iMazing iOS Manager | $15 | StackSocial
I’ll cop to not knowing there was much of an appetite to use anything besides iCloud and iTunes (or just plain-old Finder on a Mac) to manage iPhone backups. And I mean, of course there is; iCloud was—and arguably still is—shockingly mediocre and limited for a long time, and even to this day, though it’s massively improved, it still misses a few things, still locks users out of direct control of their iOS data, and its ways remain unintuitive in some areas. These areas are where iMazing—which is on sale right now for $19 off—finds its value proposition.
If you’ve ever wished that you could just drag and drop songs to your iPhone, print, save, and export your text messages, manage your photos outside of iCloud and the Photos app, import and export all your eBooks from the Apple Books app, or just more seamlessly back up and restore your iOS data, iMazing looks to be worth a shot, especially for $15. You can even transfer your backups between computers, and, praise be, you can actually choose where you want your backups to live, rather than employing clever tricks to get around iTunes’ stubborn refusal to save your backups anywhere other than your internal drive. The software is compatible with Windows and Mac OS, and supports every iPhone, iPad, and iPod. MacWorld in 2017 gave it high praise as a backup and transfer solution for iOS devices, and a 2021 review at The Sweet Bits called it “what iTunes should’ve been.”
The one major drawback, as far as I can tell, is that a single license can only cover one device, so if you’re the type to have two, three, or more iOS devices lying around, you’ll have to buy individual licenses for each. Happily, if you buy them in this sale, each additional license is only a little extra, with a five-device-license costing $30—that’s a normally-$70 license for less than the cost of a single license when this software is not on sale.