I was recently asked by a relative to get his new iPad up and running. Grand, I thought. This’ll be pretty straightforward. Bung in his email address and password and he’ll be good to go. Erm…not so fast. Apple being Apple, they make life a little difficult for you when you don’t want to do things their way. In this case, they don’t like people setting up iTunes accounts and using their Apps store without parting with credit card details or buying one of their iTunes cards.
It turns out that if you try to get an Apple ID whilst using a computer, you will run into this problem. However, if you use the iPhone or iPad itself to sign up, you get around the problem. It is a pain in the backside of course because typing out names, addresses, postcodes etc. on a tablet is not one of its more enjoyable features. Anyhoo, that’s how it’s done.
It also (ahem) comes in useful if you need to set up an iTunes account in other countries.