iPad Obliterate: A Tech Tale of Disaster

Whats This

By Lance Ulanoff2013-09-16 19:33:47 UTC

I messed up, big time. My own laziness resulted in the loss of well over one hundred drawings on my iPad — artwork I now must close my eyes and search my biological memory to see again. I could say it’s all my fault, but I don’t believe that’s entirely true.

You may be surprised to learn that I still own and use a first-generation iPad. It is my favorite piece of technology and while the fourth-generation iPad has surpassed it in speed, functionality and design, my iPad works perfectly and is in — if I do say so myself — mint condition.

Not a Perfect Existence

A few years ago, I wrote about Apple's crashing problem. You know the one, when you’re in Safari trying to load a page or simply running an app and you get dumped to the home screen. While I think Apple blames app developers for this, I’m not so sure. In any case, subsequent OS updates ameliorated the issue.

Lately, though, my iPad had been slowing down. When I typed, the device struggled to keep up. Though my home network and Wi-Fi were faster than ever, web page loading was unbearably slow. Crashes had started to ramp up again, too. I started to think that I should back this baby up, wipe her and start over again.

I used to regularly plug the iPad into my Windows 7 PC, but the PC had gone through a couple of significant issues and finally died earlier this year. When I bought a new Windows 8 system, I didn’t even bother to install iTunes. What was the point? All of our iPhones and iPads could update over the air. Since this was a camera-free first-generation iPad, I had no pictures to worry about. I didn’t have any critical contacts or documents on my iPad. Any app I bought could be downloaded again. While I did not use iCloud to backup my iPad, cloud-based, far-flung servers still hosted my music, email and most documents (Google Drive, SkyDrive). What I created was in the cloud — at least some of it.

Broke My Own Rule

You know where this is going. I didn’t bother to back up my iPad, which shouldn’t have mattered —until it did.

One day, I was drawing in Doodle.ly. I love this app because you can quickly sketch a drawing or cartoon and then share it with the service’s growing social network. People can then like and even reshare your doodle. When you complete a drawing, you can simultaneously publish to the network and share on your favorite social network (I chose Twitter). The only problem: It didn't work. The app kept telling me the share failed. After a half dozen attempts, I gave up, sort of.

First, I checked to see whether Doodle.ly was still authorized to share through Twitter (this is under Twitter’s settings on the iPad). It was. It occurred to me, though, that the authorization might still be broken.

Some weeks ago, as part of a sweeping security measure, I de-authorized a bunch of apps. Even after reauthorizing critical ones, they were not all properly posting to Twitter. The go-to fix was uninstalling and reinstalling Twitter. As I’m sure you know, removing an app, even Twitter, from any iOS device is easy. Just hold down on the icon until the black “x” appears and then select that "x" to delete. You’ll get a warning about all the lost data, but nothing of importance is stored locally in Twitter.

Next, I tried to reinstall Twitter. I found the permanent Twitter icon under iOS’s General settings, selected it and then hit the Install button. The Twitter icon instantly appeared on my iPad screen and the installation began.

It got three-quarters of the way through and then stalled for 10 minutes.

Second Big Mistake

Staring at the frozen blue installation bar, I tried to discern if it was moving at all. Nope; it seemed stuck. Nearly 20 minutes in, I gave up and held down the sleep/power button. In my defense, I have done this before — and I usually end up where I started. I assumed I’d be able to try and install Twitter again.

No such luck.

Regardless of how many times I restarted the iPad or how long I held down sleep/power and the home buttons (a good way to force a proper reboot), the iPad was stuck in an infinite loop of reboots to the glowing Apple logo.

Online, I found instructions that matched my method of reboot and finally an Apple article that recommended a restore. To do so, you connect the iPad to a computer with iTunes installed and then hold down the restore/power button and home.

What Restore Means

Restore doesn’t mean what you think it means. It’s not a restoration of your product to its previous state; it’s a factory reset. So it should be called Reset. It’s not, of course.

I connected my barely breathing iPad to my Windows 8 computer, which now had the latest version of iTunes installed, and did the hard reboot. On the iPad, I saw the “Plug In your iPad to the computer” graphic and instruction. On my computer, I saw instructions warning me that a Restore would delete all my data.

I felt a cold chill run down my spine. While I had blithely dismissed the need for backing up my data, I realized that I had neglected to consider the hundreds of Sketchbook Pro drawings that resided not in the cloud or even a photo library backed up in Photostream, but in the app's own proprietary Gallery: portraits, cartoons, greeting cards, illustrations. All of it was gone.

My predicament was untenable, yet also largely of my own making. If I had ever backed up the iPad or that app (or even exported all of them to the photo library), they might not all be lost. Granted, I had published some of the best on Flickr, in print (as gifts) and even on Mashable . Still, all the originals would be gone — forever.

Yet, I saw no other way. The iPad was not coming back on its own. So I restored.

From Scratch

When the restore was done, my iPad was as fresh as a newborn baby, and about as dumb: No apps, no memory of any settings and certainly not a single file (app-related or otherwise) was left. The devastation was complete.

As I tried to digest that fact that all my art work was gone, I began the task of rebuilding my iPad to its previous state. This proved somewhat more difficult than I expected.

Setting up my Wi-Fi, adding my Twitter account and entering my email account(s) information went smoothly. Apps were another story.

To reinstall my apps, I visited “purchased” in the App Store and began the rather laborious process of searching for and reinstalling my go-to apps . Sketchbook, my favorite app, installed without an issue (I was somewhat surprised that there wasn’t an angry message on screen, waiting for me, when I opened it).

However, I came across a surprising number of apps that I could no longer install: Google Drive, Google Maps, Google Chrome (sensing a theme here) and Doodle.ly. Each one reported that it required iOS 6.0. No matter what I did, I could not find a way to install versions that would work with iOS 5.1.1.

When exactly did the iOS system fork so sharply that app vendors cannot provide one-version back of compatibility? If I really want to use these and other incompatible apps, I have one choice: Buy a new iPad running iOS 6 (soon-to-be iOS 7).

The reset didn't even help my old iPad's performance. It’s about as buggy (or buggier) as ever. Safari crashes repeatedly and the performance is pokey at best.

And when I look back, I have to wonder: Was I right about why Doodle.ly lost its Twitter connection and why wouldn't Twitter simply install? That’s not all on me, is it? Is it?

I can wonder, but like Walter White in Breaking Bad , I set the wheels in motion. All that’s followed since is, to be honest, mostly my fault.

Pay heed to my tale of iPad hubris and woe, my friends. Even when you don’t think you have to back up. You do. You really do.

Image: Mashable