[hnick]

"It just works" is great until it just doesn't. Both our iPhones refuse to connect to iTunes via lightning cable. Nothing wrong with the file system, can view everything on the phone fine. I assume this is a software bug but the only option given is to factory reset the phones, which seems a little extreme.

But we can't use a third party app on the PC (you can find plenty to install, but they all use the same underlying iTunes software), or on the phone (some WiFi media transfer apps exist but don't work well for years of bulk data), or even just browse the file system like Android. So our only option is apparently paying for iCloud to get our media off the phone now, resetting, and hopefully putting it back on - which I don't have high hopes for since we had an issue in the past where iTunes bricked a phone when restoring from backup [IIRC iTunes didn't do the right system call to stop the Windows PC from sleeping, so it slept mid-restore, and next time we plugged it in, it automatically backed up the broken partial restore wiping the good backup].