Why I HATE iTunes. Really really really hate iTunes.

OK, I was so excited to find out that I could upgrade my iPad 2 to use the new iOS6. (I was hoping to get Siri, the “personal assistant” but that doesn’t come to iPad2, and that’s a whole other gripe).

I was firstly peeved to read that in order to upgrade your iOS device’s OS you have to upgrade to the latest iTunes, because given prior experience with iTunes upgrades “losing” music or not opening or completely stuffing up in a myriad of other ways, I have learned to not upgrade the bleeping thing at all unless absolutely necessary.

Firstly, let me state that I am a Windows PC owner, not a Mac owner, so this may be the very reason for my woes?!?!

So I went ahead and let it upgrade iTunes. All looked well and great. But I realise here I made my first mistake. I did not check that it hadn’t “lost” all our music. I went into preferences and checked that itunes still had the correct location (which it did). And it looked OK with its splashy new start screen. So then I went ahead and started the disastrous process of upgrading the iOS.

I started by backing up my iPad. Second mistake – I did not make a copy of that backup on removable media, somewhere other than where iTunes stores it.

The download/upgrade process failed, not once, but TWICE. And it takes around an hour on my computer (and that’s hi-speed ADSL with an ethernet connection to the router too) for iTunes to do the whole thing, so that was two whole painful hours of babysitting the darn computer. Then I found this useful thread which said temporarily disabling your Antivirus/Firewall/Internet Security may help, and that (my particular suite) was known to be a culprit. I paused my security suite protection for 15 minutes and hey presto, that allowed the download/upgrade to complete.

But then … After I got my iPad going again, yes it had the new iOS on board, but my contacts, calendar, music, photos and apps were all missing. My iPad had essentially become a blank slate like it was fresh out of the box.

More googling on the big computer revealed that redownloading apps from the app store would bring back all their settings (it did) but this is a time consuming approach I am still pursuing at my leisure. Everything else I just re-synched from iTunes. I had to reset allmy preferences in iTunes as if it were a brand new out of the box device.

I raised the question of Windows v Mac with friends and found that Mac users were similarly afflicted with problems updating their iDevices.

Now come on Apple, why should such a seemingly easy process, cause so much pain?

Now we can upgrade our iOS devices wirelessly, but I’m still more than concerned. What new can of worms could be waiting to be opened? Approach with caution!