Next up also relates to the improvements on the New iPad as people are complaining about battery life and the time it takes to charge the device. On top of that with the increase in hardware, RAM, display size and LEDs some are even claiming that the battery continues to drain while plugged in if you are using the device! This (if it turns out to be true, these are unconfirmed reports right now) is very surprising from an Apple product. Again, if looks as if all Apple did was increase the number of GPU cores, the amount of RAM, the display, LEDs and increase the battery all without making sure the product was up to the demands that it would be put under.

As of right now we are hearing that these two issues happen primarily when gaming (which plays into the idea that some have speculated that the new quad core GPU is the main culprit). This is also in light of some new reviews claiming that the New iPad is not that much faster than the iPad2. Now it is no secret that Apple had to do something to put the iPad out in front of the growing competition and also to help fight against the anticipated threat from Windows 8 which is due out in October of this year (2012). Now I have had multiple people (mostly Apple fans) that Windows 8 is not a concern for Apple but from what we are seeing even if they are not concerned about it, they should be.

From getting hot and having a rough time charging we move on to a new item that popped up today. It seems that some are complaining that the New iPad has problems with WiFi reception. This again is very unusual from an Apple product. The same type of issue was found on some Asus Transformer Primes not that long ago. Some of this appeared to be related to incompatibilities with Wireless Access Point controllers and the Wireless Adapter in the Transformer. It is also possible that the same thing is happening to Apple’s new device. There is a thread on Apple’s own community that is 20 pages and 296 posts long about this issue. The problem seems to be all over the place as some are reporting this using multiple access points. So far Apple has not commented on this issue, but as we know from the past they are probably working on a fix. The problem is that Apple typically does not comment on fixes until they see some type of results from their internal testing.

To be honest though, we really have to wonder about the reaction this has gotten in the press. Is this truly because the New iPad is flawed? Or are we see the psychological impact of Apple without Steve Jobs are the helm. After all even with the issues that plagued the iPhone 4 there was not as much of a press and user frenzy as there has been this early in the life of the latest Apple tablet. Apple could be in serious danger of losing market and consumer confidence with these issues (even if fixed) and, again, with more options available including Windows 8 on ARM and x86 it could be bad for them in both the short and long term; especially considering the less than advertised performance gain over the iPad 2 and the reduction in cost of that same device by $100. Does this mean Apple will fail or not continue to sell products? Of course not; it simply means that they will lose some (if not a lot) of their market dominance faster than originally anticipated. As always we will keep an eye on the situation and let you know if we see hear about any other issues or fixes for the existing ones.

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