The Apple iPad Gets a Firmware Update

As far as first-generation electronic gadgets are concerned, the Apple iPad has experienced a relatively smooth launch up till now. No major issues or bugs or faulty parts—new iPhone owners haven’t been so lucky.

The iPad’s main issue has been with Wi-Fi. While many iPad owners haven’t experienced any issues using Wi-Fi, there’s been a number of reports from people having trouble with the strength of the iPad’s Wi-Fi signal, dropped signals, and Wi-Fi being too slow at times, especially when streaming video.

Fortunately, Apple released a new version of firmware for the iPad this week, version 3.2.1, that promises to improve Wi-Fi connectivity, among some other minor changes such as adding Microsoft’s Bing as a search option to the Safari web browser, a subtle political move, no doubt.

Here’s the list of bug fixes and improvements according to Apple:

• Improved Wi-Fi connectivity.
• Fixed an issue that could prevent copy and paste of single-page PDF attachments in Mail.
• Addressed issues that causes video playback to freeze.
• Improved reliability of video-out when using iPad Dock Connector to VGA Adapter.
• Added Bing as an option for Safari’s search field.

The update applies to all models of the iPad and is now available for download through iTunes.