But every word is true! About three years ago, or whenever the iPad Mini came out, I ordered a real-wood cover/protector for the back of the iPad, because I like wood.
I put it on the iPad just after I took it out of the box it came from Apple in, so there shouldn't even be a thumbprint on it, let alone a scratch!
But I never anticipated taking the cover off—I do remember thinking "Hmm, this is gonna be a bitch to remove," as I applied the wood to the iPad.
I had done a brilliant job with applying the wood guard, so it looked really, really good—not fake veneer, but actual wood.
But unlike the nice little video they put up on how to remove your cover, the hair dryer trick did nothing to help remove the cover.
The iPad with the cover on looked something like this (I forgot to take a photo of it before I started to remove the cover; this is a random image from the Internet, but it looks very like mine):
I tried the hair dryer trick, but it didn't help anything. I had to use my thumbnails—and completely fucked them in the process. It's hard to even type, my fingers hurt so much. As you can see from the next photo, the wood skin did not peel easily. I had to pull up little pieces and they kept breaking off in my fingers.
I did not want to use anything metal to help me peel the skin up, but I found a stiff plastic rectangle made to remove bubbles from screen guards, and it worked well—better than my ragged fingernails—and didn't scratch the iPad. But look at this mess, about half an hour in:
It got worse. This as about half an hour after the last photo. I was dripping sweat by this time; I kid you not (the little plastic rectangle at bottom right):
It took at least another hour to get to the stage in the next photo. I know that is hard to believe, but it's true. I really had to be careful not to scratch the iPad in any way. It was difficult, but with patient peeling and scraping, I was finally able to remove most of the skin:
But look at all the adhesive residue. It was a bitch to remove—that alone took half an hour and a lot of bicep power:
