It’s true, if you don’t use it, you lose it. This is no less true of our mechanical and electronic systems than it is of our personal, meatware systems.
I recently needed to use the van which had died back in January. It would have been much easier if I had been able to do so right at the time it had its semi-fatal problem, since at the time all of the accompanying systems were working reasonably well. But when I let it sit for five months, only driving it around the block once a month or so, things got out of whack. Not only did I have to fix the original problem, but now I have a handful of other issues to deal with, all of which were caused by sitting in the driveway, neglected, for five months.
Tonight I’m spending way too much time trying to get my old iPad back among the living, or at least among the functional. But I’m not sure that I’ve used it since about December. Part of the problem is that it’s an iPad2, reasonably old by digital standards, and while it was the hottest thing on ice when I bought it, now it’s slow, short on memory, and closer to being a brick than not.
But I would like to take it to a work conference that I’ll be attending tomorrow, so it’s time to charge the battery. If it had a low charge but was being used regularly, this would have taken an hour or two. Three hours later, I’m at 43% charge and creeping.
Once it gets to the point where it’s actually on and staying on, it wants to update 163 apps. All. At. Once. After two hours, it’s down to 123, so it might be done by morning. Or not.
I’m sure at some point it’s going to want to upgrade the iOS operating system, if the hardware is capable of using the latest one. If not, there might be a number of apps that just won’t work any more, which again diminishes the utility of the beast.
Finally, it’s frustrating to find that 99% of the apps being upgraded have grown by anywhere from 45% in size all the way up to 250%. Which means that my 32GB of RAM is looking more and more puny by the second. I already had to temporarily delete all but three of the dozen or so movies I’ve bought for the iPad, and now I’ve had to delete two more. (“Blade Runner” made the final cut.) I guess I’ll just watch them on my phone on the next plane flight.
Next to start getting shaved down will be the music. That will be a dark day, indeed.
Use it or lose it!
I’d dump the apps and keep the movies and music. But then, that’s why I don’t have an iPad 🙂
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Many of the apps, particularly those which take up a LOT of memory, are flying/aviation related, to be used when/if I start flying again. They’re also on the much newer phone as a backup, but so are the movies and music, so I can still use them on the phone. While flying, the iPad is much easier to use and read.
Now all I have to do is start flying again to justify the hassle!
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