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Sword86

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Oct 6, 2012
345
163
ipad Air 2. Just a rant because I need to.
The screen is so unresponsive. 3/4 of the time you have to tap it once to get it’s attention and then tap it a second time to get it to do what you wanted the first time around. Often it takes three, even four times. Often you sit there thinking it ‘took it’ and sit waiting for a response, only to find it didn’t recognize multiple prior taps.
AND SLOW...you click on a link (for the umpteeth time usually) to load a webpage and it is so slow to load you have to sit and wait before it’s all done before scrolling, or the page jumps all over continuing to load if I was stupid enough to have carried on before it finally caught up.
It is not my network. My Macbook and iPhone work fine. The last update made an incredible difference but it is still a slug. Is the processor simply that bad? Why would anyone ever buy one of these pieces of junk a second time, or did I get a dud?
Oh, another thing. About four times per hour it simply decides to drop my network. It often takes a minute or so to re-connect. Once again, my phone remains online and so does my Mac. I never drop streaming Netflix, ever, so it’s this POS.
Anyone with any idea what I could do to improve things?

I will never, ever buy an ipad again. I’d smash this POS if it wouldn’t force me to drop the $$$ on some sort of replacement. I’ve been thinking it’s almost time to replace my 2008 Macbook so maybe I’ll do that, run it fulltime and get some joy from trashing this abortion. Rant over. S
 
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I hate to be the voice of reason, but is it outside the realms of possibility that your iPad might be faulty? If it doesn’t work better following a clean OS install (not an iCloud restore), it’s likely something hardware related.

Your experience isn’t synonymous with how a newer iPad should run.
 
Before i upgraded my ipad mini 2 the other week with the new 11” ipad pro...it was dying a slow agonizing death. Shattered screen. Busted home button. Buggy as all hell. But ya know what? I never stopped loving that thing. Served me well the last 5 years. And although it was frustrating at times, it was like an old friend that I couldn’t stay mad at.
 
Thanks guys. None of you are the first to tell me this may be a hardware issue, but that ship has long sailed. This is way past any Apple help.
The sad thing is it’s in perfect condition and other than it’s poor performance nothing is forcing me to want to replace it. Everything is in the cloud so I suppose a restore would be easy. I hope.
I think I’ll go see how to go about doing just that.

Yeah, the touch keyboard is a drag too as you’d imagine.

Thanks. S
 
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I hope things improve for you, the Air 2 was so great to me it’s the one older device I can’t sell or trade in no matter how many times I try. It’s so good, I’m shelling out the $299 to get the breaking down one I have now replaced with a new one so I can keep going with it! Yes, I’m well aware I can pick up an iPad 6 for about $329, but my 10.5 Pro does everything that it can do better. The Air 2 is old reliable and deserves continued use!
 
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Definitely not many people posting and ranting their air 2 is running like crap. Mostly people having a hard time justifying even parting with them still till this day

Hopefully the restore will restore you faith in it.
 
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I have to agree with Newtons Apple about the iPad hating you. It’s true iPads only work for there owners who treat them well and take good care of their devices.

That’s why it pains me so much. This ipad is still cosmetically perfect. (I baby all my devices) It has become my go to device travelling. I rarely even fire my MB up anymore. I really rely on this ipad and it’s important that it functions as it ought to. It’s too soon since the reset to determine if it has improved.
We’ll see. S
 
Air 2 is a bit long it the tooth now, and not super fast, but it is one the very few long-term bullet-proof devices Apple has made. In many ways it is better than the new stuff. (lasts longer with no issues)
 
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My gf has an Air 1st gen and it needs a hard reset every so often, esp because she leave sooo many apps running in background and she doesn’t manually quit anything. Facebook app with background app refresh on, is quite a hog.
 
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My gf has an Air 1st gen and it needs a hard reset every so often, esp because she leave sooo many apps running in background and she doesn’t manually quit anything. Facebook app with background app refresh on, is quite a hog.
You don’t actually need to manually quit anything unless the app is acting up. iOS shuts the app down after a period of time. That’s one of the best things about iOS. Background app refresh she can turn off, but the app isn’t running, it just pulls data so the next time it opens, it doesn’t take as long to fetch. The reason why the the iPad Air 1 is running slow is it only has 1GB of RAM. It can be slow when switching between apps as it has to dump the RAM to memory and then open the other app.
 
The reset has definately helped with the touchscreen issues I was having. I have yet to see my internet connection drop out either.
I also noticed that it only seems slow now when a webpage has a pile of crap to load. Seems just fine on this site. Whew.
Thanks for the suggestion.
S
 
The reset has definately helped with the touchscreen issues I was having. I have yet to see my internet connection drop out either.
I also noticed that it only seems slow now when a webpage has a pile of crap to load. Seems just fine on this site. Whew.
Thanks for the suggestion.
S
Install a crap filter / addblocker like purify...
Makes any iPad much faster loading webpages and stops most/all advertisments.
 
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The reset has definately helped with the touchscreen issues I was having. I have yet to see my internet connection drop out either.
I also noticed that it only seems slow now when a webpage has a pile of crap to load. Seems just fine on this site. Whew.
Thanks for the suggestion.
S

Glad to hear you are getting better results after reset. Some Air 2s are pretty old. I think the model was introduced in 2014. If you decide to replace it, there are amazing deals on the iPad 2018....like $229. If you get another 4 years from one of these, that's less than $60 per year....or $5 per month or one coffee and scone per month at Starbucks.....not bad. Ask anyone, these base iPads are incredibly reliable. They use older well tested technology that has to be reliable for education. Hands-down, the best value in the Apple ecosystem!
 
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Sounds like yours is faulty. My air 2 is still running strong. Only issue for me is battery life (still acceptable though).
 
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Sounds like yours is faulty. My air 2 is still running strong. Only issue for me is battery life (still acceptable though).

My Air 2 misbehaves a little when the charger is plugged in (touch screen less responsive than usual, a few folk on here have reported the same behaviour). Off the charger it’s good as gold, apart from the battery life starting to suffer a little now. But damn, this has been a great tablet. I’m in no hurry to replace it. As others have said, it’s one of those devices that Apple got right first time and was made to last.
 
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