Saving your senses

I was very interested to see your reply to Adam Caterson’s iOS SOS letter about his iPhone games (“Is my high score safe?”) in MF277.

I have a similar problem with my iPad Air, on which I have a lot of games that I play from time to time. Some are from the App Store, some from Big Fish Games and some were free via AppGratis, while others, such as Tengami and Monument Valley, were downloaded as a result of favourable MacFormat reviews.

Earlier this year, my iPad Air stopped responding, but – with great difficulty – was restored. However, as a result, I lost all progress in my games and had to start from scratch!

We were abroad at the time this happened and I didn’t have my iMac to restore from, only my husband’s MacBook Air. Could (or should?) I have waited until I was at home again and restored my game progress from the synchronised backup on my iMac? If this is the case, I’d be most grateful for a step-by-step walkthrough. The restoring of my iPad was made much harder by its total refusal to respond to the closedown instruction until we worked out that the touch zones had actually moved! Susan Platter Matt Bolton says: Wow, sounds like your iPad really had issues! As we said at the time, this partly depends on the game – some save your progress in iCloud or other network services, so don’t need backing up as such to still save your progress. Others will indeed be safe when backed up with iTunes on your Mac. Many will also be fine when simply backed up using iCloud backup wirelessly, but not quite all, in our experience. The most secure option is to use something like iExplorer or PhoneView before restoring – these apps let you browse your iOS device’s files like you would on your Mac, and individually copy and back up any game saves that are particularly important to you, so that you can place them back into the device yourself after restoring your device. appear to exist whatsoever in the UK on Google. Can you enlighten me?

And secondly, the ‘5 of the best… third-party keyboards’ mini group test: I’m one of the fortunate owners of Logitech’s K750 solar keyboard for iMac, which not only recharges in bright light, but is almost identical to Apple’s item in terms of colour, design and operation. It’s perfect, except that it isn’t backlit (this is only a minor irritation, though!). It cost around £70-80. In my opinion, it’s still the best third-party iMac keyboard by a country mile; it’s such a shame that Logitech no longer sell the item… Phil Hardacre Christopher Phin says: Some Griffin stuff can turn out to be quite hard to find in the UK – but we don’t always know this when we review it. However, as we write this, you can find the Lightning-equipped iTrip Auto for sale at mobilefun.co.uk. Griffin actually has its own eBay store too, which ships to the UK.

And yes, the K750 is indeed a bit of a modern classic. You can still find it and its cut-down version (the K760) available to buy, though, for a bit cheaper than when they were new. Staples (staples.co.uk) still had the K750 at the time of writing – maybe you should buy a spare, Phil!