iOS warning

I upgraded my 3GS from iOS 4 to 5. It didn't go completely smoothly, I got some meaningless error message and had to reload from backup, but once I'd done that everything worked fine. No noticeable drop in performance. Also upgraded my iPad Mk 1; that went without a hitch.

Went through the update this weekend. It's working now, but I seem to have lost play history since Oct. 5, so I have to mark a lot of podcasts as not new.

This, of course, also caused problems with having too little space to sync, causing more update problems.

My iPod touch once erased my apps and my music from the device. All my app icons were still there, but they wouldn't launch. I called Apple support and the rep. told me my problem was that I was using Windows and that my PC gave my iPod a virus.

To those with support appointments, good luck :).

I need to update my iPad 1 to iOS5, and I'm not sure how to go about doing this.

I'm new to the Mac realms. I tried Googling it and ended up in support hell on their forums with no clear notion of how to go about it. Mostly it was people grousing about the launch problems and performance issues on the iPad 1 (yay - I hope that's settled out by now).

The steps they describe confuse me - the options and stuff they keep telling me to use don't seem to appear on my system. For example, if I go into iTunes to the "Update" pane, it's blank except for a link to the terms and conditions. Clicking through it doesn't appear to do anything and the rest of the choices don't seem to come up when I get back to the pane. And I can't find out where to find out what version of iTunes I have.

I'll know this out somehow, but does anyone know of a "Mac for Dummies" sort of document?

Have you tried scrolling to the bottom of the terms and conditions page? I think the "accept" button only appears once you've done so.

The update for my iPad 1 went like this:
1) Plug in iPad
2) Get popup "There's new update available (iOS 5.0). Would you like to upgrade?"
3) Hit yes, and it downloads and installs it.

I didn't have any problems, but I did let it back up the iPad first.

Edit: just realized how unhelpful this post was, sorry.

I did - there was no "accept button". I had done several laps in and out of things at that point, though. Maybe something lost a session or something. Let me try it again.

edit:
I was touching "Downloads", not Update. Update is in the App Store.

The link takes me to www.apple.com/legal/itunes/ww

If I touch the USA version of the iTunes Store Terms and Conditions (or any of the other links in that section) I go to the same webpage to different anchor points. The url is www.apple.com/legal/itunes/us/terms....

There are no "accept" buttons on any of this.

Or am I completely out in left field somewhere?

Plug into what? I don't have a Mac to plug it into. Maybe that's the problem?

I had never used iTunes for anything, and I have a free song code to redeem so I tried that and it worked just fine.

On a Mac (which should be about the same as on a PC):

1) Plug the iPad into your computer.
2) Select the iPad on the sidebar in iTunes (where "Music", "Applications", etc are) and click the "Update" button.

At this point it should notify you if your version of iTunes is out of date. If not, it should ask if it should download/install iOS5, etc.

Momgamer, it just sounds like you're overthinking / over analyzing the whole thing. Just make sure you're on the most recent version of iTunes by downloading it directly from http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/. Once you've installed it, launch it. That should get you a whole new set of terms and conditions that are easier to read and accept. Once that's done, go to the "Store" menu, and select "Sign In". After providing your Apple ID and credentials, that should get you another set of terms and conditions to accept. Now you're ready to update the iPad. Plug it in, and you should then be prompted with the pop up for updating to the new OS. Then, it's hurry up and wait time as that update can take forever. My iPad 1 update to iOS 5 took 4.5 hours.

Good luck!

Edited to add:
Just saw your post about not having a Mac. All iOS devices don't care what you connect them to, it can be either Windows or OSX, but you do have to have some device to actually perform iOS updates. Once you're in iOS 5, Apple will start sending over the air updates to patch iOS, but until then, you still need a computer of some type.

You will need to plug in to a computer running iTunes via USB to run the update. (That should no longer be the case after the update, as iOS5 will do over-the-air updates.)

Thanks, ThatGuy42, but I have to ask the question again, "Plug into what?"

edit: Okay - I see that. I'll need to install this on a computer, then. I assumed I could do this directly to the iPad, not through a computer. Hence the need for the Dummies approach.

momgamer wrote:

Thanks, ThatGuy42, but I have to ask the question again, "Plug into what?"

edit: Okay - I see that. I'll need to install this on a computer, then. I assumed I could do this directly to the iPad, not through a computer. Hence the need for the Dummies approach.

A new feature in iOS 5 is that you'll never again need to connect to a computer to upgrade the OS, so this should be the only time you'll have to go through these steps. I'm surprised that you're able to use the iPad without ever having connected it to anything though. For some reason I thought there was an activation step after taking it out of the box.

I bought it used, and the person I bought it from kindly set it all up for me. I'm in the middle of installing iTunes on a PC and we'll try this again. Thank you all for your help so far, and I'm sure I'll be back to test your patience as we continue on this process.

momgamer wrote:

I bought it used, and the person I bought it from kindly set it all up for me. I'm in the middle of installing iTunes on a PC and we'll try this again. Thank you all for your help so far, and I'm sure I'll be back to test your patience as we continue on this process.

We're at a particularly confusing point for newcomers to iOS right now. A device running iOS 5 can upgrade over the air without plugging it into a computer running iTunes - but when you have a device currently running iOS 4, you do have to set up iTunes and plug it in just once to get the iOS 5 upgrade in the first place.

Confused definitely covers it. I've been mostly out of the Mac realms since they had a ][ in the name so this is a whole new world.

I do know where my backside is around computers, but apparently Mac doesn't seem to traditionally keep them behind you. On my PC, if I don't know how to do something I at least know to start by reaching around back there and feeling from there. With this, all bets seem to be off. Using my media player to update my OS seems really odd to me.

I think it's simply a result of how the product evolved. The devices always synced with iTunes to get music and such on them from your computer so it was a natural place to add features like backups and OS upgrades. Now that this stuff is all available OTA though, the process makes a lot less sense. I'm glad they're getting rid of it in iOS 5.

Now that I know this it makes a sort of sense. I just would never have thought of it on my own. iTunes is downloaded and working on my PC, but with that time estimate for the update above, I'm going to wait until I'm done with this test pass before I start the update process. Plus, I think charging the poor critter might be a good idea if it's going to take that long.

Before you ask, my PC USB ports don't throw enough current downrange to charge the thing. It's a known issue with most PC's. Another reason I had never bothered with hooking it to the computer like I do with my other devices.

I think there are powered USB hubs that can boost the voltage, assuming you care enough to buy one

I'll be buying a MacMini after the first of the year, so I'll just cope until then. But that's good info if this has to happen again. Thank you.

I got it done. That took a long time, but it wasn't any worse than installing Windows Server 2008 R2.

I did have the glitch where no app that wasn't built in would work. When you set one off it would just flash to a black screen and then back to the desktop. Thinking I needed to re-download them or something I opened the App Store and saw I had a pending update on You Don't Know Jack. I went ahead and let it run, and then everything else started working as well.

I just purchased an iPad 2 tonight. They updated it to iOS 5 in-store. It is shiny. With a capital shiny.

I am liking it, so far. And getting Pages may be worth all the pain. Some better solutions for getting files on and off it and this thing might actually almost be worth the paper it's printed on.

momgamer wrote:

I am liking it, so far. And getting Pages may be worth all the pain. Some better solutions for getting files on and off it and this thing might actually almost be worth the paper it's printed on. ;)

Box.net is my current favorite cloud storage, not perfect for when there's no WiFi, but they currently have a free offer for 50GB of storage when you sign up through iOS (iTunes store link). And who can say "No" to 50GB of free cloud storage (linked to Box.net's announcement page)?

Finally! Maybe they'll update that ancient icon...

Also, since youtube is rather mobile friendly, I don't see this as that big of a deal.

Then again, I'm a techie.