This article was last updated on May 19, 2022
Canada: 
Oye! Times readers Get FREE $30 to spend on Amazon, Walmart…
USA: Oye! Times readers Get FREE $30 to spend on Amazon, Walmart…
Kinks in Apple iPad make the next version a better buy than release 1
Don’t get me wrong. I use the Apple iPad everyday but the frustrations tell me it’s not the simplistic computer solution for non-technical people. Apple advertise it was the magical computer for people who don’t want to fight with technology.Problems and frustrations crop up daily until I am looking at product announcements for its replacement. 3G performance is too slow for browsing. The Wi-Fi will not reconnect to the router. I bumping up against videos and websites that won’t load because Steve Jobs doesn’t like Adobe Flash. The Bluetooth performance can drive you nuts when listening to music and the email application is useless.
Since I have not been able to solve any of these problems with a casual fix or even a Google search for a fix, it would be a good assumption that novice users would be frustrated beyond belief with the iPad.
Two weeks ago the Wi-Fi stopped reconnecting with the router. So I turned on 3G data at home but that was hardly a good solution. You can’t watch videos very well on 3G because it’s too slow.
Most of my surfing starts with Twitter, which works amazingly well. On 3G the links come up so slowly I usually quit before the page is displayed. 30 to 60 seconds is far too long for web pages to load.
Last weekend I dedicated time to resolving the Wi-Fi problem. Apple knows about this: the when the iPad goes into sleep mode – every 5 minutes – it loses the Wi-Fi connection. If your home router is secured with a password, iPad asks for the password. Sometimes that works but usually it doesn’t. The solution from Apple is to change security protocols, turn off network security or hold your iPad with two fingers while dancing a jig to Yankee Doodle Dandy.
We have two routers here – a secure one and an open one for guests. I can only run the iPad on the unsecured one which is an old dog that works poorly. That’s after reconfiguring the router several times. The reality is Apple hasn’t implemented Wi-Fi properly on the iPad and customers are left to sort that out for themselves.
The email client lost its settings so many times it is hardly useful to check email. All I get are cascading error messages when I try to get at the 43 unread email messages. That too is false since it reports email as unread even after it’s deleted from the mail server.
It would be nice if the whole world went along with Steve Jobs and switched to non-Flash video and websites but that hasn’t happened. The solution is to remember which sites don’t support the iPad and which do. I’m not sure if I have the bandwidth to remember all the things Apple says I should in their closed world.
Last is the failure of Bluetooth. The solution I worked out in Look Ma no hands iPad music results in dropped signal so much that the music comes in fits and starts. During the humid days last week, the iPad had to be line-of-site 2 feet from the Bluetooth receiver, not the 30 feet in the specification. Today there is no connection. Who knows why?
The Apple iPad is a great idea. It just needs to be implemented to work right day after day, not just during the first weeks. Mac fanboys excuse all this as part of the Apple mystique.
Click HERE to read more columns by Stephan Pate.
You can publish this article on your website as long as you provide a link back to this page.
This is a good article, but I find it very strange that I haven’t had these issues? I recently bought the 64gig wifi only version here in canada, and can report the following.
Wifi performance is pretty decent, I don’t have to re-connect after the screen goes to sleep, and I use WPA2 on my router @ home.
The comment_content_author_email program I have connected to a gmail account and my own personal imap server and though I don’t browse my comment_content_author_email very much on the ipad, it works for what I need it to do.
All my apps work okay, it’s never crashed, and I take it everywhere so far. I’ve yet to try the bluetooth connection to my car stereo, but now that you mention, I’ll go try it now 😉
And just as a follow up, I just tried the bluetooth audio with my KD-AVX44 JVC receiver in the car, and the device performs exactly as my 3rd gen ipod touch. Smooth and perfect. Pairing went fine, there’s no lag in the audio, and even turning the receiver off and on again, re-paired within a few seconds and pressing play on the receiver started the music again. Just my own personal experience 🙂
I imagine your expectations are pretty high for everything in your life. I love my iPad. Use it everyday. No 3G or wifi issues. Love it at our cottage in northern Ontario.