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iPad 2 Smart Cover Teardown Reveals 21 Magnets

Small White Car said:
Interesting info. I was on the fence about the iPad 2 before it was announced, but these covers are what pushed me over the edge. After spending all weekend with one I'm now sure I made the right choice. An iPad with a Smart Cover is a thousand times better than an iPad in those old leather cases.




I've been using aluminum Macbook Pros for years and I've never had any problems with their cases.

I have a sleeve for them in my bag to keep them safe in there, but other than that my laptop is unprotected. I've had no trouble keeping them in pretty good shape.

I don't see why an iPad would be any different.
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You have to be kidding. The smart cover is what convinced you to buy the new ipad? You are just the type of sucker that apple hoped to attract. The smart cover is a joke. It provides virtually no protection. It is just a gimmick. It provides no back protection, which is where most of the wear occurs, it can't be flipped onto the back when using the device. It provides absolutely no drop protection. Shame on Apple for coming up with a completely worthless cover and then soaking all the lemmings $39 - $69.
 
So does this teardown finally answer the age-old question? ********** magnets. How do they work?
 
notjustjay said:
Yes. To everyone concerned about magnetic fields damaging your hard drive, look at this picture:
Those magnets come from right inside a hard drive, as part of the read/write head mechanism. They sit less than 1/4" away from the platters.
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Not to mention current Macbooks also use magnets to hold their screens closed and their power cords in.
 
j-a-x said:
Is anybody worried that these magnets might potentially affect the data on a magnetic HD in a macBook stored next to an iPad? Or are they not strong enough for that?
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My guess is they are roughly the strength of the MagSafe connector on the power adapters, so safe enough. Still, if you are concerned, store the iPad on the opposite side of where the HD is mounted.
 
Fgirl said:
With 31 magnets, I wonder if I'm going to be dragging a trail of paperclips and odd little metal bits around everywhere I take my ipad2??
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Mine has already picked up a couple of paperclips off my desk.
 
I would think that the magnets would screw up the compass. Does anyone have any first hand experience with this?
 
Mark Booth said:
I wonder if all these magnets are low enough power to be safe for someone with a cardiac pacemaker?

Typically, it's relatively strong magnetic fields that are a concern. But that's a crap load of magnets in the two products combined. Ya think Apple tested for this scenario?

Do the products come with any sort of warning for cardiac pacemaker patients?
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If someone with a pacemaker (like my mother) had an iPad 2 I would caution them not to "hug" an iPad. Keep it at least 6" away.

This article seems to suggest that the risk is real:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6160731.stm?lspan
 
Last edited:
rdowns said:
Really? The 31 other threads about this weren't enough.
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That was a good point brought up by the OP, but I don't have a job or a social life, so I'm going to go back and search for all of the threads on the topic, read the hundreds of comments, and then I'll get back to you guys. Or, on a second thought, I'll just not say anything at all. It's not like this is an open forum or anything. Sorry.
 
Wow there sure is a lot of magnet paranoia in here. I guess very few of you know what makes a disk drive spin.
 
notjustjay said:
If someone (like my mother) had an iPad 2 I would caution them not to "hug" an iPad. Keep it at least 6" away.

This article seems to suggest that the risk is real:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6160731.stm?lspan
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Thank you for the link to that article. Now the question is:

Did Apple use neodymium magnets in the Smart Cover and/or iPad 2?

As for "hugging" the iPad.... Modern cardiac pacemakers are so small and so efficient, most patients simply "forget" that they've got one in their chest. By "forget", I mean you simply don't think about it on a daily routine basis. It is entirely too easy to get involved with doing your daily activities and then suddenly realize that, oops, you shouldn't be leaning over that running car motor as close as you are. Or, you pick up and carry a stereo loudspeaker across the room and you forget yourself and end up having it rest against your chest as you carry it.

Yes, I have a cardiac pacemaker and I've had one since I was 44 years old. My wife owns an iPad 1 with Apple's original cover and, a couple of times, I've been using it while I was in a recliner and then fell asleep, only to wake and find the iPad resting on my chest (the way you might fall asleep with a book in your hands). Should this same scenario happen with an iPad 2 (with or without the Smart Cover), I'd be concerned about issues with disrupting the pacemaker.

Mark
 
Blorzoga said:
You have to be kidding. The smart cover is what convinced you to buy the new ipad? You are just the type of sucker that apple hoped to attract. The smart cover is a joke. It provides virtually no protection. It is just a gimmick. It provides no back protection, which is where most of the wear occurs, it can't be flipped onto the back when using the device. It provides absolutely no drop protection. Shame on Apple for coming up with a completely worthless cover and then soaking all the lemmings $39 - $69.
Click to expand...

Wow. You clearly have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. There's even a photograph in this thread (post #59) demonstrating that you're wrong. I'm holding an iPad with the cover wrapped around the back. That is how wrong you are. Congrats on being totally wrong.

The smart cover is genius because it CAN cover the back when it's sitting downnbeing used, and it ocovers the screen when your transporting it. On top of it neing an awesome stand. it's perfect.
 
Day the earth moved

mw360 said:
Wow there sure is a lot of magnet paranoia in here. I guess very few of you know what makes a disk drive spin.
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Are you kidding? I was in an Apple retail store this weekend witnessing mass hysteria as magnets in new iPads ripped fillings from customer mouths and pacemakers out of their chests! Remarkably, this did not diminish customer clamor. News reports indicate that the earth shifted its axis on the day the iPad2 went on sale. :rolleyes:
 
Magnet locking stations?

This should be really cool for other uses too - like attaching your ipad to a music stand, wall in kitchen, car nagivation dashboard, etc, maybe just be able to have a magnetic holder that attaches to the ipad magnets?

You can just push your ipad into place and it stays due to the magnets. Should be awesome! Ready to go to next room, just pick it up and go!
 
thefourthpope said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8F190 Safari/6533.18.5)

All the videos hinted at it, but it's interesting to see evidence that these are righty-only covers. I was thinking about getting one for my mom--she uses a stylus when annotating images--but since she's a lefty it looks like shed have to completely remove the cover every time.
Flanders and the Leftorium might need to come out with a southpaw edition.
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I'm a southpaw. It's a non-issue because the cover can fold around behind the pad and remain attached.
 
Blorzoga said:
You have to be kidding. The smart cover is what convinced you to buy the new ipad?
Click to expand...

There was no good way to use an iPad 1 on a table. It was the main reason I couldn't convince myself to buy one.

This allows me to type on my iPad while sitting at a table. Sorry you don't see that as a huge advantage, but it really is.

And as I said earlier, I've kept a cover-free Macbook Pro safe for a couple of years now. I guess some people are rougher on their comptuers than I am, but I'm not worried about the back of the device at all.
 
Bobbytoad said:
Magnets - great idea, but what happens if you put your credit card, hotel room key, air tickets near your ipad/smart cover!

Surely this is a recipe which could result in the ipad is erasing magnetic strips on those items if they’re in contact with each other? :eek:

Any one willing to try mating their credit card with the case magnets, in the name of research :D
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I did have two hotel key cards get demagnetized this weekend after having set them down on my Smart Cover without thinking about it. My credit and debit cards didn't have any problems though (those were kept in a wallet). For kicks, I tossed my campus ID card (which using a magnetic strip) onto the cover for about 15 - 20 minutes. It worked fine after that. So maybe the hotel just used a light charge or something. I don't know enough about magnets to be an expert on them. :D
 
sportsfan said:
It's a device that's meant to be used and handled. Does it matter?
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YES it does matter, especially when the iPad 3 is most likely coming out this year and I will have to sell my iPad 2.

When you go to sell your iPad 2 you will find out that the difference between an EXCELLENT condition iPad with no scratches etc vs a "GOOD" Condition ipad is about 10-12% less in $$$.

So YES, I would say that it matters very much to me. Money does not grow on trees where I live.
 
Shivetya said:
Can the magnets support the weight of the iPad?
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I wouldn't suggest doing this all the time, but yeah...it seems to!

magnet.jpg
 
Wow this makes me nervous. I had MAJOR issues with my iphone 3GS when i FIRST GOT IT, in fact apple kept giving me new ones as they could not figure out the problem. The battery would drain real fast and after some time I could not make any calls without a restart. This was on 4-5 different phones. FInally working with an apple technician we figured out it was because my case had a magnetic latch. It was causing the compass to spin constantly and interfere with my signal and drain the battery, hope they really thought this one through.
 
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