With the recent release of Diablo 3, there’s plenty of “first-impressions” posts out there. We haven’t gotten around to writing ours sooner because our play-time has been somewhat limited, in part because of poor system performance. Before going iPad-only, we purchased the 2009 Mac Mini Server model in order to have something to setup and sync our iOS devices to, and to serve as a headless Mac Mini connected to our LCD television. This was before buying an Apple TV, so the Mac Min was a dual-purpose machine handling the brunt of our multimedia needs.

We sold our last PC back in 2007 or 2008, so when Diablo 3 hit the scene, our inner-gamer, lingering from years of neglect, suddenly felt reinvigorated and yearned for a way to play the game. We were apparently not alone here, as we’ve seen many a post online about running Diablo 3 on a Mac Mini. So here’s the deal.

Integrated vs discrete GPUs.

The Mac Mini is built around the idea of a compact footprint and low-energy consumption. It’s basically a laptop scrunched together in a small box, which you hook up to whatever accessories you want. As with most other laptops, this means the machine isn’t built for gaming, and incorporates an integrated graphics processing unit (GPU). Without going into too much detail, this means the GPU shares system RAM, and since the GPU is also designed to consume little energy, it’s not a very fast beast, and while it works great for typical computing tasks, it doesn’t have the power for much 3D computation, which is vital in modern games.

Yet, there are low-power GPUs that some manufacturers put into laptops, and accordingly, Apple put one into the mid-range 2011 Mac Mini.¹ Our 2009 model sports an Nvidia GeForce 9400M with 256MB RAM, which is to say back in 2009 it wasn’t horrible, but three years later, it’s not so good at keeping up with modern graphics.² In comparison, the mid-range 2011 Mac Mini sports an AMD Radeon 6630M, also with 256MB RAM.

The 9400M is actually listed as a supported GPU on Blizzard’s Diablo 3 requirements site, under “low performance”. Curiously, the 6630M isn’t listed, though it does work, and performance is substantially better.

Playing Diablo 3 on the 2009 Mac Mini Server

The misleading proposition with the 9400M is that Diablo 3 just runs a tad sluggish. When you start the game, characters move noticeably less smooth than they ought to, but you assume the game’s playable nonetheless. Here or there, for the next couple hours, you’ll find some lag spikes, but generally Act I of the game is playable.

We should also note that this testing was done on the lowest possible resolution (800×600) with all effects off turned down to their minimum, or off entirely if the option was available.

Some folks have mused that certain classes play better on older video cards. The argument goes that classes with lots of special spell effects like wizards play worse, but we didn’t find this to be true. Rather, the problem seems to be large open areas, particularly those with “tiered” levels. For example, areas that are “up high” in the environment, where you can observe a drop (e.g. a cliff) tend to make the game lag considerably worse. The same is true when there are lots of environmental effects (e.g. burning villages). Here, the game is so laggy that if you’re not careful, you’ll find yourself suddenly dead due to a lag spike. We mused on Twitter that the experience, complete with poor graphics and network lag, was not unlike playing Diablo 2 after it’s respective release.

In short, the game is technically playable, but the experience gets worse over time, to the point where you can barely keep up with players online. In fact, the character ghosting in Act II is so bad that by the time you see monsters upon you, you might already be dead.

We’ve read mixed reports about the game beyond Act II. Some say Act II is the worst, with Act II and Act IV offering a better experience due to less environmental effects. Though, the beginning of Act III also seems bad.

The experience can be somewhat improved by not playing online. We found that joining public games offered the worst experience, as did playing during peak hours; it seems in-game lag is made worse by network load, and the combined effect of the game’s popularity and a poor graphics card make for a very poor combination.

Upgrade your Mac Mini?

If you’re currently using a Mac Mini, chances are the advice to buy a gaming PC is going to fall on deaf ears. After all, if you were a huge gamer, you wouldn’t be trying to play Diablo 3 on your Mini in the first place. So, if you don’t want to struggle through the lag on an older Mini, you can consider buying a new one.

As we said earlier, only the mid-range 2011 Mac Mini offers discrete graphics, which starts at just under $800. Upgrading to the i7 processor isn’t worthwhile for gaming purposes, and the HD and RAM upgrades are unecessarily expensive through Apple, so if you have any DIY skills, you’re better off doing these upgrades yourself if you need them. Just to play Diablo 3, the standard 4GB RAM option is adequate.

Depending on how old your current Mini is, you may be able to make back up to half the cost of the new Mini, so you’re basically looking at a $400 upgrade. That’s not cheap, but you also get a standard HDMI output port, as well as an integrated power brick, so the Mini is a lot more portable than the old version.

Some people may argue for ditching the Mini altogether and upgrading to a higher-end Mac, but it’s hard to justify the price increases if you already have a monitor and aren’t going to do a lot more gaming on the machine. The $1200 iMac is $400 more than the Mini, with basically the same specs. The only real difference (other than the integrated display) is an upgrade to the AMD Radeon 6750M, which sports 512MB RAM.³ Unfortunately, Apple’s lower-end notebooks only sport integrated GPUs, so if price is a huge concern and you want to stick with Apple, a new Mac Mini is your best bet.

Or wait?

Most Apple rumours hold little water, but it’s worth considering the fact that Apple may refresh the Mac Mini this summer. New low-power Intel CPUs are now available, and it’s likely that Apple will start using these new “Ivy Bridge” processors in their lineup. The big question for would-be gamers, however, is whether a Mac Mini refresh will include integrated graphics or go the discrete route. After all, it’s quite possible that all new Mac Minis will include the newer Intel HD 4000 GPU, which albeit faster than the Intel HD 3000 used in the 2011 Mac Minis, won’t really be an upgrade to the AMD Radeon 6630M.

If Apple does decide to use discrete graphics, at least in one of it’s new 2012 Mac Mini models, then they’ll likely use another Radeon model, whose performance would be around 10-20% better than the 6630M. That’s about the speed boost we’d see from Ivy Bridge over the older Sandy Bridge CPUs in the 2011 Mac Minis, so performance-wise, the upgrade won’t be too substantial.

Ultimately, an upgrade comes down to how badly you want a smooth Diablo 3 experience today. The 6630M plays the game great at medium settings, with some lag if you pump everything to high-res.⁴ If you decide to hold out, consider that no Mac Mini refresh has yet been announced by Apple, and the rumours indicate a possible lineup refresh announcement during WWDC in the second week of June. While Apple has used this event to announce Mac hardware changes in the past, it doesn’t happen every year. The 2011 Mac Mini was released last July, so we’re coming up on a year, and since computer sales tend to be greater in the month preceding a new school year, any hardware refresh will likely happen in July or August at the latest.

This means that deciding to upgrade is a gamble. At the earliest, we’ll see new Mac Minis in about three weeks, but it could be around 12. And that’s only if Apple can get production in gear to meet the start of the new school year sales rush. Can you afford to wait that long to kill Diablo?

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We finally received our Happy Hacking Keyboard (HHKB) Pro 2 that we ordered for our iPad. The idea was to relegate our Apple Wireless Keyboard to only those trips where we need extreme portability and still require a keyboard. The rest of the time, we’d use the HHKB because of its superior tactile feel. As the HHKB Pro 2 is wired, we spent a little time trying to determine the difference in power draw between it and the Apple Wireless Keyboard, to see just why reports suggest the HHKB Pro 2 doesn’t work with the iPad, and how our iPad’s battery life would change if we did get the HHKB Pro 2to work. It turns out, finding a good answer is difficult, because Apple doesn’t seem to make the power consumption specifications of its accessories easy to find, if it makes them available to the public at all.

There’s power draw at both ends.

When we’re talking Bluetooth, we’re talking power draw on both the device end (because of the Bluetooth antenna), as well as on the accessory end. The former is why most Bluetooth accessories have batteries. The power draw here is more measurable, and we can estimate it fairly.

For example, one third-party wireless keyboard manufacturer advertised their keyboard as drawing 6 mA of power, which serves as a reasonable estimate for what the Apple Wireless Keyboard draws.

Something to keep in mind is that the iPhone 4S and new iPad are using the latest Bluetooth revision (4.0), which, among other things, is designed for lower power consumption for accessories. Depending on the source, reports suggest Bluetooth 4.0 cuts power consumption by 30-50% compared to earlier Bluetooth revisions. A lot of this is dependant on how frequently a given accessory communicates with its host, as the low power consumption of Bluetooth 4.0 seems linked to an accessory’s sleep mode, wherein it leeches only tens of nA.

During peak transmission/reception, however, an accessory even under Bluetooth 4.0 is using a lot more power, at tens of mA. Of course, this all assumes the accessory is Bluetooth 4.0-compliant, which few yet are. Certainly, our Apple Wireless Keyboard is not, so we’ll continue to assume it uses roughly 6 mA of power when in use.

Back to the antenna itself, despite the fact most “This is what you can do to conserve iPhone/iPad battery power” guides claim you should turn Bluetooth off to maximize your iDevice’s power, the reality is the difference between keeping it on and turning it off is very small. This may be due to the Bluetooth antenna being part of a larger RF board which shares resources among different transmission protocols, but because Bluetooth is already very power efficient on the device end, the additional draw here is small. Several folks online have graphed power use between smart phones with Bluetooth on vs. Bluetooth off, and the difference really is really negligible. There’s no reason to assume the iPhone would operate much differently in this regard.

Even if there were a notable difference, it would only matter to you if don’t use Bluetooth with other accessories and only with a wireless keyboard; if you need to keep Bluetooth on regardless of what kind of keyboard you use, the power consumption here doesn’t matter, unless there’s a substantial change in consumption the more accessories are connected, or the more the keyboard is used.¹

In our case, we primarily use Bluetooth for our keyboard, and occassionally use it for our Jawbone Jambox. So technically, when we’re not jamming out to music, perhaps our current setup is burning more power than 6 mA after all, but even if we rounded up to 10 mA, it ultimately doesn’t matter when we consider the HHKB Pro 2.

Bad news for the HHKB.

Per the HHKB Pro 2 specs (which were conveniently a lot easier to find), the keyboard draws a max of 100 mA, and 30 mA during normal operation. The max draw is a lot higher because it assumes you’re using the built-in USB hub and have other devices connected to it. With no devices attached, the keyboard’s draw is 30 mA, which is about five times more power than what the Apple Wireless Keyboard draws on the keyboard side.

With iOS 4.2, Apple reduced the power consumption allowance through the camera connection kit (CCK) from 100 mA to 20 mA. This explains why the HHKB Pro 2 won’t power off the CCK anymore without auxiliary power, and why other USB keyboards get adequate power through the CCK to function. We can roughly estimate that a USB keyboard uses roughly three times the mA a Bluetooth keyboard uses.²

Our solution is to use auxiliary power, but of course this means we need to have an outlet handy, which typically limits us to buildings. We explored the idea of disabling the HHKB’s onboard USB hub, thereby disabling the additional power draw, but it seems this requires more serious hardware tinkering. As the HHKB is not a cheap keyboard, we decided not to risk damaging anything, so instead explored other routes.

Typically, a USB keyboard offers no need to worry about extra batteries, which is always a potential concern when traveling with a Bluetooth keyboard. For us, the determination as to whether we use the HHKB Pro 2 nearly exclusively with the iPad comes down to whether or not we can reduce the power consumption by at least 10 mA. Otherwise, we’ll still have to keep the Apple Wireless Keyboard around for when we don’t have an outlet handy.

Using a powered-hub.

When we first received the HHKB Pro 2, we of course had to verify that it wouldn’t work with the iPad as-is. That was quick, and while expected, still disappointing.

We had ordered several USB widgets to experiment with, but as we hadn’t received them yet when the HHKB arrived, we were limited to playing around with what we did have on hand: a USB hub.

The USB hub we pulled from our cable box is a small four-port powered hub made by IOGEAR. We bought it several years ago for use with, we believe, an Apple Powerbook or Macbook, and it’s collected dust ever since. It’s a 2.0 USB “microhub” with a USB cable, approximately 2″ in length, attached.

Our initial test was with the USB hub unpowered, power cable unattached. We plugged the HHKB into the hub, the hub into the CCK, and the CCK into the iPad. Unlike our attempt without the hub, we actually received feedback from the iPad this time, with the iPad complaining that there wasn’t enough power to use the attached accessory. We don’t know why we didn’t get a similar error when we didn’t use the hub, but at least we got some feedback. Unfortunately, the keyboard still didn’t work.

That was easily fixed when we plugged the power cord into the wall and hub, however. The HHKB sprung to life, and defaulted to the Japanese keyboard. We removed that setting on the iPad (leaving just English and Emoji keyboard profiles installed), and we were off.

While this was a great start, it offers marginal benefits, as plenty of tactile keyboards can power directly off the CCK. The reason the HHKB Pro 2 grabbed our attention is because of its size, and while this remains beneficial at home because setting our portable desk up anywhere is easier, the HHKB Pro 2′s small footprint can best be leveraged if we can turn this setup into one that’s more portable. Another problem with this setup is that the iPad cannot be charged when the keyboard is attached. Even though the USB hub is powered, it doesn’t supply the iPad itself with any power.

Streamling the setup.

There aren’t many keyboard aficionados trying to get power-hungry tactile keyboards working with the iPad, but there are a good number of audiophiles trying to get DACs working with the iPad. So when perusing for DAC solutions, we came across the suggestion of using a USB Y-cable.

The one we picked up had USB-A on one end, and on the other end USB-A and mini-USB-A. This type of cable is typically used to power USB hard-drives, using the extra USB-A end to obtain additional power from an unused USB port on a computer.

For our experiment, we plugged the end with only one cable into the CCK, and plugged the mini-USB-A cable into the HHKB. The other USB-A cable we plugged into the iPad power brick, which was plugged into an outlet. Strangley, this setup didn’t work.

We tried the same exact setup with a PC switchbox that also didn’t want to work with the HHKB. Our previous USB-hub solution worked with the switchbox also, but so did this Y-cable trick. Why it works with the switchbox and not the iPad is a mystery.

Back to DAC solutions, we read about Dr. Bott’s T3hub, which is a non-powered USB hub that supposedly “tells” the connected PC that it’s powered. This means that as long as there’s adequate power being pushed through a given USB port, the T3 “tricks” whatever mechanism is asking for extra power into thinking the power is there. We bought such a hub and connected it to the CCK, and connected the HHKB to the T3. We got an error that the device we connected needed more power, so we were again out-of-luck.

Just to see what would happen, we took our previous failed Y-cable setup but attached the T3 to the CCK, and plugged the one side of the Y-cable into the T3. With the power brick still plugged into an outlet, this setup worked, and actually makes for a more compact foorprint than the USB hub we used earlier, since we don’t need to carry around an extra power adapter. Unfortunately, this setup still doesn’t charge the iPad, and still requires an outlet.

Going portable.

We scrounged through our cable box one more time and dug out a portable battery charged via mini-USB. It was part of a kit to use an iPhone with a motorcycle, and basically provides additional power to the iPhone so you don’t deplete the iPhone internal battery as quickly when using GPS. Specs from the bottom of the battery are:

Capacity: 3200 mAh
In: 5V . 1A
Out: 5.5V

We charged the battery to capacity and then plugged our Y-cable into it. So on the one end of the Y-cable we had this battery and HHKB plugged in, and on the other end the Dr. Bott. The Dr. Bott was then plugged into the CCK, which was plugged into the iPad. The setup worked! This gives us a portable solution for the HHKB, and a simple USB extension cord gives us some room to move the HHKB further away from the iPad. The only downide to this setup other than the cable clutter is the lack of ability to charge the iPad with the CCK attached.

Our battery isn’t anything special, and we assume that any portable power source would work here. Just to verify, we again went through our cable box and dug out the requisite female USB-A adapter for our Solio rechargable battery.³ This worked just as well, with the added advantage of a solar recharging solution in exchange for a bigger footprint. Given the number of solar charging and battery solutions on the market nowadays, there are plenty of options here.

If you want to run the HHKB off two AA batteries, there are solutions available, or you could even build a MintyBoost if you want to go the DIY route. Our battery has five blue LED lights indicating battery charge, and with the keyboard hooked up in this configuration for a full work day, not a single light went out.⁴ Despite this, the actual power draw seems more than we expected, and may explain why Apple didn’t leave the allowable power draw through the CCK at 100 mAh.

Ultimately, our portable solution works, and keyboard battery life is about on par with the iPad itself. That’s not bad as long as you can deal with the hassle of charging a second device whenever you plug the iPad into a power source as well.

Alternatives?

The HHKB Pro 2 with a portable power source is the most compact Topre-based keyboard you’ll find to use with the iPad. The Realforce 87U is a larger alternative that may not require a power source, but the added keyboard size makes it less useful on-the-road. If you’re willing to forego Topre switches for mechanical switches like the Cherry MX series, a reasonable option is the KBT Poker, whose footprint is about on par with the HHKB Pro 2, and whose price is about 66% less. The downside is that the Poker’s build quality doesn’t meet that of the HHKB Pro 2, and the layout isn’t as ideal either, seeing as it doesn’t target the same keyboard-maestro audience the HHKB’s developers did.⁵ Fortunately, the Poker does come in various Cherry MX configurations, so you can get it in the very clicky blue configuration, the quieter tactile brown configuration, as well as the linear black and red configurations.[^5] This at least gives mechanical keyboard lovers several options, whereas the HHKB Pro 2 only comes in one Topre switch configuration with an actuation force of 45g.

For those willing to wait, you can occasionally find an HHKB Pro sold second-hand. These were produced prior to the HHKB Pro 2, and are basically the same keyboard, though lacking the integrated USB hub. Presumably, this means it would work with the iPad without any of the previously-mentioned accessory-hacking, though we can’t comment for sure since we haven’t tried one yet.⁶

For now, we’re quite happy with our workaround for getting the HHKB Pro 2 to work with our computing device of choice. The overall accessory breakdown, roughly, follows:

That comes down to roughly $107 on top of the cost of the HHKB Pro 2, so it’s not cheap if you don’t have some of this stuff already laying around. In our case, we only had to purchase the T3hub and Y-cable, so our costs weren’t that much as far as the equipment that ultimately made it into the setup goes.

Then again, if you love tactile keyboards, especially those utilizing Topre switches, you’re no stranger to paying more for quality. From our perspective, it’s worth it.

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While people love to talk about how intuitive touch is as an interface method, the cold reality is that for certain applications, legacy input formats still reign supreme. For example, for writing, there is no unseating the keyboard in one format or another, as writing by hand is slow and cumbersome for longform input. ¹

Keyboards themselves are a rather interesting animal, which can be analyzed from several perspectives. There’s DVORAK vs QWERTY, for example, and strong arguments for practicality either way. But perhaps a less niche argument is design implementation, where we have mechanical keyboards in one corner, and cheapo rubber dome and scissor keyboards in another.

Shawn Blanc just wrote a good piece on this very topic, and if you’re at all interested in how mechanical keyboards are becoming the new in thing among the blogging elite, be sure to read his piece on clicky keyboards.

We won’t go into detail here about why a mechanical keyboard is better than most mass-produced keyboards today, save for mentioning that the tactile nature of the former is what gives them a place in our hearts. Some people go all googly over the sound, but we consider that secondary to the feel. It may be a matter of min-maxing, but as Shawn can attest to, a good keyboard does make a difference in typing speed and accuracy, and over the long-term, the investment in a more expensive mechanical keyboard may be worth it.

Shawn rounded up three different mechanical keyboards in his review. One was a legacy Apple Extended II, while the others were modern mechanicals: the Das Keyboard and the Tactile Pro 3. To the casual observer, those are perhaps the big three options², but there are actually a lot more possibilities based around different types of switches. Of the keyboards Shawn tested, two use Alps mechanisms and one uses Cherry blue switches. Don’t worry about the differences, just know that both are considered very good for typing and not much else.

Not just for typing.

The other big area that keyboards excel at is gaming, and other than the PC gaming industry’s propensity to push the edge of the graphics race (which nerds love), superior controls are the other reason why PC gaming remains so full of vigor; no matter how convenient a handheld controller is, the mouse and keyboard combination maximizes human reflexes for the most intense gaming experience possible. For this reason, some savvy gamers have pushed the envelope by acquiring mechanical keyboards to further maximize their game.

Without going into too much detail here, the crux of the issue is the activation point for a given key; gamers want to know exactly when a given action is registered, and they want it to be quickly repeatable as well as predictable. As such, they prefer keyboards that allow them to ride the activation point, whereby they float their fingers on the keys at the point where a given action is registered. However, they also don’t want the keys to be too soft, offering enough resistance such that unintentional pressure doesn’t cause a key to register unexpectedly.³

For gaming purposes, none of the keyboards Shawn reviewed are great. In fact, the blue Cherry MX switches are not prefered for gaming at all, and while some claim the more linear Cherry black switches are ideal, most of the research we conducted pointed at the Cherry brown switches as more preferable, as they still provide appropriate tactile feedback. Another option many pro gamers opt for are Topre switches, usually with an actuation force of 55g.⁴ Topre switches are actually capacitive in nature, and are a sort of hybrid mechanical switch, which offers great tactile feedback and the smoothest force gradient available. They’re also the most expensive switch out there.

What about for the iPad?

We started looking into all of this ourselves some months back when we realized that we missed our old IBM Model M. We played around with many a keyboard during our past gaming days, but most were rubber dome keyboards and therefore equally bad. We kept a Model M around for casual use and loved it, despite it being a loud clacker. When we left desktops behind and started using Powerbooks/Macbooks, we didn’t revisit keyboards until we made the iPad our main computer. To this end, we picked up an Apple bluetooth keyboard, which is conveniently sized for travel, but uses the same scissoring mechanism that laptop keyboards do. We’ve said before that we consider a physical keyboard a necessity for longform writing on the iPad, and to this end, wouldn’t it be nice if we could have a better keyboard companion?

The first problem is, obviously, the wireless connectivity. Mechanical keyboards don’t typically come with bluetooth connectivity, so we have to connect the keyboard to our iPad using the camera connection kit. That’s not sexy, but it works.⁵

The second problem is form factor. If you only write longform on your iPad at home, maybe this isn’t a problem for you, but a typical 103-key keyboard is a massive beast, and most people can do without the numpad. If you’re to take your mechanical keyboard on travel with you, having a smaller physical footprint is always beneficial.

Fortunately, for the Cherry switch lovers, Leopold makes tenkeyless boards with whatever switch you prefer. If you’re willing to spend another $200 for Topre switches, Realforce makes tenkeyless models also (model 87u), with their traditional model offering variable-weight keys, and other models offering specific actuation forces across all keys.⁶ Finally, there’s the Happy Hacking Keyboard (HHKB) Pro 2, which has the smallest footprint of the bunch, but with the added problem of a built-in USB hub. This means the iPad won’t power the HHKB Pro 2 without some sort of auxiliary power source.⁷

Because mechanical switches take up more physical space than the scissor switches used in laptop-style keyboards, there’s no way you’ll ever match the footprint of the Apple bluetooth keyboard, but the HHKB Pro 2 is reasonably close.⁸

Of course, if you go this route, the last consideration is finding a suitable iPad stand; we’ve relied on both the WINGStand and Incase Origami in the past, but both are designed to work with Apple’s keyboard, so neither will work with the HHKB Pro 2. It took us awhile to discover the Origami and WINGStand, which are the top two solutions for typing on one’s lap with an iPad and physical keyboard, so we might have to hack something together from scratch in order to make the HHKB work even half as well.

We just put an order in for the HHKB in gray/black⁹, as well as for some USB accessories so we can experiment with powering the board properly. If all goes well, it will mean we can charge the iPad while we’re using the keyboard, which was always a concern of ours in the past when we mused about using a wired keyboard instead of a bluetooth one.

Once we have all the parts in hand, we’ll be sure to report on our findings.

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Some have made the case, admittedly admirably, that if Apple were to make a tablet smaller than the iPad, it would come in at 7.85″. Technically this makes sense, but it’s only looking at the issue from a hardware perspective, not from a functional one.

Take the iPhone and iPad for instance.¹ The two devices are extremely similar on a technical level, with neither really beating the other out insofar as general use goes. That is to say, the iPhone can do more or less what the iPad can, and vice versa. The only major caveat here is that the iPhone is a phone, and the iPad is larger.² And it’s the latter point we’ll focus on, because size in this regard is important.

The iPhone and iPad are so similar that Apple-haters have called the iPad nothing more than an oversized iPhone. And while that’s somewhat true from a thousand-foot perspective, it’s tough to argue that iPad and iPhone sales are cannibalizing one another, especially when so many owners of one also own the other.

Why is that?

It’s a matter of use, and environment is only one factor. For example, we use TweetBot on both our iPhone and our iPad, but how we use TweetBot on the two devices is somewhat different. For example, we have both apps hooked up to our Readability account, but when we come across a link to an article in our Twitter feed when we’re using TweetBot for the iPhone, we’ll typically send it to Readability to read later without even peeking at it first. On the iPad, we’ll generally click the link to the article, and either read it right then, else save it to Readability to reference at a later time. The point is, while TweetBot on both apps offers the same functionality, we’ll favor a particular workflow on one device over another, because a given device is better for some tasks depending on the form the device takes.

That’s the reason mobile versions of web sites make more sense on the iPhone. At first, we were incredibly annoyed that most mobile web site versions lacked the same features as the “full” site, but from a use scenario, most people don’t need access to the full site when they’re using a mobile device.³ That’s because most people aren’t using the iPhone as their primary browser, but rather a backup browser used on the road.

The iPad, however, is another story. A lot of people are using the iPad as their primary computing device, and so expect web sites to load with all the functionality in a desktop version. That’s why it’s so important for developers to ensure that web site versions designed for viewing on phones aren’t the design that show up for tablet users: the user expectation is different.

There are also some apps that simply wouldn’t work on a given device, even though there’s no technical reason an app couldn’t be written for it. We’ve recently enjoyed sketching out some design ideas in Papers, an app made for iPad. There’s no reason the developers couldn’t make Papers into a universal app and offer an iPhone version, but it would detract from the experience; part of the joy of using Papers on an iPad is the amount of drawing real-estate available to the user, and decreasing this real-estate would make for a less-enjoyable experience. In fact, this the reason we don’t see the type of drawing apps on iPhones as we do on the iPad: the iPhone’s screen is too small to be of any real use to artists.

What does this have to do with a smaller iPad?

Whether or not Apple can release a 7.85″ tablet without annoying developers, there’s nothing a 7.85″ tablet would do that the iPhone and iPad can’t, on both a technical level and a task-specific one. Whereas we’ve illustrated how workflows can change depending on whether you’re using an app on an iPhone or iPad, and how some apps simply make more sense on one form factor, what makes best sense on a 7.85″ tablet? Nothing.

A 7.85″ tablet would be too small for gaining the major benefits of apps like Papers, and too big to be an always-available backup device for checking mail, Twitter, etc. Our use of TweetBot on this imaginary 7.85″ device would either mimic our use of TweetBot on the iPhone or iPad, but not differ the way it does between version now. No matter what kind of an app you can think of, the app will always suit an iPhone or iPad better.

A 7.85″ device simply makes no sense in this market, and we don’t even need to argue costs to make that case.

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One of the iPad’s greatest strengths is its touch interface, which has proven itself more intuitive than traditional computing mechanisms like the keyboard and mouse. Yet sometimes, physical input mechanisms remain useful, as in long-form writing. In a rather confusing piece praising the iPad’s abstraction-free controls, TUAW’s Erica Sadun digresses to bash keyboard use with the iPad.

Yesterday, I spent some time debating about why keyboards and iPads didn’t mix well. Many users find that iOS is not ideal for office tasks like writing and editing books, creating complex spreadsheets — in fact, many typing-intense tasks are slower on the iPad or iPhone than on a conventional computer (aside from the fact that the best computer is the one you have with you).

The piece is rather confusing because Sadun doesn’t explain whether she’s talking about software keyboards or physical ones, as the latter addresses most user’s complaints about the iPad not being great for writing. We can only assume that she goes back and forth in the article about which kind of keyboard she means, as it’s the only way to glean any sense from her post

Adding a keyboard, in my opinion, simply transforms the iPad from a superior touch-based system to a less-capable typing-based one.

If Sadun is talking about software keyboards here, she’s not offering a solution. One could argue that a more intuitive approach to typing would be to write the letters on-screen and allowing a text-recognition engine to do the dirty work of putting your strokes into words, but as we know, writing out letters is much slower than typing, which is why removing the keyboard entirely makes no sense. If Sadun is talking about adding a physical keyboard into the mix, she doesn’t explain why she believes it makes the iPad into a less-capable machine. If anything, for long-form writing, we’ve found that adding a physical keyboard only makes the device better, because we can view our text in full-screen, and still use touch controls to manipulate things on the screen, be they in the writing app we’re using, or in another app we need access to. Either way, the fact that we have a keyboard handy doesn’t take away from the iPad’s flexibility. If anything, it makes the iPad more flexible.

The types and scale of content creation continue to grow, with new apps debuting daily that continue to push the limits on the kinds and quality of data that can be built, manipulated, and finessed on the iPad. None of them, however, seems to do the grinding job of writing out large quantities of text and meticulously editing them after.

We’re not sure how Sadun doesn’t see that there are several apps that make writing on an iPad work. From Byword and iaWriter to Writing Kit and Pages, there are plenty of apps focusing on a specific writing niche that users can choose from. Why are these applications not sufficient for “writing out large quantities of text and meticulously editing them after”?¹ With the exception of apps like Scrivener that combine very specific workflow and organizational tasks into a streamlined writing environment, the writing apps available for the iPad aren’t much different from those available on OS X.

I often take advantage of it’s mindmapping and sketching tools to lay out ideas, but my “real work” will happen back at the office. I don’t think the South Park guys will be switching to iPads any time soon either.

Comparing Sadun’s writing requirements to what the South Park staff have to deal with is simply ludicrous. For one, there’s no reason South park story-boarding and scripts can’t be written on an iPad, but obviously their workflow is reliant on more powerful computers. From recollection, each episode of South Park is generated using many servers to process the data and graphics required, and that’s obviously not a task a single iPad can accomplish. Sadun may just as well have pointed out how the iPad makes for a poor web server, or CAD machine. But Sadun’s needs to write are easily accomplished using iPad apps, and it’s silly to lump writing into niche content creation cycles like developing iOS and OS X apps. We’ve pointed out how the iPad remains incapable of serving as an app development system, but that’s a far cry from the type of content creation most people need to deal with.

If this is the type of article Sadun is writing nowadays, maybe she should switch to the iPad, because whatever she’s using “back at the office” doesn’t seem to be helping.

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Apple hasn’t pushed the new iPad’s specs into the limelight, a trend they’ve run with for all their mobile device offerings. Traditionally, specs were the lifeblood of a PC marketing campaign. That specs on paper were a meaningless comparison is something computer nerds have known about for years (even if they didn’t always admit it), and today comparing specs is mere mental masturbation. Consumers don’t care about which device has a better CPU or which has more RAM, they care instead about the experience a given device offers. “Does it do what I need it to?” is the question they ask themselves.

That said, there’s some merit in noting a device’s specs, if only to compare it to its predecessors. “Will this upgrade be worthwhile”, for example, is a question that specs can help answer.

Horace Dediu compares the new iPad to the 2008 MacBook Air, a device we really wanted to buy back then, but considered its specs too meager in comparison to the MacBook Pro we were using at the time.

The new iPad now exceeds the total display resolution, has similar speed and storage capacity while having twice the battery life of the thinnest laptop of four years ago. It also has very high quality cameras and GPS and cellular network connectivity which have yet to appear on mainstream PCs. It’s still a lot smaller and half the price and has a larger selection of available software titles at prices a fraction of its elder cousin.

The only value that a desktop of 2008 has over a new iPad is the size of the screen and a larger hard drive.

Dediu’s point isn’t that the new iPad is a better computer, but that it’s another step in narrowing the gap between traditional PCs and the iPad. Put another way, consumers are finding the new iPad perfectly capable of handling their daily tasks, just as the 2008 MacBook Air did four years ago. If anything, it puts a lot of emphasis on the idea that implementation is more important than raw specs, and why you really don’t need the latest hardware to be relevent.¹

Critics may dismiss this by pointing out how the 2008 MacBook Air was considered under-powered, and how no one in their right mind would buy a 2008 MacBook Air today, but that would miss the point entirely: by re-engineering the software and hardware to be both simple and fast, Apple has created a device that is replacing traditional computers at home. And it’s doing this using the hardware equivalent of a four-year-old notebook computer. The irony is that while we didn’t buy the MacBook Air four years ago because we considered it underpowered, we didn’t think twice about preordering the new iPad. In fact, since the original iPad, we replaced our MacBook Pro for everyday computing tasks.

It’s become a better PC.

Looking back at our initial experiment in 2010 to use the iPad almost excusively for home computing, we see that several things have changed since, which have further cemented our decision, and why we haven’t felt the need to jump back into the notebook game.

When we bought our original iPad, we also bought a Mac Mini to serve as a headless media center. Its chief purpose was not only to serve media to our LCD television, but to serve as a mechanism for getting stuff onto, and off of, our iPad and iPhone. The synchronization process was typically a pain using a headless Mac, and though it became easier with VNC apps, it still wasn’t an ideal solution.

iCloud has mostly changed that. Since we’ve had the ability to back our iOS devices up wirelessly to the cloud, we’ve had almost no need to physically connect our devices to the Mac Mini.² Our iPhone 4S, for example, has never once been hooked up to the Mac Mini, and we’re better for it.

In truth, we rarely listen to our iTunes library anymore; most of our music listening is via Pandora. Still, it’s nice to have our music library with us, but a requirement for this has always been physical synchonization. Not only is this no longer necessary with the latest versions of iOS, but more importantly, we don’t even need to be home to get at our music collection. iTunes match is a great service that compliments the “basic” iCloud offering, and has allowed us to dismiss our Mac Mini even more.

iCloud and iTunes Match are two big changes that came about more recently, but iOS in general has gotten better. Switching between apps is now faster than it was in 2010, and the two years of application development has enabled a much better workflow than we had when we first adopted the iPad as out primary computer.

No need for the Mac Mini anymore?

Unfortunately, we’re still not at a place where we can totally remove our Mac Mini from our home. Apple TV was another solid blow to our need for a media center, but there remain three reasons we’re still holding onto the Mini.

First is the issue of media acquisition; most of the media we consume can be obtained via our iOS devices, but there are others we still obtain through other channels. While Apple’s video offerings for film and television have expanded significantly over the past couple years, others still require alternative approaches, like being able to grab content from a TiVo hard drive, ripping media from optical disc, or downloading from the internet. As Apple’s offerings continue to expand, the need for consumers to rely on these other distribution channels will lessen, and we hope that television networks and other publishers come to understand this. In most cases, consumers will opt for the easiest method of obtaining what they want, and Apple’s service is sufficiently easy for people to forego most other channels.

Second is iPhoto, which for many of us, makes up a large portion of our media library. The 64GB maximum storage size on the iPad keeps it from being able to store our entire iPhoto library, which could somewhat be alleviated with a more well-built iCloud component for iPhoto. So basically, we’re forced to wait on either an iCloud/iPhoto revision such that our whole iPhoto library is in the cloud, else wait on a larger hard drive option in the next iPad. Hopefully, the former option will be taken up by Apple in the near future.

Third is the issue of app development, and the concept of “eating your own dog food”. There are plenty of code editors available for the iPad, but no way to run custom code on the device.³ You might argue that users can still write HTML apps on the iPad, but again, this is a somewhat limited alternative. We have to think that Apple is at least toying with the idea of an iOS app that could be used to write code for actual compilation and submission to the AppStore, but if they are, no one’s hinted at it. The closest solution we’ve come up with in the meantime is to store code in the cloud (e.g. Dropbox) and use an iOS code editor to access it (e.g. Textastic). We then need VNC or similar app to access our Mac Mini, so we can manipulate the simulator.

Of these three obstacles, the first isn’t a deal-breaker; we wouldn’t be too upset if we had to limit our video consumption to what we can get through iTunes, Netflix, Hulu, etc. The third issue is variable, because we’re only throwing around the idea of doing some hobbyist development at the moment, so we could very well end up either not doing it at all, or doing it in such limited increments that we could just borrow someone else’s computer for brief coding sessions. ⁴ The second issue is the real deal-breaker here, because our library is too big to fit on our iPad unless we decided to seriously limit what apps are on it too. For many people, this may not be an issue at all, but for those of us with digital photo libraries going back 15 years or so, the obstacle is unsurmountable at the present.

To be clear, these issues may all be moot for the average computer user, as such users are likely not computer savvy enough to obtain media from unconventional sources, don’t have massive photo libraries, nor do any app development. This is why we continue to recommend the iPad to friends and family who we know have comparatively low requirements.

As we plan to take ownership of our new iPad later today, we have little regrets about moving away from traditional PCs. Aforementioned obstacles aside, the experience has been quite a good one, and its enabled us to take our computer places that we would never have lugged our MacBook to. With the iterative improvements to the new iPad, we fully expect the experience to only get better after today.

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We expect that a lot of people don’t know what “PC” stands for, or at least give it any real thought. The idea of a “personal computer” came about at a time when computers were huge, expensive, and used by several people in research facilities and universities. At the time, what made a computer “personal” was that it was owned by a person instead of a company or organization. As more and more people relied on desktop computers at home, the “personal” half of the term had less and less meaning; in homes where several family members used a computer, the desktop and file structure became a mish-mash of the user’s personalities. Things changed a bit when home operation systems began to use local accounts, one for each user. But even then, the form factor of a typical computer simply doesn’t lend itself to the level of connectivity that something “personal” ought to.

Compare this to an iPod, for example. An iPod is cheap enough for most everyone to own, and its contents are a reflection of the owner, containing her tastes, styles, and interests. Even the exterior of the device can be customized by the owner, either by choosing a specific exterior color at purchase, else using cases and decals. Furthermore, the form factor of an iPod is perfect; most people can use their iPod at home, on their commute, at work, and in the gym.

While computers have become smaller, and notebooks more common, they still don’t reach the level of closeness that people have with their iPods, because they’re still very task-specific tools.¹ This is where mobile devices have stepped in to become the everywhere tool in a person’s life. While smartphones have been reasonably successful, their size makes certain tasks limited, or cumbersome. To great success, the iPad has found the middle road between what’s small enough to go most everywhere and what’s large enough to still be useful for most tasks. And the iPad form factor, a tablet, makes it ideal for tasks that most people would never have considered doing on a computer, or on a mobile device.

Stephen Hackett comments on several tasks he uses his iPad for:

I can do all of these things on my MacBook Pro, or even my Mac mini at home. The iPad, however, makes these tasks not only easier, but more enjoyable … especially on the couch, with a beer.

The success of the iPad isn’t in just in what all it can do, because contrary to what some may claim, the iPad is not “just another tool”. Rather, the iPad is successful because not only does it do a lot, but it lets you integrate the iPad into all your daily tasks, be it in the kitchen, at the office, on the couch, or even in the bathroom. The iPad is a more natural fit for how we live our lives, instead of constraining our tasks to a necessary time and place that most traditional computers require.

If anything, the iPad is a more personal computer than a PC, which is really what this “post-PC” hub-bub in the press is all about. “PC” has become a misnomer, because compared to the iPad and its emulators, PCs are not personal, they’re impersonal.² Inasmuch as what the iPad can do, it may differ little from a conventional PC, but the idea Apple is pushing with their post-PC nomenclature is that tablets are opening new doors for how computers can be used, and it’s about as drastic as the difference was between PCs and what came before.

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The iPad home button may be an iconic piece of iPad history, but iconic doesn’t mean practical. People said the scroll wheel was emblematic too, but the iPod received a makeover with touch technology as soon as Apple realized the wheel was a point of failure. Dave Caolo thinks the home button is too important, and likely doesn’t equate it with the forgotten scroll wheel. After all, the wheel only changed form, and was no more complicated to use when it went touch-sensitive.

As Bill Williams was keen to point out, the whole mess isn’t a problem if a dynamic home button appeared based on the iPad’s orientation. We propose to take the idea one step further and provide illumination to the area of the bezel that’s active. This visual cue would remove any sense of confusion a user might have over how to get back to the springboard, and instead of a “push”, perhaps a swipe in a given direction would do the trick just as easily.

Apple stands for sleekness in design, and the home button is a remnant of the old.¹ As long as Apple can maintain the intuitive feel of their hardware interfaces, there’s no reason to stick with a home button that’s prone to failure; the home button may be robust for now, but as owners of some older iPhones will tell, the mechanism doesn’t stay perfect forever.

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Brent Simmons was one of many who commented earlier today on OS X Mountain Lion removing RSS reading from Mail and Safari. The move makes sense when one considers parity between OS X and iOS apps, in that the latter do not offer such features. But more importantly, these features are typically unused by most OS X users, who, if they review RSS feeds at all, typically have either a dedicated reader, else use a web app like Google Reader.

Worth noting is that people didn’t use Mail/Safari for RSS reading because the experience was shit. Apple seemed to add these capabilitie as an afterthought, and not because it was deemed particularly useful. We’ve used Google Reader for years because the experience is relatively consistent across browsers, and because there are numerous third-party apps for iOS that integrate with the service. However, given Google’s evilness of late, we’d happily consider an alternative if there was one, but right now, there simply isn’t. What do we mean by “an alternative”?

• Ability to access feeds via the web to read and modify.
• Native apps for iPhone and iPad that offer all the functionality of the web version.
• Synchronization.

It’s really not asking much, and we’re rather surprised that Google Reader is the only option out there. We’d even be willing to pay for this service if it had third-party extensions, like being able to leverage social networks, OmniFocus, Instapaper, etc.¹ Presumably, Apple doesn’t want to take this project on because the average Apple user doesn’t know or care about RSS.

We’ve looked into options like Fever, but we’re not a fan of self-hosted options if we can avoid it, and it seems Mobile Safari still leaves something to be desired for viewing one’s Fever feeds.

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An Apple-produced television set is still in the rumour-mill, but the concept still mystifies us. Media outlets are proposing that Apple will do with the television industry what they did with the computer, music, and cell-phone industries. But TV isn’t the same beast, because of much of what TV is is not the hardware, or even the software, but the content distribution. That is to say, what brings value to your television beyond its size and image quality is what you have connected to your TV: a DVD or Blu-ray player, a gaming console, or simply your cable tuner. All of these accessories make use of content from different distribution methods, be it optical media, digital streaming, or something else.

Apple influenced computers by re-engineering the hardware and software; they made computers simpler.¹ They didn’t invent a better internet. And they backed content distribution formats that already existed, favoring those with longer expected lifespans (first optical discs, now digital streaming) versus those that were on their way out (first floppies, now Blu-ray). People bought Macs because they were easier to learn, were more stable, and abstracted a lot of the things Average Joe hates about computers (blue screens of death, configuration issues, et al).

Apple repeated the process with the music industry by making a better mp3 player, and then pushing a distribution method that already existed (digital downloads), albeit in a pay-for-content form. People bought iPods because they had better interfaces than the competition, generally greater storage capacities, all wrapped in a robust package that interfaced nicely with Apple software.

When Apple took on the cell phone market, they took on hardware that, like PCs earlier, were built on a myriad of shaky hardware platforms, with non-intuitive software interfaces, and with limited downloadable apps available through expensive, extremely proprietary outlets. People bought iPhones because the price was right, and because the iPhone easily leveraged the market Apple built with the iPod.

With tablets, Apple further abstracted the things Average Joe hates about PCs, providing the iPhone’s intuitive UI in a larger format for better web browsing and general computer use. Arguably, they made the tablet space, which is somewhat of a first for Apple.²

But televisions aren’t tablets. While Apple may have thrown around the idea of taking on carriers directly with the release of the iPhone, they ultimately signed a deal with AT&T to use existing infrastructure. Now surely, in the television space, Apple is better positioned to take on the carriers, because Apple already has a distribution platform they’ve successfully used since the iPod was born. But unlike each area Apple tackled before, televisions aren’t inherently broken. You can argue that TVs should be easier to set up, what with channel scanning, picture calibration, input configuration, DVR setup, etc. But these are problems with accessories, particularly those utilizing legacy inputs. If Apple sold a TV that dismissed legacy devices entirely (as Apple once shirked floppies and Blu-ray), would consumers buy the device? Would enough consumers buy the device to make entering this market worthwhile?

The Apple TV of today (the iOS-running media box) is a perfect test of this market, and it’s not clear just how profitable it’s been for Apple. The Apple TV is great because it’s instant-on, and it’s not hard to see how embedding this device into a conventional TV may make sense, just as some TVs sold today already offer some internet services like Pandora, Netflix, etc. But if you can buy an Apple TV today for $100, why would anyone replace their entire television to the tune of $2000 just to have a fully-integrated solution? For such a solution to be elegant, it would likely reserve only HDMI inputs, and no matter how Apple wanted to go about it, setup would remain tedious without lots of hardware being integrated off the bat (like an audio solution).

Sure, we can envision a sleek, Apple-branded television that comes with surround-sound speakers, complete with an audio configuration wizard to optimize sound. It would indeed be an elegant solution, but at what price? People don’t replace their TVs as often as they do their computers and mobile devices. If anything, most people wait until they actually have the space for a big-screen TV, their TV dies, or a major new display technology is unveiled.³ So sure, we can envision such an object, but not outside Apple’s research lab.

For a consumer product, Apple would be better off working with TV manufacturers to create “Apple TV-ready” televisions, where a designated HDMI port would always be the default when turning a TV on, such that the first thing a user sees is the Apple TV. With some fancy integration, attached Apple TVs could control access to other input ports to access attached consoles and legacy hardware, so in effect, an Apple TV “brain” would ensure a perfect user experience. With no Apple TV attached, however, the television would simply revert back to the “generic” menus most TVs have today.

Think we’re wrong? Drop us a tweet and explain what would compel you to shell out big money to replace your existing HDTV.⁴

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