iPad Fixed by Burping It!

We have several Apple devices in our house. It started with a basic IPhone many years back, then blossomed with the first iPad back in 2010, a second and third iPad (primarily used for my digital artwork), then an iPad mini for my husband, and several iPhones since. My current phone is an 8Plus and my husband got my old 6Plus. Along the way we have gifted a few iPads as far away as England and France. I’m pretty familiar with troubleshooting the devices, but we were stumped with my husband’s iPad mini. He uses it constantly for reading, solitaire, and surfing. It’s also been dropped several times. Lately it’s been locking up where he has needed to hard reset it several times during the day. The issue wasn’t storage, and it was becoming irritating. We deleted a lot of junk from his device anyway. It was getting to the point where I thought we may have to take a trip to the Apple store to see if they could figure it out or we would need to purchase a new device. So on the sly my husband searched for alternate troubleshooting options and came across “burping” the iPad. I thought he was kidding - but he wasn’t. He said he wrapped the iPad face down in a towel, layed it on his lap and tapped on it clockwise for at least a minute covering the entire backside. That was two days ago. Since that time he has had no problem with his device acting up whereas before he was messing with it at least 2-3 times per day. It must be something mechanical that suddenly fell back in to place or just plain luck. For whatever reason my husband seems to be able to figure out whatever isn’t working. This approach was quite unexpected, but definitely worth trying. 

Apple's New IPad

I got my 94 year old mom an iPad about six years ago - one of the first generation devices. She uses it for emails, looks at photos, plays solitaire, and primarily reads books. But she was no longer able to buy books on iBooks since the new operating system was upgraded. Her iPad has not been updated since she got it. She lives in one state, and we live many miles away across country. So I knew when we visited her this time we would need to finally update her iPad. Of course, she didn't want to, but it is such an important part of her life. So my husband and I first tried to fix the problem, but it's not fixable. So we drove to the Apple Store in Tampa and got the newest iPad that just came out, had it set up, and then had to go to her cellular carrier to get her plan transferred. It's a lot of running around, takes a lot of time, patience and tutorials - because things have changed! But the new devices are so much better, faster, and have so many more options on them - especially for sight impaired. She can now dictate her emails rather than type them, ask Siri for help with a lot of things, still play solitaire, and read her favorite books. Unfortunately we are not here to troubleshoot, and hopefully she won't have too many problems. She'll need to get used to the new device, and hopefully it won't take too long. I LOVE Apple products, and I think she does too - even though she won't admit it.