After submitting analytic logs from my iPad to capture the problem as it occurs, I've had fairly regular calls from Apple support for the past week to follow up. They assure me that their engineers are working on identifying the root cause. This is encouraging, but they have yet to mention any proposed solutions or suggest an ETA. Looks like slow and steady, and a concerted effort from all of us on both sides of the pond, is the only way to effectively deal with this.
I have been pleasantly surprised at the level of attention from Apple, considering my iPad has been out of warranty for several years and never had an extended warranty. Perhaps they see that I own several Apple products and that makes some kind of difference. I'm not sure. Yeah, I drank the Apple Kool-Aid a long time ago, but it has lately started to leave a bit of a sour aftertaste.
In the meantime, I bought a new iPad mini 4 for a killer Black Friday deal at Best Buy for just $249. As would be expected, it's lighter, thinner, faster and the screen is much crisper. It arrived with iOS 11.3 installed. I was reticent to upgrade, considering the way it killed my iPad mini 2. But since 11.3 was the version that killed the iPhone screens, drained the batteries, and overheated the device, I figured it was a crap shoot either way. So I went ahead and upgraded it to 12.1. So far, it's been working fine. But a customer should never have to make these kind of irreversible decisions due to expired firmware signatures. I hope Apple's cars don't have this kind of upgrade method.
TECH NOTE: If you have to run Analytics (Preferences > Privacy > Analytics) to send logs to Apple, you of course have to be online to do it. But it apparently has to be either a direct cellular or WiFi connection - it won't send if your iPad is tethered directly to your iPhone hotspot via WiFi or Bluetooth. But you CAN tether your iPhone to your laptop and then share the Internet connection from the iPhone to the laptop WiFi, then connect the iPad to the shared laptop WiFi. Then it will work. They didn't tell me that - had to figure it out for myself. Such fun! In case you're wondering why I wouldn't just use regular house WiFi, I work on the road 24/7. My WiFi IS my iPhone.
}:@(
