Apple iPad Initial Setup – Drivers, iTunes A/c & Sync Data

Congratulations on your Purchase of the Apple iPad – The device which can help you stay connected while you are at rest, driving in a public transport or when the Laptop battery is empty. The Apple iPad once unboxed would give you give a look of a Strong Aluminum Unibody casing which is not only beautiful but also rigit which means that the product seems to be tough for normal damages.

Initially you need to remove the plastic wrapping which comes on the device which won’t be taking more than a few seconds, following which you will be pressing the Power Button on the top of the iPad which will start off the device. Next on the screen you will find that the device needs you to connect it to the iTunes Software to get started. This is because, Apple wants you to Register the device with their website along with some email address and then also Sync Music & Movies to the device.

In the iPad box you will be finding a Data Cable and a Charging Brick. Connect the Data Cable to the iPad & your Computer [Windows 7 in my case]. Next the PC would start searching for drivers based on Preconfigured driver folders on the computer.

Next once the drivers are found, automatically configured and installed on your computer be it Windows or Mac based. Next the iTunes software would display you a screen to Register your Apple iPad as shown below.

Click on the Continue on the next window which shows you the Apple iPad Software License Agreement.

Next you will be asked to connect your iTunes Account with a Apple ID which can either be a @mac.com email address or any email address which you need to enter. Since we already had a account for our Apple iPhone, we went ahead and entered the Login credentials.

Next iTunes will ask you to confirm if you would like to continue with a 60 days full trail of ‘Mobile Me’ application which would send you push email, push calendar and push contacts. Don’t forget the paid service costs you around 99$ a year, hence its better to just select ‘Not Now’ option and go ahead.

The next option would be the ‘Set Up your iPad’ option where you will be asked to complete the setup as a new iPad or else restore a previously synced Apple iPad.

Following this, you will be asked to enter the Name of the iPad which would be displayed on the device. You can also configure if you want the iTunes to Automatically sync all the songs, photos & applications. These would be backed up from the ‘My Pictures’ folder.

The next screen would display you the confirmation page of the Apple iPad on the iTunes, with the summary of the device information like Capacity, Software version ie OS, Serial Number etc. You can set other optional options like Automatically opening iTunes when the iPad is connected to your computer, Checking for updates of the Operating System, Restoring all the data of the Device in case of any issues etc.

Next on the very same window you will find different tabs like info, Apps, Music, Movies, TV Shows, Podcasts, Books, Photos all of which are different options and most of which would allow you to automatically synchronize their data to the Apple iPad and vice versa in the form of backups. We had over 80 applications in our Apple iPhone which were all synced with the iPad, which is quite good because many of these were paid ones and we didn’t have to repurchase them again. While if you go for sync photos, it will optimize all the photos for the ipad and then transfer them making the job whole lot easier.

We can say that the whole setup won’t be taking in more than 15 minutes of time for a first time user of Apple product because the whole setup is almost wizard based and you just need to press the continue button in the most cases and get access to the device which would show you the following screen once everything is done perfectly.