iTunes bricks the iPad

While Southern Man has been in computers for a long time he had never owned an Apple product of any kind - no Apple ][, no Mac, no iPod or iPhone (although he's purchased plenty of both as gifts for the Southern Children) until his former employer bought iPads for everyone.

And, yes, the Apple Kool-Aid is sweet indeed and Southern Man loved his iPad enough that he bought it from them when he left their employ.

That said, Southern Man is firmly convinced that the unholy abomination that is iTunes is of the Devil's Software Workshop.

But as Southern Man was "synching" the iPad the other day iTunes suggested that it install the latest and greatest version of IOS. Southern Man agreed. And when the update was finish the iPad's Wi-Fi was greyed out.

That is a bad thing as the iPad isn't much good without a 'net connection so Southern Man did a little Googling and found that, yes, IOS updates occasionally knock out the Wi-Fi and so even though it was years out of warranty Southern Man took the iPad to the Apple Store to see if they had a fix. And here is what the "genius" at the genius bar had to say:

Well, we do see this a lot. It's because when you update the operating system the iPad is under a lot of stress and that causes the Wi-Fi hardware to fail.

Yes, he really did say that.

So, the iPad is now a very pretty brick. Southern Man must now contemplate just what he should do with it.