Apple's IOS5 upgrade has problems

[Phil Bunch]

Impulsively, I decided to rush into upgrading my iPad to IOS5, Apple's new OS release.  Big mistake.  

As best I can tell, the installer has multiple problems and poor error handling and error recovery.  As a result, I'm having to redownload all ten zillion purchased apps and media on to my iPad.  I've learned the hard way that what I thought was a comprehensive iPad backup was actually not operating properly, yet no error messages were produced.`  Thus, I suspect I'll simply lose some of my media, and a lot of content and media that I had placed into my primary non-Apple app, Goodreader.  

Fortunately, all my e-books were bought through the Kindle App, and it has all my e-books and bookmarks ready for normal use.  Can't say the same for Apple's iBooks app.  It apparently ate my personally added PDF e-book content as a part of the upgrade process and I am having to redownload all Apple-sourced (mostly free) e-books.

At various Mac forums, I've read many horror tales of people bricking their iPhones, iPods, and iPads as a result of trying to upgrade to IOS 5.  Doesn't sound like a good post-Steve Jobs start for the new Apple...very sad.

More details by worldwide users are provided at this forum, among others:

https://www.macworld.com/article/162983/2011/10/some_users_face_problems_upgrading_to_ios_5.html

My personal assessment is that many of the problems, perhaps even most of them, are not caused by server overload but rather by bugs in the backup and restore systems and problems in the upgrade installer and perhaps iTunes.

Needless to say, I am not a happy camper, but I'm glad I didn't try to upgrade my iPod touch, which I actually use much more than my iPad.  Losing my calendar and contacts and notes would have not been a good day, but fortunately I held off on upgrading my iPod Touch until I was sure the upgrade would actually work reasonably well.

YMMV, but I strongly recommend holding off on this upgrade until they fix at least some of its problems.

[Jeroen D]

Thanks,
i was sort of contemplating getting the upgrade, but I'll probably hold off. Most of my stuff is also on my Mac laptop, but still. I hate having to spend my time on this sort of stuff. Extremely frustrating and it tends to take hours and hours of work to get it all back to normal.

Good luck with it.

jeroen

[Will]

It would be great of you could keep this thread updated... I'd like to hear how it turns out for you.

[Jamie]

I've helped quite a few people restoring their Apple device to iOS5, even with crippled backups, if I can be of any help, just ask! The restore procedure works, but sometimes the restore process causes some hick-ups also caused by Apple's confusing methods and you tend to start all-over again re-downloading all Apps.
There are some simple tricks to get things going again.

Let me know if I can be of any help, I'm a registered Apple iOS developer, so I know my ways