It took me 12 hours of frustration to discover this, so I share it. If you don't have a wireless router, you will need to use your iMac as a router, so that your iPad can connect to the net through your iMac.

Turning on WiFi isn't enough, even if your iPad tells you that it is connected to your iMac's WiFi. It's lying!

You need to:
go to system preferences/sharing,
highlight 'internet sharing',
choose 'ethernet' under the menu which says 'share your connection from',
tick 'Airport' in the 'To computers using' menu, and
tick internet sharing in the left hand menu (where you highlighted it earlier).

When you have done that, check that the 'internet sharing' circle is green (i.e. on) rather than red (i.e. off).

Now and only now will your iPad be able to connect--provided that WiFi is connected on both machines.

Thank you for sharing this information.

The iPad is not all that smart in regards to Wifi's. It can only determine, whether it is connected to a Wifi, but not whether the Wifi is actually connected to the internet.

I did all this and I still can't connect my iPad 2 to my Mac. I'm sharing ethernet 1 through Airport and sharing is turned ON (green). The iPad can see the name of my workstation, it connects (check mark), and has 3 bars. It even asked for the password so I know it connected. no internet functions work.

Any thoughts? I do use intego virus barrier. thought I might need to do something in there, but usually if it blocks something you can't even connect.

I tried 40 bit password as well as 128 WEP. neither work.

thanks