Anyone else here in the post-PC era?

Well, I will admit that once I figured out to keep iTunes from creating Libraries and not make copies of stuff, it became close to not totally worthless.But it is still right there with iPhoto on my list of bloated, and stupid implementations.I use the iPad as an eReader, and also to test websites I design to make sure they are workable when a user must suffer with an Apple OS or Safari browser. I have used it for some surfing but minimal.It is a nice eReader.

In iTunes on the left hand side of the screen.Top item is Library.Half way down if your iPhone or pad or whatever is plugged into the computer it will show the device in the Device heading.Click that and you access the iPhone or whatever. This screen has several headings, Summary is the one you want, I think.Hope that helps.

I use iTunes solely for Podcasts for this reason in particular. I refuse to allow it access to my media library. I've spent countless hours fixing what iTunes fucked up in my music folder. oh, and it's buttfuck slow too.

So it has to be plugged in to the computer. Ah. Can't be done initially with WiFi?

Not as far as I can see. Only needs to be done once, though.

Okay, I have done it twice; once on a Mac mini, once on a Windows 7 machine.Now the iPad still cannot see either machine as on the wifi network.

Well, I won't disagree that it's bloated, but it kind of has to be - it's not just a music player, it's a playlist manager, it's a full media viewer for PDF and video files, it's a web-based media store, it's an activation portal for cell phones, it's a device manager, it has sharing, it has social media... it's doing a lot, in other words, besides playing your collection of Merle Haggard albums.

But I do not want a play list manager. That is MY job.I do not need a web based media store. There are browsers that can do that.I do not need an activation portal for a cell phone.I do not need a device manager.And my idea of social media a cup of espresso and a friend.And I have no Merle Haggard albums.

Presumably this is why you don't need to sync your iPad with your computer, then.

That of course is irrelevant. The point is that it seems that sync over wifi doesn't work anyway.But sync would be nice for my eBooks.

I've learned a little bit more about how IOS 5 keeps iPads up to date, but I still have many questions.I gave my mother an iPad this past summer. She's visiting right now, and so yesterday I updated her iPad to IOS 5. So now I have two iPads in the house with IOS 5. Under settings I checked the "WiFo Syncing" for both of them.So now when I open iTunes I see two iPad devices all the time: "Percy's iPad" and "Mom's iPad". Every once in a while one of them does a sync, I think it probably happens once a day. As near as I can tell, unless you've powered the iPad off, iTunes can communicate with it. I can click on the Apps tab and see all the apps on either iPad.But where does the iCloud fit into this? Is iTunes displaying the apps that are actually on the iPad? Or the apps that are saved in the cloud? Or are the apps actually stored in iTunes? Both iTunes and the cloud?If my iPad accidentally gets wiped clean and I want to restore, will I be able to restore all my apps from the cloud? Is there some way to see when the last sync was, and whether the sync was to iTunes, the cloud, or both?If either update to IOS 5 had gone smoothly I probably wouldn't be asking these questions, but they didn't. My iPad had to start out clean and I had to reconstruct it's original state from memory. Fortunately my apps were still in iTunes (I think - the cloud denied I had anything stored) and was able to restore from there. My mother's iPad had trouble sync'ing, and in the end I had to restore from my iPad's state. iTunes and iClould denied that anything from her iPad had been stored, despite the fact that just 10 minutes before in the process it stated that it was backing up her iPad. She lost 7 apps and an iBook.--Percy

It does work; it's far slower than wired but if you check the right boxes it does work.

So show me the secret handshake. Which boxes need to be checked?

I think the best way to look at it is to think about syncing via your computer or cloud. They both do the same job but with cloud you don't need a computer and with a computer you don't need cloud.You can see the last sync time stamp in settings where you can manually sync if you need to.The advantage, I suppose is that you can sync over any open wifi with cloud.My thinking is that Apple want people to use cloud so they can charge them a bit extra when the music that has been ripped rather than bought is backed up with the music matching service. And they can make jailbroke apps be much more inconvenient to back up.It would not surprise me if PC connectivity was phased out at some point so we will all have use cloud and absolutely everything can be reviewed and 'taxed' like music matching.

Not at a PC at the moment (oh the irony) but go to iTunes, click on the pad or phone device, go to summary and the check boxes should be there.I'll have a proper look as so as I get back, if that dosn't work for you.