Hands-on: Four Mac apps to transfer voicemail, other files from your iPhone
Need those files that iTunes won't give you? Desktop apps to the rescue.
by Jacqui Cheng Oct 11 2012 Ars Technica
"How can I transfer voicemail files from my iPhone to my computer?"
It's a question I'm asked fairly often by Ars readers through e-mail, Facebook, or Twitter-at least two or three times every month. It's also a question I was forced to ask myself recently. I had a number of voicemails on my iPhone that needed to be transferred off and forwarded to the appropriate legal entities. And, equally frustrating, I had older, less-tech-savvy family members facing this problem. It's not as if I could tell them to jailbreak their devices and dig through filesystems.
But as many of my Twitter followers pointed out, there are plenty of software packages that allow users to easily transfer their voicemail files-as well as text messages, photos, music, and other data-from an iOS device to a computer. No jailbreak hanky panky required.
I took a look at the four most popular applications that were recommended to me. One is Mac-only, and three are available for both OS X and Windows (though I did all of my tinkering on a Mac). All four offer free demos for download from their respective websites, though all these demos limit functionality to an extent until you pay full price. These apps work with all iOS devices ever created, including iPod touches, iPads, and iPhones. So which are the best for people who want to retrieve those files from their iOS devices? Here's what I found:
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