I have an 1st gen iPod Touch and an iPad 2. The iPod Touch is obsolete enough that most new apps won't run on iOS 3.1. Also, there is a growing number of apps that I own and use daily that have updates that the Touch can't run.
I sync my Touch with iTunes to keep my podcast library up to date. My iPad syncs with iTunes via WiFi.
I use several universal iPod/iPad apps. If I update one of these apps to a version that my Touch doesn't support (because the app now requires iOS 4+), the Touch loses that app. When I try to turn off app syncing for my Touch in iTunes, iTunes warns that it will delete apps and their data on the device. That's not what I want.
How can I sync my iPod Touch with iTunes to keep podcasts up to date, but keep the older versions of the apps around for the Touch and use the latest versions of the apps on my iPad?
Best Answer
Thats a tough one, the only solution I can think of is to have two separate users accounts on the machine you run iTunes on. Each account has its own iTunes file system and this includes the cache of applications, even though both user accounts may use the same iTunes account.
It's a bit of a hack, and not very elegant but here goes...
You would make a backup of your existing iTunes directory from within your profile and place it in a readable location for the other user account.
Log into the new user account, start up iTunes so it initialises your new folder structure for iTunes under that account. Shut down iTunes and copy your existing backed up iTunes account data over the new.
Barring file permissions changes, you should now have two users accounts on your machine that you can control the upgrade path for your applications on.