Drawbacks of never syncing iPad to iTunes?

What are the drawbacks of never syncing an iPad with iTunes? 

I don't know why it would take 6 hours to back up your iPad - unless you have the 64GB device and you have it loaded to the gills with content already. It should not take that long.
You can backup your iPad to your computer and transfer all purchases into iTunes and you should not have to restore the device to factory settings. When you connect the iPad to your computer and launch iTunes, right click on the iPad name on the left sidebar and select Transfer Purchases. That will put all of the apps and purchased content into Tunes on your Mac. Let that process complete and then right click on the device name again and select Backup this time. Let that process complete.
Now go into all of the different tabs of iTunes, Info, Apps, Music, Photos, etc, etc, and make sure that you have selected all of the content that you want to sync with the iPad. Put checkmarks in all of the headings as well - Sync Apps, Sync Music, etc.... Then click on Sync in the lower right corner.
If something goes wrong - or if you forget an app or a playlist or album - or anything at all - just go back into the corresponding tab in iTunes, select the item to sync - and click on Apply in the lower right corner.
After you do all of this - you can set up Wi-Fi syncing and it should go without issue. You can backup to iCloud or to iTunes as you see fit. Personally, I am not relying solely on iCloud yet. I do backup to iCloud, but I still back up to iTunes on my Mac as well - and I use Time Machine to backup all of that up.

Similar Messages

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    http://www.apple.com/support/ipad/assistant/itunes/
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    http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1591
    iOS: Device not recognized in iTunes for Windows
    http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1538
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    http://support.apple.com/kb/ts1814
    iTunes for Windows: Device Sync Tests
    http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4235
    IOS: Syncing with iTunes
    http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1386
    Apple - Support - iPad - Syncing
    http://www.apple.com/support/ipad/syncing/
    iTunes 10.5 and later: Troubleshooting iTunes Wi-Fi Syncing
    http://support.apple.com/kb/ts4062
     Cheers, Tom

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