According to us, the coolest thing that Apple unveiled at the ‘Come See What 2011 Will Be Year Of’ event was the iPad Smart Cover and not the iPad 2 as we more or less expected the new features and improvements based on the rumors and speculations.
Folks at iFixit were as intrigued as us and decided to disassemble it to find out whether: “how it attached perfectly to the iPad” and “Apple was using cutting-edge magnets with special properties”.iFixit have discovered the following things from the teardown, which we found interesting:
There are a total of THIRTY ONE magnets within the iPad 2 and Smart Cover: 10 magnets in the iPad 2, and a whopping 21 magnets inside the Smart Cover. They're the reason why the cover works so well with the iPad 2.
Sadly, none of the 31 magnets inside the devices had any special properties. All of them were the standard, two-pole kind, but they were arrayed in such a way that made clamping the Smart Cover to the iPad 2 quite easy.
The Smart Cover has one dedicated magnet that turns off the iPad 2's screen. The rest are used to either clamp to the iPad on the right side (the far-right column of magnets), or to form the triangular shape used to create a stand for the iPad 2.
A steel plate on the far-left side of the Smart Cover attaches to 15 of the cover's magnets (on the far-right) in order to form the triangular base. In fact, the majority of those 15 magnets are specifically there to assemble the triangular base. Only four of them actually clamp to the iPad 2 when the cover is in place. A steel-to-magnet bond is weaker than a magnet-to-magnet bond, and so they needed lots more magnets to prevent the case from literally falling apart during use.
The far-right row of magnets clamps the Smart Cover to the iPad 2. The magnets in the iPad 2 had their polarity displayed: + - + - . The alternating polarity of the magnets in the iPad 2 was complemented by the opposite alternating polarity of the magnets in the Smart Cover (- + - +), ensuring that the Smart Cover always sits in the same orientation on the iPad 2.
There's also a row of magnets on the left side of both products. The iPad 2's magnets are actually encased into the side of the device, and are used to securely clamp the iPad 2 to the Smart Cover's frame.
The teardown provides a fascinating insight into the making of the iPad 2 smart cover.
iPad Smart Cover comes in 10 colors. The polyurethane iPad Smart covers are available for $39 while the leather ones cost $69.
Are you planning to buy one of them for your iPad 2? Let us know in the comments section below.
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