Israel confiscates visiting iPads | Hacker News Reader

Israel confiscates visiting iPads

theregister.co.uk

18 pointsjacquesm14 comments

I found this out yesterday and submitted http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1264183

I don't understand the wifi issue. This screwed my plan for my father's 50th birthday gift. I have been hiding an iPad in my dorm room, still in its original gift wrapped packaging. What do I do now?

I'll gladly take it... actually forget that, Vietnamese customs would probably hold it forever before loosing it in someone's pocket...

So, Israel, Apple? First they shoot Macbooks, and now block iPads from entry? What's going on there‽

Bureaucracy.

Israel, like my own country, has laws in place which forbid the sale of any RF-capable devices until they have been expensively and painstakingly approved by some central regulatory authority. This sort of thing is common in state-heavy countries. The Israelis are just more competent about enforcing their laws and regulations.

So does the US - the agency responsible is the FCC.

In general regulating broadcast RF is a good thing, because it only takes one badly behaving device to spoil the air space for everyone.

You might think that it would be possible to rely on foreign certifications but standards are not totally harmonized between regions and governments worry that local inspection and certification is required to avoid having B-grade out of spec product sold in their market.

It is not necessarily bureaucracy or "state-heaviness"; Israel is a small country, the army may be using these frequencies, and they need to cleared out before being used by the public. It was the same with bluetooth and other wireless technologies.

American standards, with which the iPad does comply, allow for lower wireless power levels than do the European standards. Because of this, Haaretz quotes unnamed ministry officials as saying, "the broadcast levels of the [iPad] prevent approving its use in Israel."

They're confiscating them because they support lower power levels? That seems weird. Typically radio-like devices run into trouble for being too powerful for local regulations.

Not that that should be an issue. My Airport Extreme lets you turn down the transmission levels from 100% to 0% in 25% increments anyway.

They got it backwards.

IIRC the max effective power on 2.4ghz is 200mW in the US and 100 mW in the EU. Changing the limit is a software/firmware configuration issue plus a little calibration with a signal meter so it won't have any impact on a worldwide launch date.

A lot of people in the EU load US firmware to get more range, even though it's not permitted.

The lower default power is actually a good thing. 100mW is fine to cover an average European house/apartment, and it helps cut down on interference and boost total available capacity in densely populated areas.

I thought it smelled off. Not a big surprise from The Register, I guess :-)

I found the 100mW EU limit but curiously the "wifi" page on Wikipedia fails to list the US limit and I believe it claims it varies by jurisdiction.. (state?)

Loading US firmware has issues - you are going to lose channels 12 and 13 (I found out the hard way - I bought an Airport card for Powerbook in US and had missing channels ever since).

In practice nearly all WiFi in London is on channels 1-11 because there are enough tourists who would otherwise complain.

Some personal WiFi is on 13 because it buys you two-channel separation for free. (13 and 11 still conflict, but not as badly as 11/12 or 11/11.)

I feel your pain though. Apple are horrific about regional settings. Mine Macbook is a US model so it's missing 12/13 and there is no region crack for the DVD drive so it's permanently stuck on region 1. Next time I'm going to buy a Thinkpad.

Be aware that region free DVD drives don't work with Windows 7 - at least, they don't play DVD movies, but they do work with data DVDs - unless you're using VLC.

Some drives have firmwares available which tell the OS that they only support a single region - the region that's on the DVD, which resets upon every disc entry.

A bit of a PITA, since region locking isn't really a copy protection mechanism; DVDShrink or similar still work.

Mine Macbook is a US model so it's missing 12/13 and there is no region crack for the DVD drive so it's permanently stuck on region 1.

Can't speak for the MacBook, but all of the Macs I've owned can change region 5(?) times before being permanently locked. Just pointing it out in case you haven't even tried, though I'm assuming you've probably used up the 5 or there's some other factor.

> no region crack for the DVD drive so it's permanently stuck on region 1

Can't it be changed 5 times ? I seem to remember seeing that when I first popped a DVD into the MacBook, and was asked to set region.

A DVD which, incidentally, I was going to use RipIt on (http://thelittleappfactory.com/ripit/ - I'm pleased with it, might work for you). Keeping up with the silly tricks to annoy honest buyers seems to require buying commercial apps. Fine, I'll just buy one less DVD to pay for the app ...

(P.S. Another "smart" idea is small-kid's games that cost 10 bucks, in copy-protected-play-in-drive-CDs, to fend off those well known penniless pirates and thieves, the parents-of-small-kids. The first I bought was the last - I wanted to use the ISO in an old laptop with a bad drive ...)

This is not accurate. It is all initiated by few who tried to smuggle it through the customs at the airport and got caught. Those who paid the fine, or alternatively declared about it and pay the custom fee, managed to bring it in.

Yet, iPad being that hot topic in the news woke up some clerks in the communication ministry saying we did not approved it at all, as if it is nothing like any other iphone/ipod or just standard iphone.

by the time it would be available by Apple distributor in Israel (as we all know, it will not be available outside of US before the end of May) I believe the regulation thing would be sorted out.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com