
What's the big deal?
You're charging it wrong...
Apple has confirmed its iPad Pro tablets sometimes freeze while recharging. The Cupertino giant has published a support document acknowledging that its new 12.9-inch tablet has a tendency to lock up when plugged in for a battery charge, requiring a hard reboot to revive it. This comes after people have been complaining for …
"....an ordinary iPad charger...." Indeed, I was wondering if the problem was just some over-active Apple code of the type that whines if you use a non-Apple (as in "you have not paid the Apple tax") but perfectly operational charges or cord with the other Apple devices. Apple has got so paranoid their devices are now rejecting even their own chargers! Strangely, I have used Blackberry, Nokia, Sony, Samsung and HTC phones for years with chargers from different vendors without any problems at all....
"Apple has got so paranoid their devices are now rejecting even their own chargers!"
Yes it has. Had to troubleshoot an intermittent iPhone 5 charging problem. After upgrading to iOS 8.1.2 it sometimes complained that the original charger is unsupported. Reversed the plug, charges fine. Reversed again, charges fine.
The cause turned out to be rather simple - a slightly oxidized contact on the data line. Bugger.
That's not very promising. It sounds like a hw bug rather than a sw bug.
Sure, there could be some weird interrupt lock up, but from what I read here this sounds more like the charging is causing the hw to get in some screwed up state rather than just a straight software problem.
That would be a bugger for Apple.... hw recalls are expensive.
In a company I once worked for the senior management decided to switch from one firm to another for some software. The previous vendor who we liked had a system that didn't require any specialist hardware and could be controlled using a standard keyboard and mouse. The new system required a special keypad that only they supply as well as another monitor because it was so 'advanced' that everything couldn't be displayed on one screen. Then one day it all went wrong the special keypad on one computer doesn't work, so we swap it for a spare we know works. Only this one now refuses to work as well, but tested on another computer both work fine. We check the USB ports and it isn't them either, machine is operational and we want to avoid having to reboot it as the spare is being fixed. Running out of options we restarted the software and still nothing so we call the vendor and ask why their software is crap sorry that should have read not working with their hardware.
Vendor takes notes says we'll call you back and eventually does having had to wait for their US offices to open so they can obtain help themselves. They tell us that if it is a hardware fault we're looking at new expensive keypads needing to be bought. 20mins later we are told to open task manager on the computer and read out each item that is running. They tell us that two items are missing and we will need to have these running to get the keypad working again. Turns out that their keypad needed one of those programs running to translate the the output of the device into combinations of keys you could enter yourself on a standard qwerty keyboard. Deeply unimpressed as these keypads weren't cheap and we realised we could just DIY one.
If you're talking about software running on a PC, there is zero reason for a special keypad and there is no software for which a bog-standard, 100+ key keyboard cannot suffice. You could replace the keyboard with only a number pad, but there is no reason to require a keyboard and another input device with keys.
This reeks of snake oil and it would seem that their autolaunch tasks prove it.
Personally, I would never accept being told that software running on a PC need any input deevice beyond mouse + keyboard. Not for my needs anyway.
I find it very unlikely that no one at Apple would have noticed this during the test phase. Not a single tester pligged in his ipad while using it ? This incident leads me to believe that :
a. Apple does NOT do in-house testing, or
b. They knew about this, but delaying the product would affect the bottom line and someone found this unacceptable.
I can't decide which I think is worse, but any chance of me forking over 1000 Euro's for an iphone 6s just discappeared out the window.
This will get the usual modern electronics solution: Fix it in software no matter what. Use software even if it means saving the internal state to flash memory when you plug it in and rigging up some other chip to power cycle the board when the main CPU stops. Tell customers to that the device is becoming obsolete and it's time to buy a newer one that works better.