Have resisted upgrading to IOS 9 on my ipad 3 as it was running fine but finally relented this evening.

I decided it was time to sync my ipad with my macbook so plugged it into itunes and up popped the software upgrade noification as usual.

So i synced/backed up my ipad and downloaded the upgrade in readiness.
I also backed up my macbook to time machine for good measure.

I am running Snow leopard 10.6.8 on my mac and made sure i had the latest version of itunes before the upgrade.
So far so good.

Started the upgrade and it appears to have gone well (haven’t tried the ipad yet!) – until i tried to connect to itunes afterwards.

A pop-up said i needed to download the latest version of itunes
Hmmm – thought i had that. Checked for itunes update – yep latest version is installed??

It appears that ios9 wont connect to the latest version of itunes (that snow leopard can run – 11.4)
No – it needs itunes 12.3 which means i need to upgrade my macbook to the latest operating system to get it.
I have no intention of upgrading to el capitan as i know it will screw up my photoshop and illustrator cs6 (and possibly others)

Really really p***ed off that itunes would allow me (indeed tell me) to upgrade my ios when itunes itself is not compatible and neither is my operating system

So now i have an ipad i cant connect to itunes to sync or back up 👿

I have totally had it with apple!

Anybody got any advice on what to do?

Nothing you can do now unfortunately. If you’d done it earlier you could have rolled back to ios8 but it’s been killed off now.

Had you of updated over wifi rather than plugging in then I think you could still talk to iTunes 11.4 but if you update via iTunes then you can’t do it. No use to you now but in case you have other I devices might benefit you, just don’t plug them in.

Will iTunes still sync with the iPad over wifi? You do have cloud backup and with the new music service I think you can add your iTunes library to the cloud and download to the iPad – given where Apple has gone with iTunes I don’t think it’s much of an issue really, I probably haven’t connected anything to iTunes for a few years.

Upgrade to Yosemite, and use the jre 6 from Apple. Runs cs6 fine on mine, and many others report the same.

El capitan has also been reported to run with the updated jre6 installer, although there are security risks associated with it.

You should also be able to downgrade your iPad back to iOS 8 as I believe it is still signed, but that may have changed. You may need to find a friend with a more up to date version of iTunes to achieve this though

Anybody got any advice on what to do?

Update your MacBook OS.

As above, absolutely no need to physically plug an iPad/iPhone into your computer any more; everything can be done through the cloud. Apple are no longer signing 8.4.1 so you can’t downgrade iOS anyway.

I have run CS6 fine on Yosemite but unless you’ve previously downloaded it with your Apple ID it’s no longer available on the App Store. I had a quick Google though and it looks like most people are saying CS6 will run on El Capitan (most people who say it doesn’t work are talking about the beta version). You will need to install the older (less secure) Java 6 though although a poster on this page http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/180899/adobe-illustrator-cs6-with-java-8 claims CS6 only checks for the presence of Java (and doesn’t actually require it) so it’s possible to trick it with a workaround.

Adobe CC is great though – if you use it professionally I would consider upgrading.

So now i have an ipad i cant connect to itunes to sync or back up

I have totally had it with apple!

Anybody got any advice on what to do?
Hardly Apple’s fault their very latest version of their mobile OS needs the very latest version of iTunes to interface with, which in turn needs an up-to-date OS to be installed, not one that’s six years old; even the last update was four years ago.

Snow leopard is Old. You can’t expect it to remain fully compatible with later versions of Mac and iTunes os’s forever. How does Yosemite screw up your photo’s anyway? I’ve got a 2008 MacBook ant it runs fine, in fact the best it’s ever run, on Yosemite and my photos were not screwed up as far as I can tell.

Photoshop, not his photos.

Snow leopard is Old. You can’t expect it to remain fully compatible with later versions of Mac and iTunes os’s forever.

This is true, but I too would be highly miffed if itunes prompted to upgrade the ipad to an os version that it itself couldn’t talk to! What on earth would be the point of offering to break stuff for you? That’s rubbish.

If ios9 needs itunes 12.3, only 12.3 should offer to do the upgrade, making sure you update stuff in an order that doesn’t break anything, especially if there is no way to get back to something that works.

Damn and I was hoping iOS 9 would work with OS9 on my G4 tower – Apple you barstewards!!

Unfortunately if you choose to run older software you have to accept that your are kind of stuck in that era for all other devices. Upgrade one device and it all falls apart.

phiiiiil – Member
This is true, but I too would be highly miffed if itunes prompted to upgrade the ipad to an os version that it itself couldn’t talk to! What on earth would be the point of offering to break stuff for you? That’s rubbish.

If ios9 needs itunes 12.3, only 12.3 should offer to do the upgrade, making sure you update stuff in an order that doesn’t break anything, especially if there is no way to get back to something that works.

This.

Given your situation I see you having the following choices;

1) backup iPad to Cloud and no longer sync to Mac
2) upgrade OSX as far as you can whilst still being able to run your software (looks like Yosemiti according to above)

Running old kit and OS is always a juggle, my ipad1 was stuck on ios5 and the issue with syncing was apps as latest versions became incompatible with the device. In the end I lost Facebook as the old version of the app was removed from the App Store.

is is true, but I too would be highly miffed if itunes prompted to upgrade the ipad to an os version that it itself couldn’t talk to! What on earth would be the point of offering to break stuff for you? That’s rubbish.

Except OP doesn’t need to plug his iPad into his Mac, he just wants to.

When you “go Apple” you need to accept that there are two ways of doing things:
1) The Apple way
2) The way of immense pain & frustration

If you go down route 1 your life will be stress-free and joyous 🙂 If you choose route 2… you probably should’ve bought a PC

Thanks for all the replies on this

I understand that snow leopard is old but as i was prompted to do the upgrade i kinda thought it would work – phiiiil is spot on

Having thought about it, Its not a massive deal that i cant connect to itunes.
I can use icloud to sync contacts etc and I have itunes match so music is also not an issue.

My one issue so far is that i have audiobooks in itunes on my mac. As far as i can tell these aren’t available in itunes match.

So whats the best way to get audiobooks to my ipad?

As suggested i am sure there is no need these days to actually connect to my mac but its just the way i have been doing it for years.

I turned on icloud once and ended up with duplicates of contacts on my phone so promptly turned it off again.

I’m sure a few hints and tips from the helpful stw’ists will soon have me up and running.

(mutters)Still a bit miffed that apple steered me into this without any warning that it wouldn’t work though!

Apparently this method will work except if you bought the audiobooks from iTunes
http://www.macworld.com/article/1164237/put_your_audiobooks_in_the_cloud_with_itunes_match.html

Ok – so i’m really not liking this ios9 on my ipad – its slowed it down a fair bit. 🙁 but it seems im stuck with it now.

In a rather desperate attempt to get things back to normal i decided to reset my ipad to factory settings and ios7 – then i could connect to itunes and do the update over the air which would allow me to connect to itunes again –

No! reseting the ipad just wiped everything off and gave me a new ipad with …… ios9!
Only now i no longer have all of my stuff on there and no way of restoring it from backup as it still cant connect to itunes – b****cks!

So my options are leave everything as it is and get used to the fact my ipad isn’t very good anymore OR take the chance on updating my OS to Mavericks – so at least i will be able to restore all of my stuff back on to it (albeit with ios9)

So my question is:
If i downloaded the trial version (30 day trial) of carbon copy cloner and cloned my drive as it is to a 2tb drive and then updated my OS to Mountain Lion or Mavericks (both appear to be available on ebay).
Should i run into issues with either of these (apps and hardware not playing ball etc) could my drive and everything on it (and i mean everything) be put back exactly as it was prior to cloning it?

Is this an easy thing to do?

Is it worth it?

Can i be bothered?

I dont want to go to el capitan – its too new and i dont think my ageing macbook would cope too well.

Maybe i should just leave it alone.

Feel like i’m rambling – sorry

i’m really not liking this ios9 on my ipad – its slowed it down a fair bit.
….
my ipad isn’t very good anymore

Odd. I have iOS9 on my iPad 3 and I can’t say I’ve noticed any slow down at all (compared to iOS8).

Is there any particular bit that feels worse now?

Mine mostly gets used for web, email, YouTube, Facebook, playing games and reading magazines – and they all seem very much the same.

You’ll get used to iOS 9, I can’t comment on speed on the older iPad though.

You don’t need Carbon Copy Cloner (or SuperDuper which I’ve used) to make a backup of your iMac. You just need an external drive and do a full time machine back up, time machine is a standard programme included with the Mac OS. If the OS upgrade bombs you can restore from the Time Machine backup. You only need a backup device / drive the same size as what you’ve used on the iMac – so possibly less than the 2tb. Note the backup could take a long time ! Yiu should backup regularly btw !

Yes personally I would upgrade the OS on the iMac all the way to El Capitan but you can stop at Mavericks (or whatever is required for the iTunes) and then sync / restore your iPad

Feel like i’m rambling – sorry

Don’t worry about it. My view on Apple these days is the company is not what it once was! Dare I say it, but since Steve Jobs died, the company’s focus has shifted somewhat. Certainly Any professionals that rely on an old OS and software for anything are completely ignored these days, but not only that, all updates are pushed onto the user with a minimum of beta testing. I’m always reluctant to update to the latest OS too quickly (sat typing this on MacBook Pro on Mavericks, which I only recently updated from Mountain Lion) as both my iPad Air and my iPhone 6 have been reduced to expensive paper weights pretty much since installing iOS9 on them!

I long for the heady days of OS stability, low resource demands and everything “just working” as it should when Snow Leopard was prevalent. Personally, if I was using a Mac for any kind of creative work these days, it would have a clean install of Snow Leopard and I wouldn’t connect my iPhone or an iPad to it ever!

@ grahams –

Is there any particular bit that feels worse now?

It just has a general lag to it now – it used to do everything pretty much immediately – now if i press a screen button it can take a second or two.
Was trying to edit a photo this morning and it was just so unresponsive i gave up

@ jambalaya –

If the OS upgrade bombs you can restore from the Time Machine backup.

Yiu should backup regularly btw

I do a time machine backup about once a fortnight.
It really hadn’t occurred to me that time machine also backs up the OS. So even if i changed the OS, a restore from time machine would put the original OS back?

@ mboy –
I absolutely agree. My Macbook is a 2009 model running 10.6.8 and it all works without issues at all.
I can record on it – i can edit photos and videos and i can mess around with illustrator etc and i can surf porn er… peruse the internet all without issue.

My ipad was also running ios7 without issue.

Like you, i never jump in to upgrades generally but from the reviews i read, ios9 seemed pretty stable and there were a couple of apps that i wanted that wouldn’t run on ios7.

Apple just doesn’t feel good to me anymore.

@hunterst yes I think time machine restore will do what you need. If the machine totally bombs you first do the <cmd>R restart (I need to check that online) then the time machine restore.

My experience with Apple upgrades has been very good, I upgrade OSX and iOS on the day they are released, never had any issues aside from a hiccup with gmail on Mavericks but it worked fine through Safari. Mac Mini 2009, MBP 2012, iPhone5/6and iPad Air2 and Mini retains all run fine on El Capitan / iOS9. All this and the upgrades are free.

You read of people of the forums who don’t upgrade or wipe their machine clean for “fresh install” but I don’t bother with any of that as I would say do most people

Just updated my macbook air 2010 to el capitan – I was mulling over changing it as the last 2 os upgrades have made it worse to the point of the lag being pretty bad and vmware won’t even run.

Happy to report it’s given it a new lease of life, it’s as quick as when it was new and VM ware now runs albeit not as well as it did under the 10/11 os’s.

If your CS6 will work on it i’d try the upgrade first.

Ok, so I just updated to ios9 on iPhone 4s, and iPad 2.

Snow leopard 10.6.8 running iTunes 11.4 synced just fine.

Not sure what I did differently than the OP, but I am finding ios9 faster on my (aging) devices!