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Newbie, first time iPhone user

jeb

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Since Samsung downgraded their phones with no replaceable battery or expandable memory, and since Apple has finally right-sized (IMO) their phones, I thought I'd give them a shot. Picked up an 6S Plus a few days ago and have been fighting it ever since. We are a pure Windows house and have never owned an iPhone or Apple anything. We have a long line of Androids though, and even some of the early Windows smartphones (HTC 6700). So this is all new and there's a steep learning curve. I've been trying to get happy with the phone, but the list of headaches I've thus far is long.

I've worked through most of it. I'm a programmer and like a challenge, and thought I'd made it through the worst of it getting all my non-itunes songs and vids converted and "sync'd". And learning how bad Apples App Store is, etc.

But my last hurtle may be the straw that breaks the camels back, which is mass movement and organization of text, pdf, doc, xls, etc folders and files is impossible. I have 1000's of files in various file formats (pdf, xls, txt, doc, jpg, etc) in dozens of folders I like to keep on my smart phone. Android is just drag and drop and use built in file explorers to find them and open them. Easy peasy. iPhone makes it very hard to load them (has to be through iTunes) and you can't organize them beyond things like name and date. iCloud is not an option as I'm often outside cell range. This restriction really blows and may be the deal killer for me. It's like someone said "No, you can't use file cabinets anymore. Just take all those files and through them on the floor.".


Any assistance from you long time Apple folks on the mass movement and organization of files, would be appreciated. Do I need to Jailbreak it? I see a 3rd software release in the last 45 days hit today, so I'm kind of hesitant to downgrade to 9.0.2 so I can do that. But if I did, are there good jailbrake apps that will do what I want, have a file/sub-file structure on the phone that I can easily update and access?

I'm trying to get through all of it and get happy with this thing, but Apple sure is making it hard. It's so much more work to do the same things I can do with an Android phone in a matter of seconds. I still have plenty of time to turn it back in, and that is probably what is going to happen, but I'm trying. I've spent hours and hours on the web searching for answers, installing programs to try and work around this stuff, talking to Apple via phone and chat, etc. Frustrating stuff.

Thanks
 
iOS devices are app based, not file based. There is no central file repository in iOS devices. The only way to get those files on your iPhone is to download them to an app that can read them. Also, with few exceptions, the downloaded files will only be readable in the app They're located in. This is due to the app sand boxing that limits how apps can interact with each other.
In regards to jailbreaking, it's no longer possible to downgrade to iOS 9.0.2 as Apple is no longer signing that software version. A jailbreak will have to wait for the release of an iOS 9.1 or 9.2 jailbreak.
 
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Thanks for the post. That is probably a good way of putting it. So it's not really like throwing all the files into the middle of a room. It's more like all blue files go here, all yellow files go here, white files go here, etc, no matter if they are related or not. Still seems a very odd way to "organize" things, but it is what it is, I guess.
 
Thanks for the post. That is probably a good way of putting it. So it's not really like throwing all the files into the middle of a room. It's more like all blue files go here, all yellow files go here, white files go here, etc, no matter if they are related or not. Still seems a very odd way to "organize" things, but it is what it is, I guess.
Actually, I find the iPhone to be very intuitive but the problem might actually be your advanced knowledge level. I have often thought that the iPhone is a product designed for ease of use for those with less knowledge than you have.
 
I found a way to get what I need. There are programs like Doucments 5 and FileApp that allow me to drag and drop whole directories of files into them via the Apps in iTunes. Both seem to do about the same things, but Documents 5 seems a bit smoother, so I'm experimenting with that one first. As long as I then access the files through the app on the phone, all of the file formats are recognized and supported, and the app opens them appropriately.

Thanks to scifan57 for his post. Getting the paradigm of the phone being app based into my head helped me get my head around the problem.
 
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