[Bacchus1976]

On Windows 8 you are expected use the Windows Phone App to sync content to WP8 devices. Why?

All the WP App does it replicate functionality that exists in other Win 8 Apps in a more limited and clunky way. Music, Videos, Photos and (eventually) Podcasts should all be managed within the Photos, Xbox Music and Xbox Video Apps. Those apps, while less functional right now than Zune was, are still much better than the WP App. Sharing and Syncing content between Xbox compatible devices should occur within these apps or as a OS setting. These apps already control sharing between cloud services, why not Windows devices connected and on the network?

WP8 supports OTA software updates which should make connecting to a PC unnecessary as well.

Tell me, what good is the Windows Phone app supposed to be? I see it's use for Windows 7 and Mac PCs that can't use Modern UI apps, but both of those platform are getting the Xbox apps and could easily get the Photos app as well.

[Moocowdeluxe]

It's just a basic app to allow you to sync music, videos, and photos to a WP8 device when you don't have the Xbox apps (like people using Windows 7 such as myself, and from what I can see MS has no plans to offer the Xbox apps to OSes outside of Win8 and WinRT) or don't want to use them (such as Win8 users who prefer to avoid the Metro-UI Start Menu).

'Course, you can also just move things to/from the phone via the file browser now, as well. But a lot of people are more comfortable with an app.

[AngryNil]

All the WP App does it replicate functionality that exists in other Win 8 Apps in a more limited and clunky way. Music, Videos, Photos and (eventually) Podcasts should all be managed within the Photos, Xbox Music and Xbox Video Apps.

Your solution is to manage the syncing each content type in different apps? That sounds more clunky than anything else.

[Muessig]

Sure you can stream music and video to your phone but you can't use OTA updates to put your own music and video collection onto your phone. You can either drag and drop straight onto the phone in the file explorer or use the App to do that. Either way you still have to connect the phone to the computer.

[Bacchus1976]

It's just a basic app to allow you to sync music, videos, and photos to a WP8 device when you don't have the Xbox apps (like people using Windows 7 such as myself, and from what I can see MS has no plans to offer the Xbox apps to OSes outside of Win8 and WinRT) or don't want to use them (such as Win8 users who prefer to avoid the Metro-UI Start Menu).

'Course, you can also just move things to/from the phone via the file browser now, as well. But a lot of people are more comfortable with an app.

It makes sense to have this for people with a WP8 who aren't on Windows 8, Mac and Win7 users particularly. That I get. But with Windows 7 and WP7 there was the Zune app that was one stop shopping, all your Music, Video, Podcasts and Photos in one place. You synced, managed and bought all in one place. Mac users didn't get Zune and they got a striped down Windows Phone app to move content manually.

Now, in Win 8 we're all reduced to the same status as Mac users were in Win 7.

Your solution is to manage the syncing each content type in different apps? That sounds more clunky than anything else.

That's not ideal either, but it makes more sense than buying and managing all my media content in distinct apps and then syncing them in another app that doesn't play with the others.

MS clearly decided that managing content should be broken into distinct apps in Win 8 because they created Xbox Music, Xbox Videos and Photos. It's a change from Zune, but in practice it might be an improvement. What doesn't make sense is why then then are trying unsuccessful to glue it all back together in the WP App. The App should just be an agent that hooks into all those apps and pushes stuff to my phone.