An Otter Box For an iPad Mini

An Otter Box for an iPad Mini

What did I do when my very cool, excellent iPad Mini slipped out of my hand and struck its corner on the concrete? 

Dang!  The corner then had this small shatter pattern in the glass, and the fracture pattern extended up the extreme edge. The good news is that the iPad Mini was still completely functional.

So, next, using some wide Scotch-Tape I carefully taped over the fractures.  This left the entire touch surface undisturbed and everything was fine.

I realized that another such drop would most likely spell the end of the device and went shopping at Best Buy for an enclosure.  The Otter-Box was just the ticket.  The salesperson asked if I have an extended warranty on the device.  I did and found out that Apple will fix the iPad even when unintentional damage is inflicted on it.

I backed up everything to the iCloud except the pictures which took over 1.2gb of space and thus would have consumed over 17 hours of upload time and headed over to the Genius-Bar at the local Apple store to get the replacement.  The genius I met with informed me that I could save the pictures too if I backed up the iPad Mini to the iTunes app on my PC instead of the iCloud and I headed back home and did just that.

The next morning I headed back to the Apple store with my PC and the iPAD.  The genius I worked with this time said that I should also import all my pictures into the iPhoto application (just in case).  That extra step only took a few minutes.  

The genius fetched a new iPad Mini that looked identical to the one I had (except for the shatter pattern on the glass) and when I hooked it up to my MacBook Pro and brought up iTunes it offered to 'Restore-From-Backup'.  That event took a few minutes and I found that all the stuff was aparently restored, including the pictures.

Well almost all the stuff, many of the application were missing but when I brought up the AppStore app there they were:  All the missing apps had a little 'cloud-icon' beside them as if to invite me to download them.  I did downloaded those apps and found only a few still missing.  The notable exceptions were Pages, Numbers, and Keynote the Apple iWork 'office-like' applications.  Once I installed Pages, Numbers and Keynote all the content I had created with that app reappeared. I did expect this since these apps store their content on the cloud which makes for easy sharing between devices and even people.

This left only the application called iBooks.  In this app you can visit the Apple Book Store and purchase books. Also when you get .PDF file as an email attachment you can click on the 'swoop-arrow' and then choose 'Open In iBooks'.  When you do this you then have the document in your iBooks library.  Unfortunately the iPAD does NOT persist this content to the iCloud.  And even more unfortunately the iPAD does NOT back this content up to either the iCloud or the iTunes app.

My genius at the Apple store suggested that I just email all those documents from the old iPad to myself and bring up the mail app on the new iPad and do an 'Open In iBooks' event against them thus restoring them to the iBooks app in the new iPad.

The entire event at the Apple store took about two hours.  At the end, after everything was restored to the new iPad Mini and I declared it to be a clone.  At that time I brought back up the old iPad and did a 'Reset-All' function (which did warn me that I was about to totally delete everything on that iPad).  This function completed in a few minutes when the  old iPad rebooted  it came back up and presented the same prompts that are  presented when you power up a brand new iPad Mini.

So I did follow the rule:  Once you clone something and copy over all the logic and memories to the clone you  really should destroy the original.  I can imagine if you do not follow the rule then the Pauli Exclusion Principle could kick in and wreck havoc.

The experience of working with the technical folks (geniuses) at the Apple Store went very well.  Every single person I've worked with at the Apple Store over the past three years I've owned this type of technology has been extremely knowledgable and helpful.  This company not only makes super products but also has a support infrastructure that matches perfectly with their products. 

The next stop was to head over to Best Buy and purchase an Otter-Box for the iPad Mini. Below are pictures of the iPad Mini encapsulated in its Otter-Box.  This enclosure seems pretty 'bullet-proof'.  However it is NOT waterproof but only protects against bumps, small drops, dust and dirt.  And that is just what I was looking for.

The Otterbox cover acts like a stand.

In the above picture you can see my login screen which is a picture of two of the most beautiful girls in my life (Anna and Ginny).  The Otter-Box has a plastic window that fits over the iPad's screen and it is so constructed so that all your gestures are transmitted right through it to the iPad's screen just fine.  The front-facing camera is in the little oval hole at the top of the screen and 'The-iPad-Button' is covered with part of the neoprene wrap-around that is part of the Otter-Box. 

This is the 'front' when the cover is in place.

In the above picture you see the 'tabs' at the corners which you disengage to remove the cover and snap back in place to restore the cover.

In this view you see the 'back' of the Otterbox

In the above image you see the back of the iPad Mini with the front cover in place.  The little round thing is the rear-facing camera of the iPad.  The back of the Otter-Box is actually a neoprene wrap that enclosed the Otter-Box clamshell that consist of the back and the screen cover.  The neoprene cover 'snaps' into spaces on the plastic clam shell.