iPads in spa-a-a-a-ce! The next time you take your iPad into space, remember that it has a screen-rotation lock next to its volume-control rocker switch. You may need it. As any fanboi toting Apple's magical and revolutionary device knows, the iPad's accelerometer allows it to reorient its display so that down is always down, no matter in which …
Apple have announced that zero-G is now banished from the apps store. Any apps that could be used in a zero-G environment now contravene apps store rules and will be removed. A spokesman added that as a result of this ruling "bouncing breasts" apps would be reinstated subject to a demonstration that that bouncing was consistent with a non-zero-G environment.
As iPad is only passively cooled it will overheat if left for a long time on in an area without active ventilation eq forced air movement. Passive cooling is based on the heated airs lower density that rises in gravity.
Without gravity lower density air doesn't rise and the device will end up in a heated airbuble.
Ok, since this appears to be a point of confusion:
If you're going to say that freefall != zero-G, then sending an iPad on any random space mission will not suffice (as suggested by someone else). You will need to send it on the next interplanetary space mission (ie to the Moon, Mars, etc)
What most people refer to as Zero-G is experienced when in orbit around a planet. Well guess what? That's freefall. Gravity acts on orbiting objects in the same way it act on earthbound object, just less so. If there was no gravity in orbit, objects such as satellites, the Moon, space stations etc would not orbit, they'd shoot off in to space. What keeps an object in orbit is its forward motion is enough to keep it "falling" around the earth, that is to say the object is falling under the effect of gravity, but its going "forwards" (for want of a better term) so quickly that it keeps missing the horizon. To make an orbiting object return to earth, all they need to do, is make it slow down.
So actually guys, in the generally accepted use of the term "Zero-G", it is equivalent to freefall.
Take one into space for real to see if it works - send one with the next shuttle mission.
This test seems to have only proved that in freefall, they still generally work. I suspect the few times I spotted it not working in the video were more due to the operator turning with it, not the sensor failing to find gravity.
apart from the stuff about freefall/no gravity, there's a good chance an iPad would be glitched by radiation. Not fried, but glitched enough that you couldn't rely on it for anything important.
They're built for use at ground level with a nice big radiation shield between it and the rest of the universe.
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