It is poor design. I fully expect the dock to be wholly incompatible with 3rd party accessories/cases, but not with an Apple product that they touted as being one of the best products they've ever designed and acted as if buying the cover alongside the iPad was a foregone conclusion for all buyers.
Apple has come to expect a lot from themselves on the design of their products, and consumers are no exception. I feel like the diehards love to trumpet Apple's superior design, but when they do something boneheaded like this, the consumer is just supposed to pay $29 and deal with it.
Although they do all sorts of nifty things these days, docks have traditionally been used as a quick way to pop in your devices for charging and syncing. For me personally, no amount of effort or sacrifice of protection is worth the trouble if I can plug in a 30-pin connector with less haggling.
I'll save my $29. Do as you wish. Thanks.![]()
How is this any different from the first dock and the original iPad case? While it's certainly not perfect, seems like the new dock/smart cover combo works better than the old dock/Apple case. In fact, if you made a dock that accommodated the smart cover, it probably wouldn't work well with a naked iPad. Can't please everyone all of the time.