The latest Apple update for iPad is aimed at adding new features and improving performance – but for some users is rendering their tablets useless.
The technology giant is rolling out iOS 9.3 to thousands of iPad owners worldwide, but, any with iPad 2 are crowding the firm’s social media customer service accounts with complaints that their tablets have stopped working.
The new update includes Apple Music for CarPlay, improvements to other Apple apps and better handling of blue light at night.
The NightShift app which monitors blue light emissions seems not to work on 32 bit tablets and phones, complain many Apple tablet and phone users.
But iPad 2 users who have pressed the OK button to update are greeted with an error message and are locked out of their tablets.
iPad can’t activate after update
The message says: “Your iPad could not be activated because the activation server is temporarily unavailable. Try connecting your iPad to iTunes to activate it, or try again in a couple of minutes. If this problem persists, contact apple support at apple.com/support.”
Apple expects the update to fix after contacting the activation server, but some iPads are still offline days after the update and show no sign of coming back to life.
Overall the update is frustrating for many Apple customers with older iPads and phones.
Apple has not commented about the bugs, but is asking customers who get in touch by social media to discuss the problem in private messages. Some are invited to Apple Stores, but complain the staff cannot fix the locked tablets.
Apple update on low memory devices
Some users suggest backing up the iPad 2 data before applying the update.
Their advice is to set the iPad to factory default, apply the update and then restore the back up.
However, even this has failed to work for some tablet users.
Another problem with the latest Apple updates is the files are too large for older iPhones and iPads with memory modules of 8gb.
The solution to backing up these devices is the same – backup all data, restore to factory default, update and then restore the data.