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On 03/01/14 08:55, Neil Winchurst wrote: > To save space I have cut all the advice that followed. Thanks for all > the help from everybody. And the news is, she has ordered an iPad Air > which should arrive today, Friday. > > Now I am wondering what you mean by 'jailbreaking' it. Remember I have > never used an Apple computer of any sort so I have no idea what to look > out for. > > Thanks to everyone who replied to this, > > Neil > > See, I told you! Left to their own devices (no pun intended), generally speaking non-techie women, who naturally have a sharp eye for this kind of thing, will choose the iPad. Tom did definitely convince me that for the more technical types who like fiddling with their IT gear as much as actually using it, a Nexus + Ubuntu is the way to go but I think she made the right call. What model did you order? Now, as for management, you are going to need access to iTunes ideally - that's just the way Apple devices work. You can completely sidestep this as several Linux programs can interface with iDevices enough to load music, films and pictures, etc, onto them and the iPad itself, once connected to wifi, can happily be set up independently and can download Apps from the AppStore but... for the full deal, iTunes is a must. There are various third party programs (such as imtoo*, which have free versions and time limited full demos) to handle things like transcoding, file management, backups and so on but they are native windows tools, although they mostly run under wine. I'll give you some links to start reading up but don't worry about never having used a Mac - the iPhone and iPad (and iPod, AppleTV, etc) whilst still being definitely Apple, are very different from the actual Mac computers and IOS is still very different from OSX. Not having Mac experience isn't a problem. I'd suggest obviously letting the wife play with her new iPad as much as she likes when it arrives just to get used to it whilst you familiarise yourself a little with the new ecosystem and the various tools. When you are ready to proceed, back it up, and then proceed to jailbreaking**. Jailbreaking means the process of getting full unrestricted access to your hardware/software Neil - believe it or not, unlike general purpose computers, most phones/tablets/gadgets these days don't allow their owners full access to their systems (kind of like not having root access on your own Linux box) and the manufacturer, usually Apple or Google, Samsung, HTC, Nokia, etc, actually has more control over your device than you do. Which sucks. Jailbreaking or "rooting" your device fixes that by subverting the control mechanisms in place and letting you reassert full control over your own property. This allows you to adjust official settings in a way the manufacturer specifically didn't want you to be able to: Apple don't want you to be able to install Apps from third party stores, ignore your carriers arbitrary rules about tethering devices, locking down and controlling blatantly abusive privacy settings from installed Apps, etc. Predictably, I, and most sensible people, couldn't give a sh*t what Apple want and prefer to completely control my own property. I paid for it after all! Another good source for reading up on jailbreaking, with a specific Apple slant rather than Android, is this link***. Don't worry if it all looks a bit daunting, I can either help you through it all or ultimately you and the missus might quite well decide it all looks like too much effort/hassle to bother with jailbreaking and modding and just use the iPad as is, like 99% of the population. I know that my girlfriend would absolutely not have bothered jailbreaking hers on her own, and it's only because I insisted that it wouldn't be let on my network otherwise. Enjoy the new gadget anyway - if your wife is anything like my missus you probably won't get your hands on it for the next few days anyway :] Cheers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_jailbreaking * http://www.imtoo.com/ ** http://evasi0n.com/ *** http://www.idownloadblog.com/tag/evasi0n7/ -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq