Apple now has iCloud, and that’s pretty awesome. I got jealous when I started setting it up for a few family members on their iPads, because I don’t use an Apple mobile device myself.
So I got to looking for some similar options for my much-loved Android phone.
I had remembered once before looking at a tool called AirSync from doubleTwist. At the time, I decided I didn’t want / need it. But now I believe it deserves a respected slot on my growing shelf of useful technology tools.
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It used to be that when you went out to buy a new computer, you would spend $2000 and you would get whatever the latest setup was. That would probably include the new computer itself, a new monitor, a new printer, and maybe a few other peripherals (remember when we used to call them “peripherals”?).
At the time, technology was changing so rapidly that it often made sense to upgrade everything. For example, your old computer might only have a floppy drive but now hard drives are available. Or the old computer had a hefty CRT monitor but now LCD flat-screen monitors are available. It was a time when the changes in technology were so obvious that the old equipment just looked… old. Nowadays the changes still happen rapidly but they are not as dramatic (or compelling).
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I’m a “PC guy” so I always get a little miffed when I hear people go on and on about how Apple’s products “just work.” In my own experience, that just isn’t true. They have bugs, just like all computer hardware and software has had for as long as the history of computing technology has existed.
I have enough general computer and troubleshooting skills to know where to concentrate when I am faced with an odd problem on a Mac, an iPad, or in the iTunes software. And I believe I have enough experience to be able to fairly call a particular glitch as a bug (as opposed to those glitches which are simply caused by “user error”). As a result, I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with Apple’s iTunes product.
Please forgive my short rant below… 
Personally, I think the iTunes software is such a beast of a program that it should be rewritten from scratch. I think it is completely unintuitive, requires software updates too often (with little explanation of what you are “getting” for your update), and is very heavy-handed about its updates – often requiring huge downloads and restarts of your PC afterwards.
But to be honest, I still haven’t found anything on the PC that I like better than iTunes for managing my music library. I’ve tried a few other things over the years and found them all lacking overall.
You might say the problems I have with software bugs are due to the fact that I am using Apple software on a PC, and that’s not where it was intended to be used. But I would say:
Is Apple just not as good at this as the open source folks? Or are they just not trying as hard?
In any event, that’s my unhelpful rant which you will hear me occasionally vent about Apple software.
I was very excited to hear about the latest versions of iOS for iPad (and iPhone). While my household and circle of competency revolves around Windows and Microsoft on the desktop, I am well aware that in the mobile device arena some of the best choices are Apple products. I tend to stick with Android products for my own mobile devices, but several of my family members received Apple’s iPad 2 as a gift this year. It’s a great product.
But I was surprised when I brought the iPad home that I needed to go through a cumbersome process of synchronizing with my personal desktop in order to configure it for its intended recipient. I thought it should be more like Amazon’s original Kindle, which “just worked” right out of the box – it came pre-configured with the intended recipient’s Amazon account.
The latest version of iOS fixes this complaint – it makes it so that all future updates can be done wireless (something, ahem, that Android devices have had from day one!). So that’s great, the iPad and iPhone are now getting rid of what, to me, was a major usability bug. Even better, there is the new iCloud service, which purports to automatically and easily backup anything that you have bought from Apple – to “the cloud.”
One initial complaint with iCloud – it only syncs when the device is plugged in. Also note that for your big iTunes library that was ripped from your old CD collection you will need to pay Apple about $25 per year to sync that to iCloud (money I’d say is well worth it).
But here’s my gripe with the user experience when going to iOS 5. I had read posts on Facebook from a lot of friends over the last few months who had problems with the upgrade. My own experience also failed on the first two attempts – even though I successfully completed a backup of the iPad, the upgrade process complained that the backup had failed and refused to continue.
Here’s the message I was getting:
An error occurred while backing up this iPad (-5000). Would you like to continue to update this iPad?
Finally I searched a bit and found some info that seemed to help: -5000 error updating iPad to ios5
The advice that did the trick for me – disable Norton 360′s real-time virus protection. Then the update went through without a hitch.
Looking forward to working with the new iOS version. Still wishing that Apple had gotten some of these features out in earlier versions. And, I think the Apple upgrade process really needs to just come right out and tell you that it won’t work until you disable your antivirus software! 
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