Over the past week or two, Apple has released updates for El Capitan, iOS 9, TV OS and Watch OS. The question that everyone always asks when these updates appear on their devices is “Do I really have to do this?” The answer to this in many instances in YES
The nature of the updates that have come out most recently are what we call minor updates. They are simply revisions and repairs to the current version already running on your device. How do we know that? The third number is the only part that has changed. OS X El Capitan updated from 10.11.4 to 10.11.5, iOS 9.3.1 went to iOS 9.3.2 and so fourth. These kinds of updates are critical updates to run on your devices because they most often fix security concerns and provide bug fixes. When these updates come out it’s admittedly not always at the most convenient time for a user, so one great feature with most of the updates is that you can schedule for them to happen when your work flow will not be interrupted. You can easily set your computer, iPhone or iPad to run these updates in the middle of the night when your not using the device. It should be noted that for these settings to work in most cases you do need to have the device plugged into power.
We always stress the importance of ensuring you have backed up your data before performing any kind of update to your software, but what many of us might not think about is compatibility within Apple installed software. Recently I performed the above updates on my iPhone and other iOS devices as well as my home computer. I rely heavily on iCloud and syncing of information and files so that no matter what computer or device I am on and I have access to much of my basic information, including my notes. I utilize the notes program for a lot of things, from basic grocery notes to meeting notes. Most notes I only need to keep for a short period of time and delete often, but in recent weeks I discovered that several of my notes had either disappeared altogether or were not updating to my MacBook Air. I verified that iCloud had copies of all the notes on my phone, I could make a new note in the cloud and it would show up on my phone, I could log onto my home computer and find my notes but nothing was updating to my MacBook Air. I deleted my iCloud and re-added it to my machine, turned notes on and all on my iPhone and nothing worked.
Upon digging through several pages of support information and lots of frustration I discovered a critical error made on my part (one that I warn customers about all the time). I failed to pay attention to the little warnings as I hastily clicked through updates. One of the updates was specifically for notes and I paid absolutely no attention to the fact that there was a little warning box that said El Capitan would be required to view the notes upon completion of this upgrade. So now, until I get around to updating my MacBook Air, I’ll have to remember to either grab my phone when I need to make a note or to log into my iCloud account directly. These kinds of updates mishaps are most common with third party applications, so I gave no thought to the idea that I could or would loose access to my notes. Lesson learned on my part.