As I began typing this, my iPad was having 115 apps installed. The scary thing is that I chose *not to install* quite a bunch of apps that were on it before I wiped it.

Oh yes, I haven’t mentioned that: I wiped my iPad.

I chose to do so, as it happens, because once again I fell afoul of Apple’s moronic unresettable restrictions passcode. I had obviously set up a restrictions password to block a few things from the kids, but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what I used. Not my ATM pin codes; not my old ATM pins; not any combination of my kids’ dates/months/years of birth; not even the LAPD code for criminally insane (5150 – as used often by Eddie Van Halen).

Apple have chosen to prevent users from resetting or recovering restrictions passcodes; in fact even Apple “geniuses”/service/tech departments can’t do it. It actually cannot be done – without jailbreaking one’s device, or engaging some l33t h4x0r skills. I tried the latter (which involves editing the hex of various files within the backup), but the required strings to be edited simply did not exist within my backup. So. Stuffed then.

Self-righteous types on the Apple support forums lend their support to Apple’s approach, attacking people who post looking for solutions to this, framing it up as the person’s failing and stupidity, and a necessary and sensible bit of security so one’s kids or a thief can’t bypass the restrictions passcode.

However…

Anyone who doesn’t care about the data on an iThing (let’s say, just for argument’s sake, the mooted child or thieving villain) *can* easily bypass a restrictions password, by doing what I did today: restoring it as a new device. All the same apps can then be installed; only data stored solely on the iThing is lost.

So it seems to me that the *only* person the unrecoverable, unresettable restrictions passcode causes problems for, is the legitimate owner of the device, who doesn’t want to jeopardise their data.

Slow clap, Apple. Well bloody done.