Apple Thoughts: iPad Restore: Someone Please Explain This To Me

I admit it: when it comes to the world of Apple devices, there's still a lot I don't know. Some things make intuitive sense, while others I find baffling. This is the latter.

Today I returned my black 32 GB iPad 2 and exchanged it for a 64 GB model. I've become quite enamoured with the iPad and am excited to use it for photography so I wanted to have the extra storage. The local Apple store here gave me some amazing customer service - I'll write more about that in another post - and I was able to upgrade to the more expensive product fairly easily. Before returning the 32 GB iPad 2 to the store, I did one final sync to back it up, then I reset it back to factory specs before boxing it up. When I connected the 64 GB iPad 2, I opted to restore the image I'd created just a few hours earlier. The results of the restore weren't very impressive.

First, rather than the three screens of icons that I very carefully organized over a period of two weeks, I have ten screens of apps. It will take me at least an hour to put everything back where I want it. Only four of my dozen or so folders are there, and they only have one app each. Next, after I connected to my Wi-Fi network - it needed the password, which I found odd - I was peppered with half a dozen password prompts. Exactly what kind of a restore is this? Other than putting my background wallpaper on there, this seems like a poor "backup" that was taken of my previous iPad. I watched as every app was installed again - though than. I can understand somewhat the password issue - it's a security precaution so someone doesn't clone your device and get access to all your accounts. But it's a hassle for the user. If my backup was encrypted in iTunes, would it still work this way?

Am I missing something, or does Apple really not understand the expectation that a backup should restore a device to the exact same state it was in at the time of the backup?