Tech Blogger Reveals 102 Secret Magnets in 2018 iPad Pro
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Apple’s latest iPad Pro iteration packs a ton of new features, unprecedented power, and next-generation technologies into an impressively designed chassis. Perhaps the most pragmatic among these features are hidden from plain sight.
As CultofMac notes, Apple’s latest 11 and 12.9 inch iPad Pro (2018) models, unlike their predecessors, are “studded with 102 small magnets,” which are strategically placed underneath its exterior aluminum chassis and allow for the seamless attachment and detachment of the new Apple Pencil and Apple Smart Keyboard Folio accessories.
The magnets are all shielded by the tablet’s impermeable aluminum-unibody shell and therefore it is unknown it’s anyone’s best guess as to how so many small magnets even fit with all the other components and delicate internals inside.
Fortunately, famed Tech-YouTuber, Marques Brownlee, answered these head-scratching questions for us.
In a recent video, the YouTube vlogger uses a special piece of magnetically-charged paper to “map out” the internal magnet structure hidden within Apple’s latest iPad Pro.
MAGNETS pic.twitter.com/SCSzHNFo9W
— Marques Brownlee (@MKBHD) November 13, 2018
Brownlee uses a material known as “magnetic field viewing paper” to conduct his experiment, which makes it possible to visualize magnetic fields through metal, silicon or other impermeable materials.
Most, if not all, of the 102 magnets packed inside the new iPad Pros are located around the outer edges and, more generously, in and around the tablet’s curved corners.
These magnets have been incorporated to allow for easy and secure attachment/detachment of Apple’s Pencil and Keyboard accessories — they don’t serve any other meaningful purpose, save for adding a tiny amount of extra weight to the device. As iFixIt noted, upon removing the magnets and main logic board cover during their recent 11-inch iPad Pro teardown, “If we had a nickel for every magnet in here, we could melt them all down and make a giant novelty nickel.”
