerdave]

Last time I checked it isn't possible to deploy from Xcode to an iPhone wirelessly

[tomovo]

At some point it was but they scratched it.

[CountSessine]

They have all their photos since 2010 stored in there and have inherited all the crap from every single unexpected reboot, failure and app residues, building up gb's of 'other files' as shown in iTunes

Meh. They should just copy their photos off their idevice using USB PTP mode. That's USB config 1 when an idevice plugs into a PC. No macOS required. No iTunes required. Done. Solved. As for the crap, isn't that an argument to NOT migrate via iTunes?

Most of iPhone users have a 5Gb iCloud account where not even a whatsapp backup fits, and they still need a computer to migrate all the data

ICloud storage is super cheap, especially compared to the price of a smartphone every 2 years. If you're not using this, you're cheating yourself out of one of the biggest advantages that iOS has over other computing platforms. iCould backup is the one thing in iCloud that really just works.

Plus there's dropbox. Solved.

But it still isn't strictly necessary.

That, and the fact that you're still unable to put music inside an iPhone if you don't a) buy it from the app store or b) using iTunes

Wat? Who still does this?

[robotresearcher]

Also, they talk fine over WiFi, which is built into both. There's some Bluetooth stuff too, but I never figured that out.

But it's very important not to allow your iPhone to talk to your Mac because that means iTunes will run and make everything worse.

[nicky0]

Me: I need to charge my phone, I'll just plug it into this handy USB port on my Mac...

iTunes: Hello!