I started Parallels on my macBook, plugged in the iPad and let it connect to the virtual XP that was running: "Not Charging". Shut down Parallels without even unplugging the iPad, well, boy howdy, its charging now. No OSX/iTunes? Purposely broken.
OS X obviously is aware of iDevices so it charges without you knowing any wiser. Windows needs the driver.
My MacBook pro gladly puts out more than 1100ma @5v no matter whats connected and no matter what "handshaking" occurred (or didn't). Its a little scary really.
My iPad does charge albeit very slowly even when it says "not charging". When it does so, it consumes about 750ma (thus, breaking the spec anyway in a strict sense). It stops charging if you turn it on and just runs from usb power. So its kind of telling the truth, when it says "not charging" on the screen, it actually isn't.
The ipad increases charge to around 950ma when it gets the OK from an Apple Approved device. (my MacBook, only when in OSX mode)
When connected to my palm pre's "dumb charger" the ipad does the "not charging" thing @750, even though the pre's charger can deliver 1500ma.
The official Apple wall charger seems to deliver about 5.5v and nearly 1000ma to the pad.
It seems the choice is actually left to the iPad itself whether to sip or slurp and it does this by detecting what its connected to. (or rather, what it isn't connected to)
In conclusion, this operational profile is frustrating. "Purposely broken" may have been too strong but they didn't go through any extra effort to make my user experience stellar if I elected not to go the full monty on apple gear.
But what does it really mean to me? I can't charge my 'pad on the damn plane on that freakishly long SF to Sydney and watch all the back episodes of "Mad Men", using that nifty USB jack on Qantas' new A380. Bummer.
If you'd installed Apple's drivers in your XP instance, things would have worked fine.
If you want to argue that Apple should have made their changes public so anyone could re-implement, well, that's a different discussion.
The fact is that 'some motherboards cannot supply the voltage' or is it 'it needs its own driver to charge' ?
>To charge over USB, Apple had break the USB spec without compromising compatibility or destroying existing USB peripherals
>If you'd installed Apple's drivers in your XP instance, things would have worked fine.
So they purposefully broke the spec (looks like compatibility WAS compromised, wasn't it) by having a USB connector but not allowing all USB ports to charge it.
What about the USB ports at airports, in car adaptors, heck, even the otherwise useless one on my Comcast DVR?
So they couldn't make the iPad detect insufficient voltage and show 'Insufficient voltage detected. You need to install iTunes to charge me!'
Or maybe charge at a slower pace and show a message to that effect?
It's not as if it's an edge case seen by few, probably ~50% of iPad users might be connecting it to Windows PCs.
I'm fairly sure there is no requirement that your device is able to charge from every USB port. It is still 'in spec' because the cable is used to sync data. It only breaks spec when it knows that the hardware can take it (via apple drivers).
That's just lovely. At work someone ordered 2 western digital passports harddrives. They wouldn't work with any Apple laptops that we had (2 15in MBP, a 13in MBP, a Air) and would only work with desktops (2 iMacs). The box, WD's website, Apple's website all said these were compatible with any MacBook ... I suspected the problem was with underpowered USB ports. I even phoned WD's support (who were unprofessional) and couldn't get straight answer out of them, nor any useful info from Apple website.
Thanks for confirming my suspicions!
I never used a Mac until 1.5 years ago and I've been impressed with the quality and finish of the hardware, the overall smoothness of the UI, suspend & hibernate that work, AND a bash shell. And the ease in which non-Computer literate can use one is impressive (unless they've used other OS's for a long time).
But, the way Apple obfuscate information, and Bill Gates ... er I mean Steve Jobs apparent desire to lock users into Apple is disturbing.