Reviews for Apple 30-pin to VGA Adapter

I bought it at a recommendation of one of the "geniuses" at the Apple store, who assured me that I could watch Netflix and display slideshows using this VGA adaptor. Needless to say, neither works. Apple's obsession with what we can and cannot do with their products is sickening.

The VGA Adapter works. The iOS allows apps to output to either the display screen, to the external device, in either mirror or independent modes.

Here is the problem, and the source of all disappointment from customers who bought this cable early: to encourage software developers to write code that takes advantage of this new feature, there needs to be a customer base with the cables, or at a minimum, Apple needs to start shipping the cable so that customers can buy it. What should come first, the software or the hardware? It is a problem of the chicken and the egg.

Developers are writing code to make this work. If they aren't, by all means, put their feet to the fire, but don't blame the hardware folks.

If there should be negative reviews, or demands for new features, these ratings, and these emails, should be sent to the software developers. And, in this case, the developers of Keynote are squarely in the cross hairs. Of all apps, Keynote should be the one that works as presentation software should, with independent displays.

From a product management, I would have said:

1) Mirror the display to the VGA screen (this will take care of 99% of the use cases, and will work with any applications)

2) Allow applications to support dual screen mode (which is a very nice to have).

Interestingly, Apple Product Managers seem to have been overpowered by something or someone that told them to first worry about the 1% usecase, and then eventually solve the 99% one.

I could not have imagined that this adapter did not support mirroring without having read these reviews.

To bad for us, we are back to project from a PC/Mac.

First cable was bad and then found out the replacement won't play movies downloaded from iTunes. Useful for some QuickTime movies and Keynotes if you want the hassle of using Keynotes or getting your stuff into Keynotes.

Product should come with this warning: "Doesn't project 90% of what you want to see on a monitor."

- Won't do what it advertises to do, which is projecting the iPad screen on an external device
- 10 CM cable???? What am I going to do, sit at the back of my computer and hold the iPad there?

...at least until Apple sort out mirroring. Here's the thing - I'm a teacher at a Study Support Centre, involved with hundreds of children, teachers and leaders from different schools and organisations and I CAN'T SHOW APPS TO THEM ON MY WHITEBOARD! I have up to 30 children/teachers at a time watching me demo apps on my iPod touch at worst, iPad at best. How stupid! Can't give zero rating either - doubly stupid!!

I love this device it does what it says. I use keynote and it great. It is not the device it the app that cannot project to the wall or screen I also use it at home with netflix wow.

Thanks apple

Apple should WRITE on the box what the VGA-adapter CANNOT do, that is:

it cannot MIRROR the ipad's display (I suppose...easy to do for the worst engineers in the world) which is the main interest in a such adapter.

And I cannot understand the reason of this kind of limitation! PLEASE, EXPLAIN US THIS! and PLEASE, GIVE US THIS OPTION!!!

Thanks

Common sense tells me that
1. Most, if no all, computers can connect to a project for presentation.
2. Apple has to demonstrate how good the iPad is through projector.
3. Presentation is one of the most essential features in computing.
4. Connection to a projector is technically possible and easy.

However, the iPad I bought is not able to connect to a projector for presentation.
How disappointing?

The biggest disappointment with the video output from the iPad is the inability to view Web pages and apps on any kind of external display. I suppose it is to limit watching unauthorised movies on big screen. Does Apple fear that iPad will become Apple TV replacement?? The reality is that out of people interested in buying this product, rarely any body would be primarily interested in watching big screen movies using iPad . If they want big screen movies, they can easily do so many in other ways. The main reason is education or use iPad as a scratch pad. It is a big shame that Apple is limiting the potential functionalities of such a great product as iPad.

Come on Apple, how do yo hope to confront upcoming huge wave of tablet PCs if you are going to behave like this.