The Ipad is a great device with at least one major flaw - it is simply too sensitive to heat. My ipad has shut itself down due to overheating - once while using it for 10 min in the 65 degree sunny spring weather in Boston and the other time without even using it (it was simply sitting in the sun, not even 60 degrees here). We are not talking about extreme heat situations, just a nice sunny day. For some reason, this thing seems to bake. The last time this happened, the case was even closed and the device was OFF! This is in Boston in April! This is going to be a huge problem for Apple once the summer approaches and makes the device all but unusable outside at almost any time you'd want to be outside. For a device that touts itself as an e-reader, this is truly unacceptable.
Unfortunately, I doubt this is addressable in software. A reflective case may help when it's off. In any case, they might as well remove the summer reading selections from the ibooks store since this device will be unusable at the beach or pool for sure!!!
Nonsense, I'm in the Southern San Joaquin Valley in California - Bakersfield area, and there has been no overheating issue with the iPad. It gets hot here, real hot - 110, and above.
It hasn't been real hot yet, but we have had a few warm days, and I was out in my back yard, for most of a day, when it as warm, wit the sun shining on it's back side, and have had no issues. I set it down for an hour, and the sun was shining on it's face, all that time.
I came back out and picked it up, turned it on, and it never missed a tick - no dropped connections, or any kind of performance issues. I'd been doing up emails from 11:00 AM, until 3:30 PM, and a little surfing and buying on line.
This is a Great little device, and so convenient............ 🙂 Nope, no heat issues here, or any other, so far, for that matter.
ah, so to clarify, you are fine with it "shutting down as designed" in 65 degree weather. YOU have a nice day, too! 🙂 Just don't expect to have it while using an ipad outside in anything above chilly temps.
i was in my screened in porch yesterday in florida its about 74 out. not in the sun and it gave me a warning. Grant it i was on it for 3 hours, to me its still an issue. I love this thing too, im gona bring it back and get another one and try again tomorrow.
yeah thats why i am just going to get a replacement because i think its a hardware problem... so i guess ill find out. And i only live 3 blocks from an apple store so its not really a big problem.
we aren't really discussing specs at the moment. we are discussing real world problems with the iPad when used in sunlight. specs are specs. reality, especially from sample to sample, may not square with "specs". tell you what--you go read the specs. Meantime, those with problems will either return the ipad or exchange them in hopes of finding one that actually works outside in moderate temps.
I agree, the manual surely states what the environmental specs are; namely humidity and temp.
from the Apple store's specs:
Environmental requirements
* Operating temperature: 32° to 95° F (0° to 35° C)
* Nonoperating temperature: -4° to 113° F (-20° to 45° C)
* Relative humidity: 5% to 95% noncondensing
* Maximum operating altitude: 10,000 feet (3000 m)
Orange, I have already walked to the Apple store and got a replacement one. Oh, guess what? The replacement is doing the exact same thing... overheating int 55-65 deg F direct sunlight. If you don't know the problem, maybe you should try getting outside in the sun with yours, and see what happens. some people are having this problem inside cool buildings. There is a problem, and it is not a perceived one. You may think it is small, but not everyone using the discussions boards.
I just think it's an intrinsic problem with the technology, not likely to be easily overcome.
1. Apple has to make this device relatively water-resistant. Check the iPhone -- certainly it'll go bad if you get it really wet, but obviously, for marketing purposes, Apple has to make sure that if you accidentally splash it with spaghetti sauce while eating dinner and using it, it won't fail instantly. Ditto iPad. So, engineering problem number one: we have to keep this device pretty sealed, we can't cover it with aerating holes.
2. Apple has to make this device fast, to be competitive. It has to cruise the internet faster than an iPhone, otherwise, who'd buy it? Fast means heat. Apple's pushing the limits here. Perhaps there are other suppliers of CPU (Intel) who can make a fast, low-power, low-heat-generating processor, but Apple chose to go with its own proprietary solution. That solution means trade-off of heat radiation for speed. You could probably make a cooler device, but it would be slower, or more expensive, or less under Apple's OCPD control. 🙂
3. Brightness. Again, you're fighting another fundamental engineering dilemma. To run this thing in the sun, even in the shade outdoors, the screen has to display considerably more brightly than it would have to in a cool, dark cave. Higher brightness means, again, greater heat generation. Apple is again clearly at the limits of current technology here.
4. Battery size. Larger battery, guess what?! More heat. The balance between making an even larger battery that might be engineered to run cooler, or a smaller battery that fits into the space allowed, another engineering trade-off. I'm sure Apple did the best they could here. They could've made a bigger unit, but then again, doing so == marketing fail.
All in all, Apple made a debut with showcase 1.0 technology that hit a clearly successful target market.
There are clear limitations to this device: the battery is not user replaceable, it is too heavy, it has limited connectivity, it does not multitask (and even when, come OS 4.0, it does, it will not do so well, compared with any equivalently-priced laptop), it smudges, etc. etc.
It's a shiny toy and it's probably the best Apple could make it, given the marketing goals. Are there limitations in the ways it can be used? Sure. Are those limitations opportunities for Apple to revise the device over and over again, keeping it in the public eye with new/improved all along the way? Most certainly. Are they bad enough to sink iPad in competition with, say, a Microsoft competitor? Possibly, but unlikely, given the establishment of iTunes and AppStore at this point (it's not all just about the device).
Enjoy your iPad within the constraints it operates under, or return it and wait, it's really your choice. I don't think any of us could have expected Apple to market this thing with, "won't work outside on a sunny day! Limited storage! Wi-fi may not connect to every device under the sun on the whole planet without any problems! etc. etc." -- so, as with all things, your happiness or unhappiness over YOUR decisions are YOUR responsibility. If there are things the iPad can't do that you wanted it to do.... you should have researched that better, or waited a little bit to see what kinds of limitations become apparent. You really can't blame anyone else for your own failures here, hard as you might try.
