[X4U] iPad news

[Neil Laubenthal]

I'm not arguing the spec . . .or anything else . . .just noting that running an external drive for a few minutes to load photos wouldn't have a real serious effect on battery life. Sure  . .it would reduce it but my point was that short term use might not significantly affect it.

Mostly I was just speculating about what else might be possible with what has been provided . . .in the absence of any firm info from Apple . . .i.e.,; whether it would be technically possible to plug a thumb drive or usb drive into the camera adapter to load/offload photos . . .nothing more than that.

My cocktail napkin battery life effect calculations were just a first order approximation of what effect the drive would have on battery life . . .kinda thinking out loud.

Even if it knocked the battery life down to say 2 hours . . .as long as the life was advertised as 10 hours but might be reduced if you were to use an external drive . . .then they're covered as all portable electronic devices have lower battery life if you plug in an external drive.


On Feb 1, 2010, at 4:16 AM, David Ledger wrote:

> 
> The USB spec doesn't say 'for 10 minutes'. If it had a USB port for plugging a drive (of any sort) into, it would have to have to be able to supply 0.5A until the battery failed.  If they put a USB port on there there would be legal action because it couldn't drive a 0.5A disc and get anything like the 10 hour battery life. The anti-Apple brigade would have a field day. As far as I know a 'Camera Port' isn't a defined thing, so it can have whatever spec they like. In practice it may work with any USB device with its own power source, but connect it to anything other than a camera and you can't complain if it doesn't work or the battery life drops.
> 
> 


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There are only three kinds of stress; your basic nuclear stress, cooking stress, and A$$hole stress. The key to their relationship is Jello.

neil