Fruity computers! - iPad internal clock

[bill bolton]

I bought my wife a top-of-the line iPad for Christmas... a lot of her friends have them so she has a good social support network for the actual use/application of that device..... and she does indeed use it a lot , something I've never been able to get her to do with any of my ThinkPads.

The down side is that her social network is now giving her their unsolveable iPad technical probelms in the hope that I can magically solve them.

One common problem for the group is that the iPad internal clock doesn't keep good time. My first thought was that there must be a setting somewhere to use an NTP source, as all iPads have at least WiFi connectivity... but no! Not only is there not any IOS setting to use NTP, Apple has specifically set things up so that no applications can change the system clock, so even though you can run a NTP application on an iPad to display NTP based time, it does change the system clock and so does no good for the many applications which are dependent on system time.

There appears to be some (undisclosed) method within the iPad of getting system time off a 3G connection (for those iPads that have 3G capability) but even that only syncs with a 1 minute accuracy...... and doesn't work on every 3G session anyway.

This is just so incredibly dumb on Apple's part and has certainly been a wake up call for me about the straight-jack nature of Apple's solutions.

Cheers,

Bill B.

[rkawakami]

Maybe Apple will release an updated iOS if the masses complain enough about it . I'm still waiting for them to activate / include an FM radio on my Touch. Given that that kind of capability will drain the battery at a faster rate than just sending email or browsing the net, I don't expect it anytime too soon. For the iPad, it shouldn't take too much power to fire up an NTP client, say once a day, and sync to a server.

And no, for my use, streaming radio via iHeartRadio/Pandora/Last.fm/et al. is not an option. Not all radio stations are streaming and the ones that do typically use a single (corporate selected) service that requires a specific app; therefore no way to have a single app "tune" in to all of the stations. Besides, the time delay between what goes out over the air and via the net can be a couple of minutes.

[DAH]

Perhaps it's time to teach her to jailbreak her iPad? The world is so much better, when we control our devices. Cydia has a program called NTPDate

[bill bolton]

Perhaps it's time to teach her to jailbreak her iPad?

I'm not about to void the 2 year warranty!

Cheers,

Bill B.

[topmahof]

If you sync it with your computer, does it reset the time?

[bill bolton]

If you sync it with your computer, does it reset the time?

No, it doesn't

Cheers,

Bill B.

[NorrisCell]

I'm not about to void the 2 year warranty!

You can always go back to non-Jailbroken status if you need to take it in to Apple. Quick restore and re-sync fixes all

[ThinkRob]

I'm not about to void the 2 year warranty!

Jailbreaking doesn't void the warranty.