I may have discovered another piece of the bigger picture required to solve the problem many of us are stillv having with updating our iPad apps.
For starters... thanks to all the iPad users who contributed solutions that worked for them. Without your detailed accounts of these fixes I wouldn't have had a clue where to start.
I won't try to summarize all the various contributions. It would be a long list and I'd undoubtedly miss something, leave someone out, or misspell someone's handle.
Suffice to say I read every single posting on this thread and tried every one of them; all to no avail. The badge on my iPad2's App Store still showed 5 missing updates.
Somewhere down the thread an intrepid iPad user (wfpIndiana) planted the seed that the solution might have something to do with clearing the email address on record for iCloud. In short... I tried wfpIndiana's fix and it worked!
In my case the solution was a bit more complicated. Since I bought my iPad 2 (a few years ago now) I've had occasional problems because the first Apple ID I set up used an email address that wasn't an Apple account.
Those hassles were resolved after I created a new Apple ID using me.com. That left me with some apps that were purchased/installed under my old, non-Apple ID and some that were installed using my newer me.com ID.
After Apple released one of the more recent IOS updates to iCloud, they sent us all emails telling us about our new email accouunts they'd created for us on their new iClound.com email domain. I ignored that one for quite a while.
Finally about a month ago, I gave my new iiCloud account a password and added it as the primary account listed on my iPad's iClound control panel. In retrospect... that's when all my problems with the App Store started.
So when I followed wfpIndiana's lead and deleted my iClound.com account from iCloud, my me.com account popped back into place as primary iClound email address. Then I restarted my iPad2 and gave the App Store another try.
THIS TIME... My Apps populated and told me that 5 apps on my OTHER email account (NOT me.com) needed to be updated. (!!) I logged out of the me.com Apple Store account. Logged in again with the right account. And all five "mystery apps" finally updates. HOOOOORAY!!!!!!!!
What I think I've leared from this episode is the problem Apple's trying to solve for a significant number of iPad users isn't as simple as making a fix to IOS. It's a dreaded "systems integration" problem involving iCloud, iCloud.com, me.com, the Apple Store, and all the OTHER email addresses we've used to create Apple ID's using email domains that aren't Apple's.
My guess it it'll be a while before Apple can undo the damage they did when they involuntarily created iCloud email accounts for all Apple OS, IOS and iTunes users; without full understanding of what would happen when these new identities were inserted as primary iCloud identies ON TOP OF older me.com accounts.
Till then, we've got another fix to resolve the iPad Apps update delimma for more iPad users.
I STILL LOVE MY IPAD! Tablet citics love to tell us all about the features it lacks.
The truth remain: iPad apps are carefully reviewed before they're accepted for publication in the App Store. As a result, iPad apps have CONSISTENTLY higher quality then Andriod apps. And it's still a "safe place" for kids to go & look for software toys. (NO ****!)
Apple's iPad isn't just "about" style and design. IT'S ABOUT QUALITY!
I hope apple software engineers who read this wiill give that some serious thought and do another round of QA to root out possible "systems integration" problems before their next major updates to Mac OS & IOS.
Dr. Bob Blomeyer