Restoring an iPhone or iPad to it’s default factory settings is easy whether you are restoring as a troubleshooting step or just preparing to transfer ownership of the hardware. You can reset the iPhone on the the device itself, but if the device is unresponsive, stuck on a boot loop, or otherwise needs to be restored directly, the next choice is to connect the iOS hardware to a computer and use iTunes.

Using iTunes is also typically faster than resetting through the iPhone or iPad itself, so keep this in mind if you tried the on-device method but it took forever.

How to Restore an iPhone or iPad with iTunes

If you want to restore to factory settings, do not restore from a backup during this process:

1. Launch iTunes
2. Connect the iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to the computer and select it within iTunes, if it’s not visible check the “Show” button
3. Click on the “Summary” tab and click on the “Restore” button



4. iTunes will prompt you to back up the device, this is recommended but if you want factory settings only click “Don’t Back Up”
5. At the confirmation screen, click on “Restore” to begin restoring the device to factory settings

When finished, iTunes will alert you the device has been restored, but restoring may take a while. When the device is done, the iPhone/iPad/iPod touch will boot up and be reset completely to factory settings. This means that pre-iOS 5 will require the device to be connected to iTunes to finish, or after iOS 5 you will be presented with the familiar set up screens.

As mentioned before, to maintain the factory settings do not select to restore from a backup when this process is finished, otherwise you’ll simply be left with a device that has a freshly installed iOS but with the same data as when you started.

If you encounter error 3194 during this process, you probably jailbroke your device at some point and need to change the the hosts file.

The iPhone is connected to a computer with it’s USB cable, you launch iTunes and… the iPhone isn’t shown in iTunes. What gives? Fixing this problem is probably a lot easier than you think, and after fielding a call about this I found the simplest explanation was the solution as to why someones iPhone wasn’t appearing in iTunes:

• Ensure the iPhone is connected to the computer with a functioning USB cable
• Launch iTunes
• Hover over the “DEVICES” item in the sidebar until the “Show” button appears and click on it

The iPhone will now be visible, as technically it was always in iTunes it was just hidden. It seems like the “Hide” button can be clicked accidentally, which can lead users to believe they have a more serious problem than there is. Save yourself some work and try this first the next time the iPhone isn’t in iTunes devices list.

If you attempted this and the iPhone (or iPad or iPod touch) still isn’t showing up in iTunes, you may need to reinstall iTunes itself.

We recently showed you how to delete Safari, Mail, and other default apps installed with Mac OS X, and procedurally iTunes is not much different. Unlike uninstalling applications from third parties, if you attempt to drag the iTunes app into the Trash can, you’ll see a dialog box warning that ‘“iTunes.app” can’t be modified or deleted because it’s required by Mac OS X.’

Nonetheless iTunes can be deleted from the Mac, but without a very good reason it should not be done. iTunes is integral to supporting other Apple features and hardware, ranging from the App Store to the iTunes Store, and without iTunes installed you won’t be able to sync apps, music, books, movies, and anything else with an iPad, iPod, iPhone, or Apple TV. Assuming you understand that and you still want to remove iTunes from your Mac, we will show you how to do it.

Delete iTunes

Deleting iTunes is not recommended unless you know what you’re doing.

• Launch Terminal from the Utilities folder within Applications
• Type the following commands:

cd /Applications/
This brings you into the Applications directory, the next command deletes iTunes itself:
sudo rm -rf iTunes.app/

• Enter the Administrator password to confirm

There is no warning or confirmation other than entering the admin password, iTunes will immediately be deleted, effectively uninstalling it from the Mac.

Deleting the iTunes application will not delete the iTunes library or music, and any purchases bought through iTunes will still remain tied to the Apple ID used to originally buy them.

I Accidentally Deleted iTunes, Help!
If you find yourself somehow accidentally deleting iTunes, don’t fret too much because it’s always easy to reinstall. You can download the newest version directly from Apple, and running their installer will bring iTunes back to life on your computer.

If you have a new computer, you’re going to want to authorize it with iTunes and an Apple ID. Authorizing iTunes does quite a bit, it lets you sync apps, books, music, movies, and other content from the iTunes Store, re-download past apps from the App Store, it enables Home Sharing with iTunes, and also allows for some iCloud specific features like Automatic Downloads. In other words it’s basically essential, and it’s very easy to do, make sure you have have an active Apple ID before continuing:

1. Launch iTunes on the new computer (PC or Mac)
2. Pull down the “Store” menu and select “Authorize This Computer”
3. Enter your Apple ID and password at the next screen and click on “Authorize”

You can authorize up to five personal computers of any variety of Macs or Windows PC’s. In other words, up to five computers can sync and share your data and purchases. If you go over that number, you’ll need to deauthorize one of the computers before authorizing a new one.

iTunes 10.5.3 has been released, the update includes support for the new iBooks 2 and iTunes U initiatives on iOS, and allows syncing of interactive iBooks to an iPad. The download weighs in around 100MB and overall it’s a fairly minor iTunes update, but it’s worth downloading to keep on top of things, and it may be required for the next iOS update.

Download iTunes 10.5.3

There are three ways to get the latest iTunes:

• Download from Apple
• Get it through Software Update
• Update through iTunes

Downloading from Apple is the best way to get the update at the moment, with iTunes not yet informing all users that the update is available.

The installation notes are brief, focusing on iBooks:

iTunes 10.5.3 allows you to sync interactive iBooks textbooks to your iPad. These Multi-Touch textbooks are available for purchase from the iTunes Store on your Mac or from the iBookstore included with iBooks 2 on your iPad.

iBooks textbooks are created with iBooks Author — now available as a free download on the Mac App Store.

Did you know the iTunes Artwork screensaver in Mac OS X Lion is interactive? By hovering over an album when the screen saver is active, a pop-up play button will appear similar to what is found by hovering over music in the Finder, click it and that album or song will begin to play.

Here’s how to get this working yourself:

• Enable the iTunes Artwork screensaver, found in  Apple menu > System Preferences > Desktop & Screen Saver
• Click on “Options” and slide ‘Rows’ to at least 5, the more rows the more albums appear
• Open iTunes and fill in as much album art as possible, it’s easy to get album art with iTunes if you are missing some
• Start the screen saver, hover over an album cover, and enjoy

Because the screen saver is interactive, once you are playing songs you need to hit the Escape key or click the little icon in the lower right corner to exit.

We recently showed you where iOS apps are stored locally on the computer, but if you just want to quickly access that folder or get to a single app in the Mac OS X Finder, you can do so with a right-click within iTunes:

• Open iTunes and click on “Apps” under the library listing
• Right-click on the app icon and choose “Show in Finder”

The Mobile Applications folder will immediately open with the selected app highlighted. These .ipa files can then be backed up manually and copied to other computers that are authorized with the same iTunes account that originally purchased the app.

Want to give someone an iOS app as a gift this holiday season? You can gift apps directly from the iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad, without ever touching a computer and without the need for purchasing an iTunes gift card. This makes for a perfect last minute Christmas shopping or birthday present, since you can literally buy someone a present on the car ride over to their house Christmas morning. Gifting apps is very simple:

Gift an iOS App from an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch from the App Store

This process is done directly on the iOS device within the App Store, but it can be repeated in iTunes as well.

• Launch the App Store
• Find the app you want to gift and tap on it
• Scroll down below the screenshots of the app and tap on “Gift This App”, then sign into the iTunes Store
• Tap “Next” on the app summary screen
• Fill in your name, the recipients name, and the recipients email address, as well as a note to attach to the gifted app (note: including several recipients email addresses will buy the app for each person)
• On the purchase summary screen, tap on “Buy Gift” in the lower right corner

The app will immediately be sent to the gift recipient, who receives an email with a link to download the iOS app to their iTunes library.

If you’d rather wrap the app as a physical gift, you can do so with iTunes by choosing to print a redeemable code instead of emailing the app. Gifted apps will appear in your purchase history, so if you or the recipient loses the redemption email, it can easily be retrieved again.

Note that you can not use redeemed credit from iTunes gift cards to purchase gifted apps, and the recipients iPhone, iPod, or iPad must be compatible with the app you are sending, which most are.

iOS apps are downloaded as bundles with a .ipa file extensions, but they are stored in different places than your default iOS backups location. If you want to access iPhone and iPad apps manually, here’s where to find them for both Mac OS X Lion, Snow Leopard, and Windows 7:

The easiest way to access these directories is by hitting Command+Shift+G and using Go To Folder, note the path is different depending on the OS:

• Mac OS X 10.7 Lion: ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Mobile Applications/
• Mac OS X 10.6: ~/Music/iTunes/Mobile Applications/
• Windows 7: C:\Users\Username\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Media\Mobile Applications\

As long as you’ve downloaded and bought the apps from the same Apple ID and all hardware has been authorized with iTunes, you can move the .ipa bundles from one machine to another, place them in the appropriate folder, and they will continue to sync with the approved iOS hardware. (You won’t want to do this with a new Mac though, you need to authorize it first within iTunes.)

Most of the IPA files are pretty small, but if an apps file size seems too small, it’s probably because it was paused in the middle of a download from iTunes. That doesn’t mean you don’t own the app, it just means you have to download it again if you want to use and sync it. Generally the app sizes are reasonable enough and you wouldn’t need to move this directory to another drive, but for unique scenarios, go for the same methodology of moving iOS backups to another drive and using symbolic links to keep everything working as intended.

Apple has released iTunes 10.5.2 for Mac OS X and Windows, the update includes several bug fixes and improvements, most notably for the iTunes Match service. The description of the update is brief, but if you’re an iTunes Match subscriber and you’ve run into any problems, you should probably get the update sooner than later.

iTunes 10.5.2 includes several improvements for iTunes Match and fixes an audio distortion problem when playing or importing certain CDs.

You can download the update from Software Update, through iTunes, or directly from Apple.

Apple has started to air a new iTunes TV ad featuring The Beatles. The commercial is called “Covers” and transitions through The Beatles catalog that is available on iTunes, with the classic Beatles song “Magical Mystery Tour” playing in the background of the commercial.

This feels very much like an Apple ad, although it’s obviously targeting a slightly different demographic than the new “Share the Fun” iPod touch commercial does.

The ads release coincides with the iBookstore version of The Beatles Yellow Submarine, a free illustrated book from the iBookstore.

Apple has posted their annual iTunes and App Store rewind lists for 2011, naming the best music, movies, TV shows, books, podcasts, iOS apps, and Mac apps for the year. We’ll cover the best apps for iPad, iPhone, and Mac, and you can check out the rest of the winners on the iTunes or Mac App Stores:

iTunes & iOS Apps of the Year 2011

• iPhone App of the Year – Instagram
• iPhone Game of the Year – Tiny Tower
• iPad App of the Year – Snapseed
• iPad Game of the Year – Dead Space

The App Store 2011 Rewind for iTunes can be found here and also includes the top music, movies, TV shows, books, and podcasts for 2011, in addition to showing the runners up.

Mac Apps of the Year 2011

• Mac App of the Year – Pixelmator
• Mac Game of the Year – Civilization V

The runners-up for the Mac App Store are djay and Anomaly Warzone, and the full list for the Mac can be seen here.

If you signed up for iTunes Match and you’re seeing some peculiar icons in your music library alongside track names, don’t miss this chart put together by Apple that explains what each icon means, helping you troubleshoot the problem.

The icons include:

• Cloud with a slash through it – ineligible for iTunes Match
• X’ed out cloud – removed from iCloud
• Cloud with an exclamation point – error uploading the song
• Double cloud with a slash through it – duplicate song exists
• Empty cloud – song is waiting to be processed

Why the cloud icons anyway? Because iTunes Match is part of iCloud, of course.

For the music lovers out there, DockArt takes the “Now Playing” notification concept a step further and actually replaces the iTunes Dock icon with the currently playing albums cover art. It’s a free iTunes plugin that is compatible with iTunes 10.4 or later, but has been confirmed to work in iTunes 10.5.1. This is how you get it working:

• Download DockArt for free from the developers page
• Quit iTunes
• From the OS X Desktop, hit Command+Shift+G to bring up the “Go To Folder” window and enter the following directory path:

~/Library/iTunes/iTunes Plug-Ins/

• Drag the ‘DockArt.bundle’ file into that folder
• Relaunch iTunes and start playing a song

You can further customize DockArt by going to “View > Visualizer > Options”, where you’ll see options to adjust the icon size, show the iTunes badge, progress bar, etc.

To get the most out of this plugin, use the iTunes “Get Album Art” feature to fill in any blank covers in your music collection. If an album or song doesn’t have cover art associated with it, the default iTunes icon gets displayed instead. This plugin generally looks best with larger Docks or with magnification enabled to see the most detail.

Thanks to Andrey for the tip from the comments!

Using a defaults write command, the iTunes Dock icon can be set to display a “Now Playing” song and artist pop-up that transitions in and out and music starts. It’s a nice addition, particularly if you’re playing songs from a shared network playlist and have iTunes hidden in the background.

Enable the iTunes song & artist Dock icon popups

Open the Terminal in /Applications/Utilities/ and type the following:
defaults write com.apple.dock itunes-notifications -bool TRUE

Now kill the Dock to relaunch it:
killall Dock

Start playing a song in iTunes to see the notification appear, it’ll disappear automatically and then reappear briefly anytime a new song starts.

If you decide you don’t like the notification, disabling the iTunes song popup is just as easy:
defaults delete com.apple.dock itunes-notifications

You won’t need to relaunch iTunes, but you will need to kill the Dock again.

This only works in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, if you try it in prior versions nothing happens. The tip comes from Keir Thomas, author of Mac Kung Fu, we found it by way of TheNextWeb.