Restoring is so painful.

[mcdj]

This has happened to me me more times than I'd like to remember. I restore an iPad from an iTunes backup. 30% of my apps are MIA. I wipe and restore again, this time via iCloud backup. As is always the case, certain apps just hang arbitrarily...waiting, waiting. Tapping them pauses them. Sometimes that jumpstarts other waiting apps, sometimes not. Sometimes restarting gets a few moving, sometimes not. I'm asked to enter my iTunes password like 16 different times. Really?

I always fool myself into thinking a local iTunes backup will be the fastest way to restore. It almost never is. And restoring via iCloud, while more complete, is still a mess.

Meanwhile, Apple continues to tweak and "upgrade" things that aren't broken, overlooking things that clearly are.

/rant

 

[Salvor Hardin]

Trying to control multiple app/app update downloading has always been the most unstable part of iOS. It's probably for the best to wait it out and trust that iCloud restore will get your apps all downloaded eventually, this is just speculation but it might feel like it's taking too long to download some because it's downloading/unpacking the user data for the app during the download. The loading circle always feels random at best, I've had times where it's looks like it's made a tiny amount of process and tap to pause only to have it say it's installing the app or update.

iCloud has a very specific order to how it does a restore:
Settings and user data for stock iOS apps are downloaded then it lets you use the device again after a reboot
Apps are download along with about the most recent 75 pictures of your camera roll
The rest of your photos are downloaded in order from newest to oldest
All your iMessage attachments are downloaded

 

[oldmacs]

I always fool myself into thinking a local iTunes backup will be the fastest way to restore. It almost never is. And restoring via iCloud, while more complete, is still a mess.

Meanwhile, Apple continues to tweak and "upgrade" things that aren't broken, overlooking things that clearly are.

Its freaking annoying. I'd also like for Apple to fix basics like this.