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I back my iPhone up to my computer. I consider this a safer, more complete, and cheaper option than iCloud backup.
In general, this is fine, but I have noticed the “copying app purchases from iPhone” phase can take forever – certainly over half an hour. (This is especially true when it’s been a week since my last sync.)
And it’s nearly pointless: these are usually just newer versions of apps iTunes already has, but more importantly, I don’t much care if iTunes has these apps in the first place. Should I restore my backup onto this or a replacement iPhone, my phone should be able to download most of those apps from the App Store, I would think. Sure, some apps could have been removed from the store. I’m okay with that.
So tell me – is there some way to ask iTunes to stop wasting its time by copying over all the apps from my phone?
(To be clear: iTunes should still be backing up my apps’ data)