When you go to buy, I highly recommend the “refurbished” listings at Apple, way down low on the left side. I have yet to see any refurbished item that’s markedly different from new. Most of the time, it’s probably returned merchandise, for which they can no longer charge new prices.
Thanks for the tip!
In other words: The Messiah program. 
Sundry Notes: I was getting ready to review this very interesting app, a note-taker built for the schools market, when an Update became available through the App Store. So I went through the process of download and install, and after a brief interval tapped the app icon for launch.
The app opened, showed its splash screen, and quit. Tried it again, three times, with the same result. That had never happened before. Whoa, a CRASH on the heretofore impeccable iPad?
Went to the developer site, and sure enough, users were all describing what I had just experienced. One had even sent along a crash report, and the developer’s tech was saying that the release had a bug, even though Apple had approved it. Hmmmm….doing much testing there, Apple?
In a few hours, we had an update (new buyers must wait weeks for the Apple “approval process” to clear this version). But now more problems arose: some users cannot find their prior notes, or retrieve them from Sundry’s cloud server. The cloud, it seems, had drifted away.
One chap wrote: “Used this app to buy a new house. I stored all my notes from lawyers, seller, contractors, home inspector, etc. I go to my house closing tomorrow and the app does not open. What?! I backed up (of course) online, so I will try deleting and reinstalling. I can’t believe I trusted Sundry Notes. Hundreds of thousands of dollars on the line and I can’t even open the frickin app.”
I guess this will get settled soon, but right now Sundry Notes must have some appreciation for the plight of British Petroleum in the Gulf of Mexico.
OT: written with your irony jacket on, I assume Druid? 
BP hasn’t been called that since 1998 when it bought Amoco; suggestions that it revert to its pre-British Petroleum name of AIOC, or Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, have so far been rejected…
Trivia/pub quiz question: who connects Lehman Brothers and BP? Answer: the head of corporate communications at Lehman’s moved to BP as head of media relations last year…
I have no sympathy for the person. These are computers. They fail. Deal with it. Would he whine publicly if the laptop HD failed in his machine? I doubt it.
Lesson of the last 2 decades: Without a “hard copy” you don’t have anything.
I’m sympathetic in the sense that it’s a mistake I could have made myself.
I disagree that his error was in trusting electronics. Electronics are reliable enough.
His error was in entrusting a new, experimental app, and not having backups.
Still, as I said, it’s an error I might have made myself. The truth is you never know if your backups are good until and unless you need them. I keep redundant backups – dual backups of everything, plus copies on Dropbox of all my working files, AND copies on Simplenote of all my plain text files – and I still worry. I thought I had good backups in 2003 when I had a hard drive crash, but it turns out the backups were no good and so I lost a lot of work.
You know, I suspect that writer may be a competitor of Sundry. It seemed way too pat a story to me.
@Hugh: Next you will be telling me that BOAC no longer exists. I took my first flight cross the Pond in a four-prop plane of that company. After a three-course meal, the male stewards brought around brandy and cigarettes, and that was in Tourist Class.
If only this was rare.
A quick point: we are talking system failure. Electronic “devices” are not all that stable, particularly storage media (reference above statement). While I will agree that “trusting electronics” is not a problem, “depending on electronic storage” is a problem.
Systems are tools. They will break for many reasons. People need to remember that and stop assigning blame for their own lack of foresight.
If you don’t have a hard copy you don’t have anything.
I think I am starting to sound like Druid!
The entire platform itself is still pretty experimental. The iPhone as a hardware platform and the iOS foundation are brand new and really, seriously, should not be trusted for anything important, yet. Neither should “the cloud” for that matter, which is the usual answer to iOS related instabilities, “just use apps that have cloud backup”, bad move. The biggest “wow that’s really stupid” factor of the iOS design right now is that user data is cohesively tied to the application itself. Thus the “application” is actually three different components, two of which are volatile on a daily basis, and a third of which is volatile on a less immediate basis but in a way which is out of control for the user (largely), developer updates. User data, preferences, and application data. That’s a lot of stuff to have all riding on each other’s internal integrity. Any one of those breaks and the whole thing falls down. This is compounded by the user being 100% lacking in tech tools. You can’t go into an application space, reset the preferences, and then try again. The only way to solve any problem with any of the three integral components is to re-install the app. Because user data is stored in the application space: uninstalling the application = destroying user data. And for those clouders, you better hope the last sync wasn’t the corrupted data. 
Sounds like that is what happened to this person.
The solution is applications that have strong links back to a desktop application. That’s a tough solution to prudently maintain though. I bet the average person has a dozen applications they use regularly, and 50–100 total. Since Apple’s second dumbest move was to make every single app developer come up with their own wireless-based synchronisation systems, that means there is no global, Palm-style conduit system that automatically handles all of this whenever you set the thing in a dock. Each application, if it has anything at all, must be done by hand one at a time. In many ways, iOS is one of the largest steps backward in computing history that I’ve ever seen.
I guess the moral of the story is: for important data, only use applications that have strong links to a desktop equivalent, that do not rely on automated Internet storage to make things “magical” and buzz-word happy, and for those applications, make sure you sync it all up whenever something important changes on the device. Ignore those rules, and you might as well be carrying your novel around on a floppy disk in a magnet store.
It’s all still experimental. It will be for another five to ten years. Treat it as such and you’ll probably be okay.
Yipes, Amber, that is a somber warning. Caveat emptor.
I’ll try to be less sanguine about the iPad’s future as a w/r device.
Apple really ought to add warnings to cloud-synch applications.
And devise some better methods for backing up data.
Speaking of which, I am attempting to install IOS 4.
And the backup of data is taking f.o.r.e.v.e.r…
I mean, hours go by and the blue bar progress is minute.
Jaysen, sounding like little old me?
I think you are talking standards, and I’m 100% with you.
I used to run a humanities computing center.
Nearly all requests from my colleagues were:
(a) how do I print my document?
(b) why can’t we still use WordPerfect 4.2 (or WordStar x.x)…
And data loss from failure to backup the most common dilemma.
Oh, I’m pretty sanguine about the future of it as well, make no mistake. I’m just recognising that the future isn’t quite here yet, in terms of how data is stored on the device. Even though we are seeing a lot of productivity and creative applications being produced for the devices by third-party developers, we also all know that Apple wasn’t focussing on this aspect themselves too much, from the very start. They saw this as a consumption machine and consumption machines do not need robust data management. Losing your RSS feeds might be frustrating, but it’s not losing five months of work on a thesis! Or all of your documents pertaining to a major purchase.
So what you have are some interesting and compelling applications coming out, taking advantage of the hardware and form-factor of the device, which is great, and that’s part of the future of the device, but they are currently stuck in an operating system that was not designed with a high level of data security in mind.
If Apple (more importantly, Steve Jobs) can recognise that the device can be useful for more than just sitting around on a couch and laughing at YouTube videos, then it will gradually mature and get out of the experimental phase.
Until then, by all means, use it to be creative and productive—I do—but I am very careful that everything I do on it is put back on a proper computer as soon as possible, too, and to select applications that make it easy to do this.
Precisely. On a computer though, the only person to blame for not backing up is the user. With the iDevices there is a legitimate complaint that the infrastructure makes it difficult to even properly do so.
Apple could, in a sloppy way, “fix” much of this by simply allowing sequential backup storage of the device. That’s all! Don’t wipe out the last backup every single time and allow partial restores like Time Machine does. That would be so easy for Apple to do, I just don’t think they (again, translate to Jobs) yet see people storing important stuff on these things.
Given that the number one common dilemma is users not backing up their work, which I would tentatively agree with as well incidentally (though I think a lack of understanding in how applications and files work together is a high contender amongst those not technically inclined—there is still a lot of confusion over what a web browser does, or how Word files are files and so on, you even see a lot of that here—people just don’t get that Scrivener projects are files on their disk and think the whole world collapsed if their Recent Projects menu gets cleared—but lack of backups is definitely a more catastrophic commonality), Apple needs to take their wisdom in designing Time Machine (backups for people that don’t know how or can’t be bothered until they one day regret it) and apply it to their devices. They’ve got all of the pieces in play, they just need to glue it together. Imagine Time Capsule keeping your iPad safe all day long. That’s what we need.
P.S. I’m pretty quick to apply the term “experimental” to things, too. For instance, I consider Mac OS X to have left the experimental phase when Tiger was released. Prior to that point it was still sluggish, prone to kernel panics, and had a fragile infrastructure. Since Tiger, it’s become a rock. Apple can do it. They, unlike many hardware/software companies, have the diligence to get something from beta to stable—and with so much of their focus on the devices these days, they’ll probably get there. I’m not worried about it—but I approach my iPad the same way I did my computer back when I was running Panther; with a lot more caution.
Unless I am mistaken, iTunes does a device level backup on connection to your system. I know the iPhone does. In theory you can keep an arbitrary number of device backups and restore them at a later time. Not being a “Paddy” I can only be certain that this is how the iPhone works.
Still, the “cloud backup” mantra is very tiring. Unless you are in a tightly controlled DOD certified facility the cloud is no better at data retention than any other service. They all rely on either of the two most failure prone components in a system: disks or ram. By their very nature these devices are failure prone. Yet they are the most critical components for systems. Until you are in a massively parallel HA platform your data is vulnerable.
But who cares. The masses want their warm and fuzzy. Clouds look fuzzy. I guess the cloud will have to do.
Thanks for the really timely warning on this issue, everyone. I have just ordered an iPad, and when it arrives I will make sure I don’t trust it with the only copy of anything important. But one question: Although it is part of the ‘cloud’ I have always believed that one of the most reliable ways to back up a file from an app was to email it to my Yahoo account. While I am aware that even this could fail, I have always thought this would be less likely than the loss or destruction of a physical backup in the event of a burglary or fire etc. Therefore I have always chosen apps that allow me to send copies by email. Is this a mistake? Am I better to trust to an app that syncs to a laptop, or is a HDD (or SSD) more likely to fail on me? I already print a copy of anything vital.
Thanks for all the great tips, advice and reviews here. I look forward to implementing many of them when my iPad arrives.
Yes, this is what I was meaning to refer to above when I described the current iTunes backup system as single-use overwriting. In the iTunes preferences, under Devices, you can see a list of all the backups that have been made for each device you own, but you may note the dates on those backups are not anywhere near each other in most cases. It looks to me as though I have one backup that was made the last time I updated the firmware, and then another backup that was made earlier today when I synced the device. I’m guessing those are the only two occasions Apple backs the device up, and the latest sync backup always overwrites the previous one.
The two main problems with this system:
- Errors made a week ago and not noticed until yesterday are long gone unless you rarely sync.
- The backup restoration process is all-or-nothing. You cannot restore one malfunctioning application without reverting everything on the iPad to “yesterday”. That could, in some cases, cause more data loss than whatever was lost in the malfunctioning application since you can’t back up the new stuff first and then restore afterward to the version where the malfunctioning app was still okay.
Now, I haven’t looked into it, but you may be able to use Time Machine to restore an old backup copy—that might work assuming Apple wrote it so that it merely looks in the right spot to determine backup stats. Then it doesn’t matter how old the backup is in the folder. If iTunes keeps a separate log though, or the backups are composed of pieces, then it could get more complicated and attempting to restore from a “patched together” backup could end up corrupting the device and necessitating a factory reset.
Hence my above post: Apple should change this system so that it addresses both points above. Partial restoration; sequential backups. Anything else isn’t really a backup, it’s just a device state restore that might very well have all of the issues baked into the backup file that caused you to need the restore in the first place. It’s like backing up your computer with a full mirroring script every night and never bothering to rotate.
The security issue is what has me worried. These companies hosting space are probably not all going to live forever. What happens when all of your data is suddenly Microsoft Evernote, or AOL DropBox? Verizon AllMyPasswordsAndCreditCards.com?
I would definitely re-evaluate that. I don’t know if Yahoo! still does this, but it used to be that if you didn’t log in or use it for more than 30 or 60 days, they would permanently delete the account and all of its data. You had to pay a monthly fee to get around that. Google might have forced them to change their ways, though, so definitely read the fine print.
E-mail can be very handy for this sort of “backup” because, like you say, so many applications support that method of export. If I were relying on an e-mail account to backup data though, I’d couple it with a service that I’m paying for, and one that I can mirror to my computer—and thus have it backed up normally, too.
I iTunes you can backup “every time” you sync. Lots of disk space needed, but…
Don’t even get me started on the security implications. You don’t want to read that rant.
Scylax, systems are systems. Thy break. Large scale systems do attempt to reduce the impact of failures through redundancy. Some formats and protocols are easier to backup than others. The large table methods used by most “mail” systems these days is easier to maintain redundancy in a practical manner. But even the best designs can fail. Google lost a pile of emails to a drive controller failure not all that long ago. No one in the industry was surprised.
So what is the “average person” to do? ioAmberV and I beat this horse to death in other places, but here is what I would suggest.
- multiple local backups - think 2 external drives.
- make one of those a mirrored pair (2 drives get the same data at the same time)
- Use off site storage.
- Use a disk rotation policy with drives to a secured location (bank box).
That said, this should turn out to you owning something like
1 laCie raid 1 capable external (set to raid 1)(I recommend 500GB mirror which is sold as 1TB)
1 Icy Dock swappable external enclosure.
8 drive trays (numbered 0-7)
8 500GB SATA3 disks (drive size should be at least 3 times the size of your internal).
1 bank box with unlimited access contract.
The laCie is your time machine system. Lots of space. the Icy dock is your “forced” backup.
On Sunday you make a full backup on drive 0. Monday drive 1 gets an incremental. Tuesday drive 2 gets incremental. Wednesday drive three, Thursday four, Friday five, Saturday six. This is week one.
Now 7 gets a full backup on Sunday 2. Monday 2 give drive 0 an incremental backup. Tuesday 2 drive 1, etc. Saturday 2 drive 5 will have the incremental backup. Week three starts with drive 6 taking the full backup. Progress with your incrementals until you finish with drive 4 on Sat. Week four has 5 on Sunday, 3 on Sat. Baring massive updates to your system you should be able to get 7 weeks of backup before you need to start deleting old backups.
At this point you want to know where the bank box comes in. Guess where you keep the drives? On Monday you take the Fri/Sat/Sunday drives in and pick up Monday’s disk. Tuesday you return Monday and pick up Tuesday’s. Repeat Wed and Thurs. On Friday you need to return Thursday’s drive and pick up Friday - Sunday (assumes you can’t access the box vault at all on the weekends).
If you lose data here you are not just unlucky. You are cursed.
Again, I am a bit overboard because I do this crap all day long (the systems stuff). This is what I tell folks who want “the best solution”. Find a middle spot you can afford and be consistent.
And no I don’t do this at home. I do it at work. My home system is time machine on the laCie and forced to a pair of icy docks.
Uh, Jaysen . . . I think this might be one of those times when you march into your office, take away your cellphone, and order yourself to take 4 days off.
What you’re suggesting is enterprise-level backup in barely simplified terms. Most folks just don’t need that level of security. What I would propose isn’t all that much different, just less terrifying. 
[If you’re just using your computer for occasional use. 1 drive & Time Machine should be just fine. If you’re writing a 300-page book that you’ll be, gasp, paid for writing, I’d do the whole lot described below.]
-
Get three big external drives. A terabyte (1TB) each should be just dandy unless you’re editing Avatar in Final Cut Pro.
-
Plug-in one drive and let Time Machine take it over as your daily backup.
-
On Saturday, connect the second drive and use Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper to make a perfect copy of your internal drive. You may eat breakfast and go to the beach while the copy is being made. Unmount and unplug the drive when the backup is done.
-
The next Saturday do the same thing with the third drive. Now you’ve got two full backups plus your Time Machine backup. This is good.
-
The next Saturday, you plug-in the 2-week-old backup drive and let CCC or SD update it. Repeat ad nauseum.
Once every three years or so, buy three new drives to replace your tired ones.
If you quiver at the thought of losing anything there are two (well, three) more things you can do:
-
Each time you do a full backup on Saturday take that drive out of your house and put it somewhere else, a safe-deposit box, an understanding friend’s house, or–if you’re so lucky–your cottage by the lake. Bring the other full backup back at the same time. If you’re easygoing, you could lengthen the swapping schedule.
-
Use a service like DropBox and tell it to automatically backup everything in your “I’ll die if I lose these 20 pages I just wrote” folder. Don’t use DropBox to back up everything unless you have $2,000/mth internet connection.
-
(This is for you, Jaysen.) Purchase 3 servers with appropriately-sized RAID arrays. Place one in the NORAD grotto, one in Yakutsk Siberia, and one in Papeete. All, plus your house of course, should have OC-3 connectivity. Set-up full byte-level dynamic mirroring. Schedule regular week-long quality-checks at the third location.
Dave
Dave,
Do I have your permission on that?
For the record you missed the second part, the most important part, of that quote.
You would be surprised how few people come to me for systems advice these days.
For the record your approach is more than enough for all but the most paranoid users. I typically replace dropbox with a pair of USB sticks and a cron job. Something like
#!/bin/bash
date = `date %YMD`
time = `date %Hm`
if [ -x $drive/$testfile]
then
budir = $drive/backup-$date.$time
mkdir -p $budir
for i in $important_dirs
do
rsync $i $budir
done
fiBut again, this side of the keyboard is not quite right in the neck stump.
I suspect you’re requesting visitation authorization for item 3 of item 3 of the second group? Of course!
Ah, no, I didn’t miss it. But it was ever so small in comparison to the torrent that came thereafter.
Spiffy! I use Chronosync to do the same sort of thing but I suggested DropBox because that puts the "“I’ll die if I lose these 20 pages I just wrote” folder on the other side of the country.
Dave