Why is there no airdrop for iPad 3??

I vaguely remember something about a device having WiFi connections to two different devices, with those two not already being connected to the same network, eg, device A being logged into WiFi network alpha but device B not being logged into that network. One example would be an Eye-Fi card, for a long time it was not possible to have an iOS connected to a 'normal' WiFi network and to the card at the same time (you could let the Eye-Fi card connect to the WiFi network but you'd need to physically connect the card to a computer to tell the Eye-Fi card about the network and give it credentials, which is not always very practical, or you might not be allowed to.

Having a WiFi chip that is able to connect to two 'networks' can solve this problem (I know Bluetooth 3 was supposed to leverage WiFi for much better speed but I don't know how the WiFi component was handled there). If this is what Airdrop is based on with maybe the help of Bluetooth, it makes sense to restrict it to devices with such a chip (yeah, Apple could implement a second version that only works within one WiFi network, ie, both devices logged into the same WiFi network, but people would then equally complain why the third gen iPad has this limitations. And Airdrop has that notion to it that it works just everywhere not requiring both devices to log into the same WiFi network. And by keeping the device connected to two WiFi 'networks', you don't interrupt anything while using Airdrop.

To make this clear, the above might only be conjecture on my part or it might be some rough recollections, I can't say for sure.

And I've actually seen it in action and it works as well as the iPad Air it sent and received from.

There is a program out there which puts airdrop on iPa d 3 and it works.

Yeah, here is the AirDrop enabler that turns on the iPad 3's airdrop. Of course it's not supported by Apple since they dropped the feature in that model for whatever reason:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zm1Txf0nrPY

So you'll buy the new iPad.

I tried to post where it comes from but my post was deleted.

I seriously don't understand why people here are trying to justify by saying the hardware is different.. Both has Bluetooth 4.0.. If Apple wants, it can use that to do the transfers. 4.0 supports transfers upto 20mbps.

If iPad 3 doesn't support it, then how does 3rd party apps like instashare do the Job.? It's just that apple wants people to keep upgrading.. iPad 2, to an extend, but iPad 3rd Gen! Seriously?

True man wrote:

I seriously don't understand why people here are trying to justify by saying the hardware is different.. Both has Bluetooth 4.0.. If Apple wants, it can use that to do the transfers. 4.0 supports transfers upto 20mbps.

It's not the BT that's at issue. It's the WiFi. Airdrop dos not transfer files over BT. See the post that was marked as the answer to this thread.

iPad

True man wrote:

I seriously don't understand why people here are trying to justify by saying the hardware is different.. Both has Bluetooth 4.0.. If Apple wants, it can use that to do the transfers. 4.0 supports transfers upto 20mbps.

If iPad 3 doesn't support it, then how does 3rd party apps like instashare do the Job.? It's just that apple wants people to keep upgrading.. iPad 2, to an extend, but iPad 3rd Gen! Seriously?

Yeah, 4th Gen models support "dual band/dual stream 802.11n on both the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz frequencies rather than the lowly 2.4GHz connection". I mean clearly that is important because we all know that Apple users everywhere would have been up in arms if their Airdroped picture took 0.2 seconds to transfer rather than 0.1 seconds. We know that Apple was just trying to protect everyone from that horrible 0.1 second delay. Get it straight, man!

My concern is simple. I just need to transfer pics from my iPhone 5 to the iPad 3.

When Bluetooth can be used and both device has a powerful Bluetooth 4.0, why jail it for the users, this is between iDevices I am talking about.

You can do this through iPhoto and with several apps in the App Store.

I understand (after reading the entire discussion up to this point) the hardware 'limitation' that prevents the full implementation of the "AirDrop" product. It is clear to me however that this thread has long since evolved from the specifics included in the OP's question (i.e. the OP's question was asked and ANSWERED). If I were to take the liberty of summarizing the common theme(s) presented here: an 'Air Drop Lite' feature would be very desirable!! The hypothetical 'lite' version would offer the ability to transfer the same files that the full-blown AirDrop is able to, but at a limited rate of transfer that is determined by the hardware of the devices involved in the transferring of the files. I think that it is great that there are 3rd-party apps that can do this with a select number of file types (e.g. photos), but I, and many others, prefer the in-house approach; one main reason for this for me is the seamless integration with iOS and there are no ads taking up precious screen real estate urging you to upgrade, etc. I should note that these are not the only reasons that I prefer an in-house method of wireless file transfers.

One specific scenario in which I could have benefited from this feature was a .pdf file transfer from my iPhone 5 to my iPad 3 (or more precisely, iPad 3rd-generation) so that I could read the document on a larger screen. It would have been nice to just slide my finger and turn on the Bluetooth and accomplish this using the identical method on both devices (not fancy/3rd-party app workarounds) with the Airdrop feature!

I have to admit that I personally have not had enough experience with the AirDrop feature, but I have noticed through this discussion that WiFi is needed in addition to Bluetooth to accomplish this? Maybe my complaint lies with the feature as a whole then. Having the option to wirelessly transfer files in fast and secure(?) method through AirDrop as it stands now is great, but my preference would be to have an alternate option that spans more devices (possibly even non-Apple) and can transfer the file wirelessly without Wifi (i.e. Bluetooth only)! I do not know the specific technical requirements of doing this wih a variety of file types, but I remember children's toy devices from over 15 years ago that could send the equivalent of a text message (it possibly did in fact use SMS---I am not sure).

All that said, I agree with others that a simple explanation would more than suffice as to why this widely-requested feature is not offered. If one were to be provided by Apple, I, and many others, would quit 'whining' and move on!!

Fah\'rilla Gah\'rilla wrote:

One specific scenario in which I could have benefited from this feature was a .pdf file transfer from my iPhone 5 to my iPad 3 (or more precisely, iPad 3rd-generation) so that I could read the document on a larger screen. It would have been nice to just slide my finger and turn on the Bluetooth and accomplish this using the identical method on both devices (not fancy/3rd-party app workarounds) with the Airdrop feature!

Email doesn't really take very long.