Juicing up on the new iPad

I love the new iPad – for the most part because I’m simply blown away by its gorgeous screen.

But there’s one thing that really bothers me: When that long-lasting battery has to be charged.
Compared to the iPad 2′s 25-watt-hour battery the new iPad’s 42.5-watt-hour battery almost doubles the charge. Apple did this to still claim 10 remarkable hours of battery life – sacrificing some of the thinness and lightness of the iPad.

That would not be a problem if it were not for two things:

• Apple did not supply a new charger – they still pack the iPad 2′s 10W power adapter. So by using simple physics one can tell that the new iPad may need almost twice the time charging than the previous version. Usually this means charging your iPad over night.
• While you can still use the old 5W power adapter from your iPhone or iPod your iPad will actually loose battery charge during use while charging. I’d only heard this from poor Android-LTE-phones before. But while this causes a lot of anger for me, it might just be no one else’s problem.

This leaves the question why Apple still only provides a 10W power adapter instead of, say 20W:

I don’t think the size of the adapter might cause problems (the Mac mini’s power supply is only like twice the size and provides up to 85W of power).
The main problem here might be the cables and the 30-pin-connector. Again some simple physics: At 5 volts a power supply would need to output 4 ampere to achieve 20 watts. This might require thicker cables or even a new connector layout – introducing a new level of complexity: Can I use this new cable with this old adapter? What if I use this old cable with this new adapter?

Simply put: Apple is a company that settles on simple solutions that might have some minor flaws. They don’t settle on solutions that require user manuals. So your iPad charging takes a little longer.