Apple/iPad/ATT Fan: Nothing To Do With The Bakken

I noticed that Verizon's 4G LTE network is down and out for some unknown reason.

That's not a big deal; these things come and go. What surprised me was what I learned reading some of the comments from Verizon's Thunderbolt users -- the smart phone that uses Verizon's 4G LTE.

It turns out that the battery life of the smart phone is as little as 2.5 hours of "normal" usage.

Batteries are the bane of the early 21st century. Once someone cracks the code on battery technology, an entire new world of mobility will dawn -- including electric vehicles.

Apple Corp. and Steve Jobs got a lot of grief when the original iPad was released because of what it couldn't do or didn't have: a) could not multi-task; b) did not have Flash (YouTube in many cases); c) no still camera; and, d) no video camera. There were a number of reasons for these but a common denominator for all was the strain on battery life each of these "add-on's" impossed.

I have been waiting to see the real-world results for battery life for new smart phones and new tablets competing with Apple products.

I don't know about the iPad 2 yet (Apple says it has the same battery life as the original iPad), but I know that no one, absolutely no one, complains about the battery life of the original iPad. Apple says it will last ten hours under continuous usage and 30 days on standby. It's been my experience that when traveling I can go as much as five days in between charges just using it for essential e-mail.

On another note, now that I am in Boston for awhile, I visit the Apple Store on Boylston Street when I get a chance. On the last two occasions I visited I asked about the availability of the iPad 2. It is the same answer one sees elsewhere: the folks at the Boylson Street Apple Store generally get a shipment of iPads every other day or so, maybe every day for a stretch. They never know ahead of time what they will be getting and it's always a mix of the various models. Customers arrive each day at 9:00 a.m. to find out what has arrived; folks are given numbered tickets and are served in order. The last two times I visited the Apple Store on Boylston Street, about 2:00 p.m. each time, they still had at least one Verizon 3G 64GB model available, but no ATT models.

FYI.