Restoring Apps From iCloud
However, as it turns out, if you have app syncing off, and then restore from an iTunes backup, what happens is this: you get a freshly restored iPad with all of your data, and exactly zero apps installed. Apparently, the ONLY way to get them back is to painstakingly go through your purchased list, figure out what you actually had installed, and bring them back one by one. And if you happen to forget something, you can end up with a lot of orphaned data in your Other section where the app’s data still exists on your iPad but the app doesn’t (the only way to delete that data is to magically figure out which app it might be, reinstall it, and then delete it again). Moreover, once you turn off sync apps, there’s no evident way to turn it back on again without completely wiping the list of apps that are already on your device and starting fresh.
