Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/11/08/ipad-pro-an-excellent-if-rathe.html
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All those little magnets will also pick up small bits of ferrous metals and they will then scratch surfaces they come in contact with, along with the back of the iPad
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Fridges with verticaly-mounted inductive charging apparatus approaching the market in 3… 2…
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Just stack it on your back-up hard drive.
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Try that with your Samsung fridge and wait for the sparks…
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It would be fine. There are mighty powerful magnets inside the drive and when you consider how the force drops with the square of the distance, I wouldn’t worry about it iPad magnets near a hard drive.
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Dude just needs a new fridge.
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Thanks, good to know. I didn’t know what it takes to flip a bit and how that compares to what the iPad is producing. But I’m still paranoid and keep magnetic things far far away.
The real worry used to be magnets and floppy disks. Those weren’t really shielded and an errant magnet could possibly scramble your data. You also didn’t want to put a magnet to your CRT monitor either.
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I’ve had an old iPad magnetically stuck to my fridge door for over three years, displaying our family calendar. It’s mounted in a plastic back that has four ill-fitting feet at the corners that are supposed to grip the tablet, which are definitely the weakest part of the system. A small amount of clear packing tape helps ensure they stay on. But the magnet has never been any kind of problem.
It’s been a great way to get extra life from an out of date piece of kit.
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https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/002/395/magnets_c.jpg
(Compulsory ICP reference)
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Credit cards, maybe?
I did that to a really expensive CRT monitor at work once. I made a degaussing coil with some wire and a soldering gun, eventually got it fixed before the boss came back.
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That is one major downside of the magnetically coupled charge/docking ports.
The magsafe connector was at least mostly flush with the surface so that ferrodetritus could be seen and removed; but I had a Surface connect port actually eat part of a staple a few months back, and those little slots are a pain to get things out of.
That aside aside; really beefy rare earth magnets are none of those materials science things that still feel new and a trifle spooky to me because, while I can’t remember exactly when this shifted, they used to be unobtainium at a consumer level(only developed in the early-mid 80s and definitely not value priced for a while thereafter) and they are enough of an advance over the previous permanent magnet options(except Curie temperature, they suck at that) that they feel like a difference in kind rather than degree. Going from the fridge magnet ‘self-supporting, mostly’ level to the ‘would you prefer the fridge brought to you?’ level is quite a difference.
Also, the greater strength makes the magnetic braking demos go from ‘effect detectable’ to ‘unnervingly blatant’; which is neat.
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Credit cards, and other mag-stripe cards intended for frequent use(so not the paper ones use for copier credit and short term transit passes and such) are generally the ‘high coercivity’ type; but it’s still pretty likely that a close encounter with a rare earth magnet will leave you an exclusively Apple pay user until your card can be reissued.(Unless chipped cards are willing to coooperate when the chip is available but doesn’t correspond to the data on the stripe; then you’d be covered for at least newer POS cases).
The low coercivity ones wouldn’t stand a chance.
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Monitors were a great way to find out just how well shielded your speakers really were.
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I bet Alfie would make quick work of that!
I’ve seen fridge mounts for the iPad. I use my pad2 in the kitchen all the time for recipes and have considered getting a mount.
