iPad woes

**pastoralguy** · 04-08-16, 18:55

This is odd! I recently updated my iPad only to receive a message two days later that the generic (ie non Apple) cable I used was not suitable but they could sell me an 'official' one for four times the price of the generic one I had bought to replace the original which had split!

With regards to your friend's problem, try holding the button on the front down at the same time as holding down the on/off switch at the top right side. This'll turn the iPad off. Then turn on again using the same top right button.

**Dave2002** · 04-08-16, 22:27

pg

Thanks for the suggestion. Didn't actually work, apparently - though it probably would have worked with my 1st gen iPad running an earlier iOS version.
Fortunately it seems that there is no significant issue re photos, music or other files which might be wanted, so resetting the device would suffice to kick this back into life. Other people with a similar experience might lose a lot of things they would really rather keep.

Apple are happy enough to sell iPads to people who may not have a computer to do backups, and probably don't put enough effort into warning them about the possibilities of losing wanted data. Maybe they hope they'll simply buy another computer (Apple?) to overcome this problem, but the problem shouldn't be an inherent feature of iPads. Many Android devices, which may have similar functionality, can save data directly to a USB memory stick, or to a USB drive, but Apple in its "infiinite wisdom" largely makes this impossible. There are several ways in which Android sysems are inferior to Apple ones, but this is not one of them.

**pastoralguy** · 04-08-16, 22:34

Well, I had to have my iPad reset due to a cloud issue! Fortunately, I had backed them onto CDs. Had I not, I would have lost all our holiday pics from the last four years!

I do like Apple stuff but am not blind to the fact that those colossal stores need a throuput of repeat customers to pay for them.

**Dave2002** · 05-08-16, 11:05

There must now surely be many people who are only buying iPads or iPhones, so not having a sensible way for backing these up is a real pain.

See http://www.apple.com/uk/shop/questio...H72F44CPYDXK4J

Some of us have computers coming out of our ears, and houses full of them, and years of computer use and expertise, but many new buyers won't have these, and won't know what to do.

Indeed, I'm now wondering whether to allow my iPad Pro to do the latest update in case anything goes wrong. There is material there which I really need - though much could be recovered with effort. Comments such as "back up via iTunes to your Mac" are not always helpful even for people who happen to have the odd iMac lying around, aa that in itself may require a certain amount of logistic planning. Backing up a 128 Gbyte iPad to a Mac might conceivably then use up all the spare space on that device - it certainly would on several of mine.

Selling these "easy to use" devices to some - dare one suggest it - older people - is really cruel if they (the users) don't know how to solve some of the problems which are likely to arise, and I also know younger people who have been very disappointed with Apple's approach to selling such kit. One issue was the ability to download PDFs - which many students and researchers might want to do - but to then not be easily able to upload them back to another machine. Apple's "response" being that PDF isn't a format they control .....

.... but that the Apple formats for Pages, Numbers, iBooks, etc. w/could be backed up using iTunes - ignoring the fact that many people don't use those, but that PDFs are pretty ubiquitous and standard.

I disliked Windows and Microsoft, but there are also enough reasons to dislike Apple. Elephant traps for the unwary or unknowing.