Looks like there’s a stink brewing at Cupertino again… Over the last iterations of iTunes Apple has removed features before – much to the chagrin of its user base. At one point Apple removed the ability to control Contact and Calendar syncing via USB.
Then, after its user base raised a huge ruckus around the world. Apple relented and returned it to us.
This time round, with iTunes 12, Apple has once again ‘silently’ removed the ability to manage which email accounts from Mail that users can choose to sync to their iOS devices.
Update to iTunes 12 and its usually not until you chance to want to adjust your Mail accounts settings sync that you realise this feature is *gone.
According to one Apple user who attempted to procure a reasonable explanation from Apple about this change, the corporate tag line is that this has been removed for our ‘safety’.
Apparently, it helps prevent a lost/stolen Mac’s ‘new owner’ from simply plugging in an iOS device and easily acquiring all our Mail settings onto their iOS devices (?).
For the average user who doesn’t live under this fear suggested by Apple, what this means is that going forward from iTunes 12 we have to manually (“Yes! You read right! Manually!”) configure our email accounts onto every single iOS device we own.
From iPhones, iPads to iPods.
Every last one.
Because, it appears there is no recourse.
No iCloud feature that Apple might want to try to push its user base into using for this purpose (at least not right now) and no way to do it locally via USB anymore.
Apple you’ve done a great job thus far. Please stop messing around with what works. Hear us – submit your feedback now.