Why are new iPads so hard to setup?
 

My wife's old iPad gave up, so I got her a new one.
Turning it on only gets me frustrated. I can get as far as the 'Connect to a network' and that's about it.
It won't connect to our net and won't allow me to get to the settings to add the WEP password.
What gives?

Find a six year old kid, or even younger in some cases.

They aren't. However, they have started being more secure (GOOD! About time!) so they don't like to connect to WEP.

WEP security on your network is like protecting your house from a pervert with a telescope by wrapping it in saran wrap. Change/update to WPA2 w/ preshared keys. Still crackable, but a lot more work/time involved.

Thanks for the help guys!

Uggh - but how do you opt out of their cloud experience?

I don't want it, but evidently once I put my appleid in to get some apps I get harassed every 30-90 seconds to sign in to my cloud. And I most certainly have never clouded, condom or not...

At least once I've considered throwing the thing through the wall. Maybe this was a "customer retention" ploy to grab the thrown-through-the-wall market?

Just turn off the cloud and it stops bothering you. I actually use it for a few things I want on all devices like calendar and contacts.

Yup, it's actually highly configurable.

I have everything, data backup, picture backup, syncable apps, all turned off because I hate "the cloud" but I do have messaging and calls enabled.

So when I get a text or call on my phone I can reply / answer on the phone itself, or my iPad, or my laptop, or either of the other two desktops that I have enabled access.

It's actually really handy. My office is in the house and pretty much any room I'm in has a device that will let me take a call.

Hell. I even enabled the wife's iBrator, although that one always seems to be in silent mode. :D

Kinda hard to talk while rattling your hoo ha anyway - so I've heard.

I really thought that I did turn off the cloud.

Off to try again. I think my problem (of many) is that I have multiple apple existences with home and work devices.

You may be referring to an annoying "bug" in my opinion, where if you don't renter your credit card information for the App Store it will keep saying to log in. You don't need to log in, you need to go to the options menus and renter credit card in the Wallet and Applepay section. It will auto-pull all the info from apple but can't get the 3 digit security code. Hope that helps. Why it says to "log in" is beyond me.

When I got my new one, called Apple support. They explained how to clone it to my old one.