4.2 upgrade scariness

[pwright2]

We got my 90 year old mother-i-law an iPad this summer. She seems to like it a lot. I loaded it with a few apps and some videos and a bunch of pictures. She mostly uses it for email. Her own computer does not run iTunes and I don't think she would know how to sync it if it did.

I'm a Windows guy and use iTunes only under duress. And I've changed computers since setting up the iPad.

Tonight she came out to spend the night and I figured I would update the machine. Downloaded latest iTunes and installed. Attached iPad and it was recognized. Responded to some iTunes dialogs about who are you and there is stuff on the iPad not in the library, what do you want to do? Selected Transfer and it synced a bunch of stuff to the computer. (Damn nuisance.)

It keeps notifying me that there is a new version of the OS (presently running 3.2) but when I tell it to install it, it says there is purchased stuff on the iPad that has not been transferred to the library and that I should transfer it first. But when I try to sync, it says it will transfer stuff from the computer to the iPad.

I don't know what to do. Don't want to blow away the existing stuff with no assurance it can be reinstalled. iPad tells me nothing about what still needs to be transferred.

So, I will do nothing tonight. Wait until I think I know what I'm doing. (12th of never?). But can anyone give me a hint?

-----Paul-----

 

[pwright2]

After action report

Aaaand, after posting the above I went to disconnect the iPad from the computer and went to close iTunes first and in the File menu I spotted a 'Transfer Purchases' item. Which seems to have solved that problem. 4.2 being downloaded.

It's not like Windows is good at explaining its error messages ... but ... this is ridiculous.

-----Paul-----

 

[andjoh]

…

It's not like Windows is good at explaining its error messages ... but ... this is ridiculous.

-----Paul-----

What do you mean, it was telling you to transfer the stuff from the iPad to the computer before the update, it's backed up then and the update takes place then it will sync everything back to the iPad. If it's not saved on the computervyou would lose it, simple

andjoh

 

[twerppoet]

I kind of agree with the OP.

While it certainly isn't any worse than most Windows error messages, it does lack that extra touche we often expect of Apple. It could have just supplied the transfer option in the dialog. Or maybe a "Learn More" button.

Then again, there is always the help menu. But I have a hard time blaming people for forgetting it, since I never remember it until I've got at least three bruises on my head.

 

[pwright2]

Ahhh, well, it was a late night and I was a stranger in a strange land and I found it annoying. But I can't really claim Windows hasn't done the same thing to me. But, really, how many times can the iPad annoy someone and still have them respect it in the morning.

First I transfer movies from my Mother-in-law's little pocket movie cam (not a Flipcam but similar by Kodak) and deleted them from the SD card only to discover that the camera saves its files as .mov and iPad won't play .movs. What? .mov is a Quicktime file. Apple invented it! Bizarre. And then I discover that there is no way to transfer them back. For that matter, I had to search thru this forum to find out a way to even delete them. The iPad interface is no where near as intuitive (or consistent) as the fanbuoys claim.

Then I decide I might as well do the upgrade I had heard about. Except the iPad isn't telling me anything about an upgrade. Searching the forum again tells me I have to hook up to iTunes. I would swear that I had read that, once you set up the iPad, you never needed iTunes again. Apparently untrue.

I decide that I want to use my netbook to do this upgrade so that I can easily carry it to her house if other things are needed. Not the machine I used to originally set it up. So I install the latest iTunes and plug in the iPad and it informs me that it can only be synced to one machine and this is not the one it knows about. Would I like to have my netbook overwrite the iPad (which would result in a blank iPad) or transfer the stuff from the iPad to the netbook? I read that a couple of times, trying to make sure what it was saying (it was getting late). Finally decided that the obvious meaning must be correct and opted for transfer. (Why can I have 5 machines on one iTunes account but iPad can only be serviced by one of those? Because Steve wants it that way, of course.)

OK, transfer finally completes. iTunes tells me about availability of upgrade. I click on upgrade. It tells me there are purchases not transferred to the netbook, do I want to continue anyhow. I guess not. Cancel. Click sync. iTunes tells me data is already synced. Perplexity. Try upgrade again. Same notice. Stare at continue button for a while. Mother-in-law is going to want her iPad back tomorrow morning intact. Decide against. Write first message.

Begin to detach iPad. Use iTunes File menu to shut down rather than just click the X. Notice 'Transfer Purchases' menu item. Aha! moment. Select that. Transfers occur. (Why is that different from Sync?) Select upgrade again. Write second message.

All is well, right? End of story? Not by a half. Upgrade proceeds. Then it Syncs. Then it announces that this is not the computer that it is assigned to (same as when first hookup occurred). So have to transfer authorization again. Then it asks whether to sync the iPad to the netbook or vice-versa. OK, that would write a probably blank iPad to the netbook. Or would it? Ponder phrasing. Finally tell it to sync netbook to iPad. Seems to work. Start iPad. Get message that photos is messed up and please run that function. Tap the daisy and one album of 6 photos come up. Previously probably 100 photos. Hair pulling moment. Sync once again. Now everything seems OK.

Very late. Go to bed. Hope things still work when mother-in-law gets home.

Did you count how many syncs were involved there? And some things that looked like but apparently were not syncs?

Pleasant piece of hardware. When it dies, I think I'll get her an Android. Or maybe a Win7 if they can make one work well.

-----Paul-----

 

[Fabytm]

If you have everything done good, syncing ios devices is easy!

 

[andjoh]

Apple is .mov format yes, but on a Mac you can change an avi extension to .mov and QuickTime can still play it, the iPad doesn't play avi so it won't play it. Open the avi in QT and use the Save As and it saves as a .mov but it's still an avi. The reason is QTPro is a very powerful editing tool and keeps .mov, including if it's an audio file, as that rather then worry about each extension as it's erelevent to it. It has a Convertor to different format that puts in correct extensions then. So basically saying because it's a .mov, it's not necessarily a QuickTime .mov.
The FlipCam probably has it's own little format encoded in it that QT will play. If you got QTPro you can look at look what type of codecs are in the video.
If you wanna upload a bit I'll have a look and see what it is if ya like.

I always recommend MPegStreamClip for converting video to iPad for both Macs and Windows. Good app for that, select mp4 then iTunes button and select an AppleTV Format. Works a treat

andjoh

 

[pwright2]

@andjoh: Thank you. I would place blame on folks who developed video formats but they all grew up during 8.3 naming convention time. But, from now on, the name of a format ought to specify exactly what it is. All of the video converters give a finite but very large number of possible settings and rarely offer any guidance as to what might be appropriate. Thank you for the MPEGStreamClip advice.

Now if only I had some blazingly fast machine where rendering didn't take an hour to tell me whether it worked or not.

-----Paul-----

 

[pwright2]

@andjoh: Oh, yeah. Thanks for your offer to analyze the flipcam's video. If I ever get my hands on it again, I will send you a bit. But that's one piece of the iPad nonsense I find unforgivable. Once I loaded the bits onto the iPad, I had no way to get them back. They were there, smiling at me with their unplayable icons. But no way to send them to some other device.

 

[twerppoet]

You might have been able to get those files back using iPhone Explorer. You don't need to jailbreak to access the Media folder. Takes some digging though, since things can be buried deep in several levels of folders.

iPhone Explorer - A USB iPhone browser for Mac and PC

 

[pwright2]

Thank you twerppoet. Another useful item to add to my arsenal - for the next time.

-----Paul-----

 

[VampiressRN]

The first tablet I bought was the ZT Android 2.1 Tablet PC through Amazon. The operating system crashed the first time I used it and I never even got to the point of being able to get it set up. The company had me download a new operating system on my pc to synch up with the ePad, but I didn't have the 32 bit system necessary so I sent the product back and asked for a refund...what a fiasco, the company tried to charge me a restocking fee...scam in my opinion. Bless Amazon, I had recorded all my vendor communications through them and eventually filed a claim and got my full refund...I LOVE Amazon. Anyway...avoid that Android product!!!

At that point I decided to get the iPad since it was available through Verizon...have been happy so far. Hang in there pwright2, sounds like you are back on the right track now. Thanks for sharing your challenge though as it will be helpful for newbies like me.

 

[Bruce S]

Thank you Twerppoet
I downloaded and tried out "iPhone Explorer". Works great

Bruce