My iPad Experience, Part 2

IT BROKE

I plugged my iPad into the AC charger one evening and the next morning it was only 75% charged. Strange. When I got to work I plugged it into my laptop and it wasn't recognized. The iPad didn't recognize that it was plugged into anything. Long story short, after troubleshooting, turns out something inside it fried. The symptoms were the only time it recognized anything plugged into it was when plugged into the AC charger, which it incorrectly identified as a USB and said "Not Charging" [even though it was very slowly trickle charging, which is standard behavior for an iPad]. It could not be synced at all and could be charged only very slowly.

THE CALL

So, here's a new opportunity for Apple to redeem themselves from the absolutely horrid customer service they provided when I first got this iPad. There is no Apple store in downtown Seattle, so I couldn't walk from work. The nearest is in University Village Mall which requires a car trip, so I had to wait a few days. I called the store on a Friday at 4:30pm and told them what happened. They made an appointment for 5:10pm at the store's "Genius Bar" (whatever that is) so I left work a little early. The Apple "Genius" was ready at 5:10pm sharp and took a look at my iPad. He took it into the back for about 10 minutes, came back and validated my diagnosis: it is dead, some kind of internal hardware failure. He gave me a new iPad and said iTunes would restore it from whenever my most recent sync backup. No problem, right?

So far so good. Kudos to Apple - it looks like they're going to redeem themselves.

BACKUP? WHAT BACKUP?

Problem is, the original iPad's problem was that the cable was non-functional - which made it impossible to back it up before taking it in. I was stuck with whatever the most recent prior backup happened to be. I figured that was probably about a week ago, so no biggie.

YOU DID WHAT WITH MY BACKUP?

I returned home with my new iPad. Before restoring it I Googled iPad backup / restore. It turns out this is how iTunes handles backups:

  • Only 1 backup per device is maintained
  • Each new backup replaces the last
  • Every time you sync, a new backup is created automatically

    • Seems simple, right?
    I can think of at least 1 way the above simple rules can not only fail but also overwrite the most recent backup. Plus I'm paranoid about software that is too automatic and too smart by half. So before plugging in the new iPad, I went to my PC, dug into "Documents and Settings", found the iTunes directory, found what looked like backup locations, and copied everything to another drive.

    The instructions on Apple Support say to plug in the iPad and select "Restore" to restore your latest backup. So I did exactly that.
    Then iTunes said this iPad needed to be updated to iOS 4.3 before it could be restored (my old one was on 4.3, this one was on 4.1).
    [You can guess, as I did, what happened next... but read on.]
    After iTunes updated the iPad firmware it automatically and immediately did a sync (it didn't ask and didn't restore first).
    Of course, this being a brand new empty iPad, it synced nothing.
    Of course, that empty sync included an automatic backup (of nothing, this being a new iPad).
    Of course, that backup of nothing replaced the prior backup.
    Which left me with an empty iPad and no backup at all.
    Exactly as I predicted. Thanks Apple.
    Yeah, I'm not too upset about losing all my data for the past 6 months despite backing it up weekly. But my 8 year old daughter who has 25+ hours invested in Pocket Frogs - impressive given she gets only 30 mins of screen time per day - is really going to love you for this!

    Fortunately, I predicted what Apple's software was going to do and backed up my backup. At least I hoped I did. Apple's software doesn't provide any way to do this, so I had to guess and I hoped I guessed right.

    YEAH, THAT BACKUP

    I unplugged the iPad, shut down iTunes, backed up the new backups to a 3rd location, then copied the first backup of the backup on top of the latest empty backup, then plugged the iPad back in and started iTunes. Now it let me restore, and I saw 3 entries in the drop-down. But all 3 had the same name and which entry corresponded to which backup folder remained a mystery. So I picked them 1 by 1, backing up the backups between each trial, and got the right one on the 2nd try.

    CONCLUSIONS

    Now my iPad is back to where it was a week ago, but no thanks to Apple.

    Lesson Learned: If you restore a backup to an iPhone or iPad, make sure the device being restored has the same firmware as the device from which the backup was made. If it doesn't, iTunes will delete your data.

    If I had followed Apple's instructions using their software, I'd have lost everything. That's actually rather ironic since most Apple customers bought an Apple product because they didn't want to worry about stuff like this or have to figure it out - when it's an Apple it's supposed to just work auto-magically... yeah right! I hope this blog entry achieves one or more of the following:

  • helps somebody else save their data
  • helps Apple fix a bug that destroys their customers' data
  • provides amusing reading