Ipad Apps Stuck on Waiting

I’m not a big Apple user. In fact, the new Ipad was my first Apple purchase for myself in years. More on that in a minute.

First I’d like go over the resolution to a problem I had with the app store. Normally when you purchase an app in the store, you select buy and enter your password. The store verifies your password and takes you to a home screen where the icon appears with the text waiting. Then waiting turns to loading then installing, and then your app is ready to use. I ran into a problem where the process hung at waiting. It would hang for whatever the timeout period was (15 minutes?) then ask to retry or cancel. If you retried, you would enter your password again and go back to waiting. It would never start loading.

Of course, eventually I had to cancel the download. Restarting the process gave the same result. I tried rebooting the ipad and got the same result. After verifying it wasn’t a connection problem, I hit the internet. Most of the solutions seemed to indicate that itunes songs or podcasts were having problems downloading resulting in the background downloader locking up. Clearing the queue in itunes or podcasts would solve it. Unfortunately, for me, my queue was clear already.

Anyway, here is the solution that worked:

1. Cancel all downloading apps

2. Go to the app store on the device and sign out

3. Reboot device

4. Go to app store and sign in

After that, everything returned to normal. Hopefully that might help someone else who’s stuck on waiting.

Anyway, I wasn’t sold on Apple due to the whole ‘walled garden’ argument. However, I’m a gamer. Despite Android’s huge success in number of devices and apps available, many new and interesting games were still coming out first or only on iOS. I’m sure momentum is behind part of that. I admit that there’s also a creative culture that Apple has fostered. So, in short, I didn’t want to miss out on those games. Hence, the Ipad. I certainly haven’t regretted it.

I am going to take this opportunity to plug a couple of my favorite mobile gaming sites. First is Pocket Tactics. They cover strategy and tactical games for both Android and iOS. There’s almost always something there I want to play on the front page. Next is iPad Board Games. You’ll never guess what they cover. Actually, what you’ll never guess is how many great board games there are out there for the iPad. You can also vote for your favorites. Please check them out.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.talkstrategy.com/2012/09/ipad-apps-stuck-on-waiting/

2 comments

  1. With that said, there are still a few pieces of the iPad puzzle that I can’t quite make fit. First and foremost, while it’s great that Apple provides 3G as an option on the iPad models, and it’s even more impressive that they’ve arranged to make iPad 3G data plans pay-as-you-go, I still don’t quite understand why I would want to take an iPad out of the house. I can absolutely see it as an always-on information device that I can leave on my coffee table and pick up whenever I need it, but I don’t understand why I’d pick it rather than my laptop if I’m leaving the house. I suppose I might want to take the iPad with me if I had a specific iPad game I wanted to play while I’m out, but I do own a PSP and a Nintendo DS, and a stack of unfinished games for each, and I rarely think to take those with me. I can’t imagine that things would be much different with the iPad. I suppose someone might want to take the iPad with them instead of a laptop if they were going to need access to data, but wouldn’t necessarily be near a Wi-Fi access point. But I have an iPhone, and if AT&T ever follows through on the promise to allow tethering with an iPhone, I’m back to taking my laptop with me instead of the iPad.

  2. When my co-worker first came on board, he boasted of his water-cooled custom computer and acted very haughty about computers in general and very contemptuous about Apple because of the “walled garden” thing, repeatedly implying that everyone on the planet wanted to be able to tweak, customize and hack their computers. But as I pointed out to him and have pointed out on this board a few times, very few (like maybe 2% of computer or smart phone owners) really have any desire to hack/root/tweak/break/whatever their hardware. The vast majority of people don’t give a crap about that sort of thing and just want something that does what they want to do, which is usually as simple as 1> Surf the web, 2> Play games, 3> Email, (4> for phones, make calls and maybe text). Hell, I’ve worked with computers for over 30 years. I don’t give a crap about doing anything more than using it for those purposes. I note he doesn’t play that argument with me anymore.

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