Retina-optimized graphics are awesome, we all pretty much agree. But there comes a trade-off with such: file-size. TUAW’s Mike Schramm summarizes the issue:

The most obvious drawback is app size. Those bigger graphics take up more space, and for many graphics-heavy applications, that could put them over the cellular data download limit (now at 50 MB). Universal apps specifically are taking this hit, even if they’re not running with the new iPad-sized graphics on the iPhone hardware.

A good universal app today supports four resolutions:

1. Legacy graphics for the 2G iPhone, iPhone 3/3GS, and iPod Touch.
2. Legacy graphics for the original iPad and iPad 2.
3. Retina graphics for the iPhone 4/4S.
4. Retina graphics for the new iPad.

There are ways to mitigate the file size increase, such as recycling retina iPhone graphics for use on older iPads. In search of real-life examples for how an app is distributed, however, Lex Friedman at MacWorld compared the pre-retina and post-retina file sizes of Apple’s own universal iOS apps. In doing so, we see file sizes roughly 2.75 times greater post-retina.

Between this, camera improvements, and more computing power to push more detailed textures in 3D games, there’s a reason the 16GB new iPad isn’t recommended by a lot of bloggers.¹

While we can assume that support for older devices will drop in the future, we still have at least a generation or two to go before non-retina devices are no longer supported by new versions of iOS. And even when that time comes, dropping non-retina graphics files won’t drastically improve the footprint of app file sizes, since it’s the retina versions that are making file sizes much bigger. At the very least, we should expect next year’s iPad to offer a 128GB storage option.

In the meantime, we still maintain that better cloud tools would help immensely, especially with large iPhoto libraries that can take up considerable storage space. Another potential solution on Apple’s side is to somehow strip graphics from AppStore downloads that aren’t needed on a target device. For example, retina graphics would be removed from an app downloaded from a non-retina device, and iPad graphics would be stripped from a universal app if installed on an iPhone.

Then again, perhaps we’re making too large an issue out of one that’s easily rectified in one or two generations, as flash storage becomes cheaper. Still, it’s enough of a problem that some are pushing not to release universal apps in order to save on storage space, a proposal that we find to be a rather bittersweet solution.

Similar Posts:

• ]\ – We’ve been somewhat critical of the Apple TV as a gaming console, and when [we last wrote about the …
• iPad, the second generation. – Plenty of rumours about iPad 2.0 are hitting the blogosphere, complete with photos of “leaks” from c…
• Why we probably won’t get an iPad 2. – We say “probably” because if Target doesn’t have a line at 17:00 today, we may be tempted to stop in…

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.

Similar Posts:

• Positioning to dominate. – A little over half a year ago, we reported on [our experience](http://mendax.org/2010/11/18/our-ipad…
• Overcoming Apple TV’s file-type limitations. – We really want to like the new Apple TV. For one, it’s cheap for a media center at only $100. Two, i…
• The iPad should interface with the iPhone directly. – As we checked out Apple’s latest guided tours for the iPad, it occurred to us that since the iPad is…

With the release of iOS 5, we had a chance to try out the upgrade on several devices belonging to us and family. The process, unfortunately, was rather inconsistent across devices, with some going smoother than others:

1. iPad 2 w/3G, 64GB: This was the first device we opted to upgrade. We did a sync first, then started the update. Everything seemed to go fine until the “restoring apps” window appeared to freeze about two-thirds of the way through. The screen on the iPad itself seemed to suggest that it was done, and we continued with the setup there. With the restoring apps status bar still not moving, we unplugged the device and had to force-quit iTunes. The device worked fine, but was indeed missing some apps. Some pictures were still present on the device. When we launched iBooks, all our eBooks seemed present, but they then deleted themselves after the device “phoned home”. The next time we connected the iPad to the computer, it did re-sync all apps, and the status bar actually moved.

2. iPhone 4, 32 GB: Didn’t do a last sync before updating, and the same thing happened with this device as with our iPad 2. Only this time, most of the apps were missing. When we installed a few of them from the on-device AppStore, we found that the data for the apps was still present on the iPhone, so we didn’t need to set every app up again. The same iBooks problem as with the iPad 2 appeared on this device, too. A second re-sync fixed the problem as it did with the iPad.

3. iPad 2, 32 GB: This device had very little stuff on it. Upgrade went perfectly smooth.

4. iPhone 4, 16 GB: This device also had very little stuff on it. Upgrade went smooth as well.

5. iPad w/3G, 16GB: Another smooth upgrade.

6. iPhone 3GS, 16 GB: Upgrade seemed to go fine, but then on restoring the last backup, we received the -34 error.¹ A quick web search suggested that this error was due to the device being almost full before the update, and because the down-convert mp3s to 128 kbps was checked in the sync settings, iTunes defaulted to trying to sync the full-size mp3s back to the updated device instead of down-converting them again. When the dialogue box popped up to try the restore again, we had to cancel out and do a manual re-sync. That worked.

One would expect these types of issues to have been resolved by Apple before the iOS 5 release. Whoever is behind the iTunes and iOS testing process, however, seems to be less serious about hammering out bugs than in other Apple products. After all, the iOS upgrade process has not been without error in the past, and this is a pretty significant update. At the very least, we’d expect there to be more system feedback on what iTunes is doing at any given time. For instance, instead of “restoring apps”, we’d prefer some indication of what app is being restored, and maybe even a count of how many apps have been restored so far, versus how many are left. Some window of where we stand in the process, and what’s left, would also be nice.

It also doesn’t help that the post-update things-to-do is not very intuitive.Our family was quick to note how they would have never known what steps to take after the update, which boiled down to getting their Mobile Me accounts upgraded to iCloud, and ensuring that syncing and the iTunes store were set up properly. To make most use out of iCloud, all of the options like Photo Stream need to be turned on, but they’re not all on by default. Further, the iCloud backup option wasn’t on by default either, nor was the ability to sync with iTunes wirelessly.². Owners who started using Mobile Me after using iTunes may also have two accounts, so they need to configure their devices with their Mobile Me/iCloud accounts, and then manually switch their AppStore username even if it was correctly configured before the update already.³

Fortunately, iOS 5 is a nice update, so the struggles are ultimately worth it. Still, it’s surprising that there are as many hiccups out there as people are reporting, especially this late in the game.

Similar Posts:

• Stuck in sync when updating to iOS 4.2.1? – When we sat down to upgrade our iPad last night to iOS 4.2.1, we thought the process would be quick …
• Still no iOS app data backup in iTunes? – We’ve now seen four generations of iPhones, have witnessed iterations of the iPod Touch, and seen th…
• Apple web apps need to stay. – With Apple’s iCloud on the horizon, TUAW’s Steven [Sande is speculating](http://www.tuaw.com/2011/06…

With Apple’s iCloud on the horizon, TUAW’s Steven Sande is speculating a death-knell for Mobile Me’s offerings, even though Mobile Me is supposed to transition over to the new iCloud. One of the features Sande thinks will disappear with iCloud is web-based apps:

I’d speculate that the web-based versions of Mail, Contacts, and Calendar will get less attention going forward, and might even disappear on June 30, 2012. Seriously — who needs them? If you have a Mac or three, you’ll sync Mail, Address Book, and iCal through the free iCloud service.

The people who will still need these services are the people who don’t have access to an Apple device all the time. Most major corporations, for example, haven’t jumped on the Apple bandwagon, and so their desktops are still Windows-based PCs. Employees who use Macs at home require Mobile Me web apps to access mail, calendars, and contacts while in Mac-restricted environments. To remove this ability is to spit in the face of many of your customers, who will then just jump ship and move over to a service that can be accessed from a Windows computer, like Google’s suite.

For Windows users, you’ll be using Outlook 2010 or 2007 to sync to the iCloud. The only scenario in which you might not be able to get to your “stuff” is when you’re using a public computer of some sort at a hotel, on a cruise ship, or at a cybercafé in Spain. Of course, you don’t want that to happen, so you’ll have your iOS device with you. Hook up to Wi-Fi or use your 3G data service, and the problem is solved. That’s why they call them mobile devices.

Sande, perhaps, doesn’t know how things work in many large corporations, where one can’t simply add accounts to Outlook (it’s restricted), nor install third-party software. Nor does everyone have the capability of toting their iOS device into their workspace, and even if they did, not letting them access their mail from a local desktop isn’t in the spirit of the cloud.

In reality, what we would hope to see with iCloud is an even more robust and featured web suite, to include accessing of bookmarks and saved online articles from the web. iCloud shouldn’t just be about consistency of access across Apple devices, but from all devices, until such a time that Apple devices are more ubiquitous across industries.

Similar Posts:

• Dealing with several iOS 5 updates. – With the release of iOS 5, we had a chance to try out the upgrade on several devices belonging to us…
• Still no iOS app data backup in iTunes? – We’ve now seen four generations of iPhones, have witnessed iterations of the iPod Touch, and seen th…
• Google Reader alternatives for RSS reading? – Brent Simmons was one of many who [commented earlier today](http://inessential.com/2012/02/18/no_mor…

A little over half a year ago, we reported on our experience using an iPad as our go-to computing device, after an iPad replaced our MacBook Pro. That wasn’t the first time we addressed the issue of the iPad being a tethered device, but it framed the issue with real-world experience in mind:

Right now, the iPad is a great travel companion, but if we were to go on a major trip lasting several months, we’d question whether not having any backups during that time-frame, or missing a key iOS update, is something we could live with.

We actually brought up a tethering fix over a year ago, when we talked about how some people might still need a computer for certain tasks, even though the iPad would be a fit device for most people:

What Apple should do to address the backup issue is roll out over-the-air syncing, either at the local level with the Apple Time Capsule, or via the cloud with a an enhanced Mobile Me service. A cloud-based iTunes solution would be perfect, allowing you to keep all your media files on Apple’s servers, and choose which ones to stream or copy to the iPad directly.

With Apple’s iOS 5 reveal, our concerns regarding tethering have finally been addressed with an upcoming software upgrade. It’s an important move for Apple, because with the roll-out of iOS 5 and iCloud, Apple is effectively acknowledging that the iPad is not designed to be just an extension of the Mac, but can indeed replace a PC for those who don’t require PC-specific functionality. Since the vast majority of PC-users have simple requirements that can either be met with an out-of-box iPad (or with the addition of a couple apps from the AppStore), the iPad will now become a true PC replacement for the general populace, no reservations required.

At this stage, there’s little reason not to recommend the iPad for the general populace, particularly for those who are computer illiterate and could benefit from an intuitive device that they won’t “mess up” by playing with. The iPad was already a great seller before, and accused of crushing netbook and even notebook sales, but now it’s positioned to truly dominate the market.

Similar Posts:

• The iPad as post-PC device. – Michael Gartenberg clarifies Steve Jobs’ statement that the iPad is a post-PC device by [pointing ou…
• The MacBook Air and the iPad. – At the recent Back to the Mac event, Apple unveiled their redone Macbook Air, which now comes in two…
• Some people might want a computer for their iPad. Some. – We’ve said before that the iPad is a fantastic computing solution for the average person, since the …

There are better technologies for businesses these days than relying on desktop PCs and Microsoft Windows, at least as far as most tasks are concerned. Marco Ament spoke about the issues surrounding adoption of ChromeOS, but the same goes for the iPad, or even Macs in general. Simply put, the immediate strain on the current year’s budget becomes an argument against such an IT revolution.

That’s why that PC on your banker’s desk is probably running Windows 2000, an 11-year-old platform: because it’s extraordinarily expensive to update it, and the current system works acceptably without any massive, one-time expenditures on this year’s budget.

The same is true in Shady Land, where finding a modern computer appliance warrants a “Eureka!” The reality is that Shady Land computing is abysmal: computers run operating systems that have already surpassed Microsoft’s “end of life” date, and where the base word processing application is three versions old. Database queries are done on a daily basis using what amounts to a VAX back-end, and there is no consolidated attempt to streamline this access. Why? Not only are there cost issues like in big-business enterprises, but here we have to deal with “lowest cost” bids that get us little bang for our buck.

And then there’s the issue of perceived longevity:

In the context of replacing business software platforms, longevity is a major requirement. For Chrome OS to be considered by any reasonably large business, their IT decision-makers are going to want to know that Chrome OS is going to be around and supported by Google many years from now.

At least as far as Apple is concerned, there are small waves being made in Shady Land to adopt Apple computers to support certain functions, even though the mainstay computer remains a Microsoft Windows machine. As Apple’s future is now more certain than it was back when OS X was released, IT managers should be able to lean on Apple products more now, yet there’s still resistance. Resistance likely linked to cost.

But when it comes to a platform like ChromeOS, or even something more solidly defined in the consumer space like the iPad (which can easily manage most tasks a typical Operator needs to perform in the office), the resistance from IT managers is fierce. For one, will the platform be around long-term? And two, how can security issues pertaining to the cloud ever be juggled?

That second question is a huge issue, because even if there was a guarantee that ChromeOS and iOS will be around for a long time to come, and requisite apps are available, Shady Land will never rely on a platform solution that stores data in the cloud, or even pulls updates from a server wirelessly. In fact, unless enterprise customers can roll out updates through their own servers instead of directly through Apple, and on a wired connection, it’s likely that Shady Land will never see these types of devices adopted.

Similar Posts:

• Positioning to dominate. – A little over half a year ago, we reported on [our experience](http://mendax.org/2010/11/18/our-ipad…
• What would make OnLive Desktop a killer app? – The basic version of OnLive Desktop is already available, which leverages OnLive’s streaming video t…
• The iPad is the volkscomputer. – We love this quote by Ed Finkler, which we spied over at Daring Fireball: When folks need an elevato…

We’ve now seen four generations of iPhones, have witnessed iterations of the iPod Touch, and seen the birth of the largest iOS device, the iPad. And, of course, we’ve seen numerous versions of iTunes supporting the various iOS releases, with app management advances such as folders and the ability to import files like PDFs from iTunes itself. But yet somehow, despite all these advances, we’re still without core app management functionality like off-device data backup.

In other words, when we install an app on one of our iDevices, we can backup related data when we sync the iDevice with iTunes. In the even that our iDevice gets lost, breaks, or has some sort of iOS upgrade problem, we can always restore from our backup to not only get our apps back, but the respective data for those apps also. This means we don’t lose our app configurations, game backups, et al.

However, if we delete a particular app from our iDevice, even if we’ve synced the iDevice with iTunes in the past, any data associated with the deleted app is not only removed from the iDevice, but from iTunes as well. Thus, if we delete, say, a game, we lose all our associated achievements, and if we ever reinstall that game onto an iDevice in the future, we have to start from scratch. How is this good design?

One of two things should happen when one deletes an app from an iDevice:

1. If the iDevice was not synced with that app on it before, the user should be prompted with a message saying that deleting the app means losing all associated data too, unless the user first syncs the iDevice to iTunes before deleting the app.
2. The user should be prompted as to whether they wish to delete the app and its associated data, or just the app. If the latter is chosen, the next time the iDevice syncs with iTunes, it off-loads deleted app data that is still resident, and only deletes it once it’s been copied to iTunes.

Users should then be able to manage associated app data from within iTunes. This doesn’t mean they should be permitted to edit that data, but choose whether to keep it or simply delete it (assuming they never want to use the app again, else start with a fresh install).

Right now, too many issues still present themselves with iDevices not to have app data persistent somewhere, regardless of whether an app is maintained on a given iDevice. Just this past weekend, when we had to bring in our iPhone 3GS because it entered a restore-cycle, and ultimately handed a new iPhone 3GS, we were advised to set up the iPhone as a new device, and not restore from a previous backup. Getting our mail, calendars, and contacts back were a non-issue thanks to Mobile Me, but everything else was a hassle. We can deal with moving icons around to once again set up our iPhone interface like we want it, but getting every app set up again is a pain, and in the case of apps that don’t themselves backup to the cloud (like games), losing all associated data is unacceptable. Do we really need to wait much longer for this problem to be properly addressed by Apple?

Similar Posts:

• Upgrade to iOS 4 and lose cellular data? – A number of people have reported losing data over AT&T when upgrading older iPhones to iOS 4. The cu…
• Dealing with several iOS 5 updates. – With the release of iOS 5, we had a chance to try out the upgrade on several devices belonging to us…
• Upgrading a jailbroken iPhone from 2.0 to 2.0.1. – It was only a couple weeks ago that we detailed our process for upgrading a 2G iPhone to firmware 2….

We’ve said before that the iPad is a fantastic computing solution for the average person, since the iPad delivers all the content most people need, and works very well for basic office work. Maxator points out a number of things the iPad can’t do, which necessitate also having a “traditional” computer at home.

CD/DVD burning/ripping.

Media issues are likely a short-term problem for adopters of iPad-like devices; how long can the optical disc remain viable in a world of digital distribution, especially when there’s little legitimate reason to burn anything anymore? Seriously, we’ve burnt a handful of discs in the last couple years, and most of those were related to a console hack.

We can’t imagine that our burning needs are much different than for most people. Burning audio discs is a thing of the past thanks to the iPod, and most data (like office documents) are small enough to be thrown onto the cloud. In what common use scenario is burning 650MB of data a reasonable solution compared to removable flash storage or simple network transmission?

As far as movies go, legacy media is one thing, but for all future media, online consumption will become the norm, so why not adopt it now? Arguably, one could obtain an online copy of media you already own, which is effectively the same thing as ripping the respective DVD yourself. Now granted, this doesn’t address storage issues, since the iPad maxes out at 64GB at the moment, but that’s not necessarily a deal breaker, as we’ll note later.

One obstacle for dealing with online media, however, is with tackling file distribution outside the iTunes store. This is great for the big labels, and Apple, but not great for those who rely on things like BitTorrent. That’s because without a BitTorrent client for the iPad in sight, or similar apps for other peer-to-peer networks, downloading files of any sort to the iPad is impossible without something like FTP, which is ultimately limited.

Legacy software.

Faulting state-of-the-art technology because it doesn’t cater to legacy software is a questionable practice. Yes, people want backwards compatibility, but sometimes that compatibility needs to be balanced with a forward momentum, which Apple has almost mastered. Thus it was with the floppy disc, so it is becoming with optical media, and so it will be for closed technologies like Flash. Faulting Apple for not supporting a third-party plugin seems like misappropriating blame: if you’re upset that you can’t view all your favorite websites on mobile Apple devices, maybe you should blame the respective website developers instead. After all, it’s not that their content doesn’t work on Apple devices, it’s that it doesn’t work on any mobile device, since Flash doesn’t exist in a mobile form yet. (Adobe is “working” on it.)

Same goes for legacy software in general. Sure, it’d be nice to have TurboTax, Crossover, and Ulysses running on the iPad, but if the demand and capability were there, you can bet that the software will follow. (As far as TurboTax goes, does the web version not run in Mobile Safari?) The AppStore is a tour de force, with an amazing number of quality apps available designed for productivity. For most users, the AppStore either already offers an app you need, or will soon.

Backup/syncing.

The real hang-up to relying purely on the iPad for computing that entails massive storage is backups and data management. Right now, the iPad works well with iTunes, but this means you’re relying on at least a Mac Mini to serve as a data warehouse, which becomes an investment of around $500. It’s a fine solution for backing up an iPad’s data, but it’s not perfect. For one, uninstalled apps won’t retain their data in iTunes, which means that reinstalling an app on the iPad means starting from scratch. That’s bad design, pure and simple.

What Apple should do to address the backup issue is roll out over-the-air syncing, either at the local level with the Apple Time Capsule, or via the cloud with a an enhanced Mobile Me service. A cloud-based iTunes solution would be perfect, allowing you to keep all your media files on Apple’s servers, and choose which ones to stream or copy to the iPad directly. A Time Capsule solution would work similarly, with the Time Capsule serving up a local web page for accessing it’s own iTunes program for handling media, apps, etc. Both solutions could be implemented at the software level, and both would potentially allow users to upgrade their iPad firmware without physically tethering their iPads to a traditional computer.

In the meantime…

We still stand by our assertion that the iPad is a tremendous computer for most people, without them needing a traditional computer at home. This may require visiting the local Apple Store, or a friend, to perform firmware upgrades and the occasional backup. But these are minor inconveniences at best, which will inevitably be addressed by Apple as Mobile OS X evolves.

For the rest of us, who still need a server appliance to make the iPad something more than Average Joe’s computer, the additional investment in a pint-sized server isn’t a deal-breaker, especially when it means that 99% of our non-work computer use is on the iPad itself. Niche requirements like burning CDs and downloading torrents are easily addressed, and can likely be met without shelling out for a Mac Mini like we did, especially with how cheap PCs are these days. Maybe there’s a continuing market for low-cost PCs after all?

Similar Posts:

• Positioning to dominate. – A little over half a year ago, we reported on [our experience](http://mendax.org/2010/11/18/our-ipad…
• Still no iOS app data backup in iTunes? – We’ve now seen four generations of iPhones, have witnessed iterations of the iPod Touch, and seen th…
• Dealing with several iOS 5 updates. – With the release of iOS 5, we had a chance to try out the upgrade on several devices belonging to us…

We weren’t exactly surprised with Apple’s revealing of the iPad today. Aside from our dislike of “iPad,” the device does look pretty good, though it’s clearly not as revolutionary as many people hoped. While usage reports are sure to trickle in soon, we’ll take this time to look back at the post we made last week on what we thought the iPad should have, likely wouldn’t, and what would be nice for Apple to include.

Our must-haves.

Readable screen size: Check. As expected, the iPad sports a 9.7″ screen, just under the 10″ rumoured size. When we first saw the iPad in Steve Jobs’ hands, we actually thought it looked bigger. From the virtual keyboard size alone, we think the screen size is adequate, though admit that the virtual keyboard takes up an awful lot of room in landscape mode.

User-defined multitasking: Sadly, no mention of this was made. This is perhaps our biggest let-down with the iPad reveal, because jumping back and forth between apps and the springboard is cumbersome at best. Fortunately, with Backgrounder already existing on the iPhone and iPod Touch, once a proper exploit is found on the iPad, we can assuredly rely on the dev-team or other hacking group to come up with a homebrew solution. Still, a pity Apple didn’t announce additional multitasking for the iPad out-of-box.

Update: A key point some people have made is that while multitasking wasn’t featured in Apple’s presentation today, there’s no reason that Apple couldn’t reveal multitasking in the 4.0 OS announcement in a couple months. Remember that the presentation today was all about the iPad itself, not intricacies of the OS.

Decent text-input: We were bummed with the idea of having to rely purely on the virtual keyboard for text input, because though the size of the keyboard in landscape mode looks adequate, it takes up too much of the screen. Losing almost 50% of one’s screen-realestate in a 9.7″ display is losing a lot. When we saw images of the virtual keyboard in vertical mode, however, with the new iPad Pages app up, it looked like there was still plenty of screen left to preview written content. Unfortunately, it’s not clear if the keyboard in this mode is large enough for quick typing.

Of course, with the announcement of an iPad dock/keyboard accessory, our desire for the iPad grew considerably. We’d still be happier with iPad integration with a bluetooth keyboard, but until the jailbreak community gets BTStack or similar running on the iPad, we can certainly live with an Apple accessory, even if it will only work with the iPad.

Update: The word from the blogosphere is that any bluetooth keyboard can be used with the iPad, so one doesn’t need to buy an iPad-specific keyboard. We wonder if this means that iPhones will support bluetooth keyboards also. Better yet, from the pictures we’ve seen with the dock keyboard attached, the virtual keyboard does indeed disappear. Assuming the same is true for linked bluetooth keyboards, the iPad will truly be a bloggers wet-dream, multitasking aside.

Our need-nots.

Cellular data connection: The iPad will be released in wifi-only versions (in 60 days) and in wifi/3G versions (in 90 days). Proof that Apple doesn’t consider 3G a necessity for the iPad, but more of a luxury. Of the units that will sport 3G, the iPads will be unlocked, with an initial data offering via pre-pad AT&T. We have no qualms with this other than the lack of tethering support with an iPhone. With a 250MB plan for $15/month or unlimited for $30/month, we’d expect a discount for existing AT&T subscribers, or at least a discount if we’re tethering with an iPhone. Alas, tethering doesn’t even seem to be an option yet, but perhaps more will come to light in upcoming weeks as AT&T makes their own iPad/tethering announcement.

Also, for those of you who thought Verizon would come in to save the day: we told you so.

GPS: We didn’t think it would happen, and Apple only mentioned the existence of a compass. No real surprise here, since the iPad is too big to use as a standard GPS device.

Ports: We’re looking at an iPod connector here, to tether the iPad to one’s Mac computer. Not really unexpected.

Our nice-to-haves.

No desktop tethering: The iPod connector means that the iPad is still designed to hook into a full version of iTunes to serve up non-iTunes media, which is a disappointment. On the other hand, with the keyboard dock, the iPad can easily become a stand-alone computer for many people, including grandma and grandpa, who probably don’t care about importing their home media library anyway. The downside for many is that the largest storage offered for the iPad is 64GB, and with no external storage options, this means that for power-users, desktop tethering is still mandatory. Overall, it’s rather surprising that more storage wasn’t offered in an even more expensive model, but 64GB is more than enough for general travel.

Front-facing camera: The iPad has no camera at all, which is pretty much what we expected. Lack of a front-facing camera, though, will be a disappointment to many. One of the nice things about the MacBook line is the integrated iSight camera, which is a huge boon for professionals to still be able to see their kids while on the road. We entirely expect to see an integrated iSight in a future iPad model, but maybe Apple just wants to role out big features at a time, especially since they still want to position the MacBook line as a mobile product for professionals.

Greater cloud connectivity: No mention of the iPad’s use of the cloud was made, though we naturally expect the device to leverage Mobile Me in the same way the iPhone does, and definitely expect iPad versions of existing Mobile Me apps to be released around the time the iPad ships.

Conclusion

With the exception of more multitasking, our expectations were pretty much dead-on for what Apple thought was important and what wasn’t. We’re surprised at just how accurate some of the purported “leaks” were in the past several weeks, and how bad some of the hype got. Overall, we think the iPad is a decent version-one product, with definite room for growth. We’re disappointed at the lack of data tethering with an iPhone, and would prefer to see bluetooth keyboard connectivity, and even an iSight, but none of these are excuses not to get an iPad. As a device for writing on-the-go, the iPad seems to fit the bill pretty well, and is a traveler’s dream, coming in at half the weight of the MacBook Air. While the iPad won’t replace a full-on Mac just yet, Apple did well in positioning the iPad between its Mac and iPhone/iPod Touch products, adding yet another Apple gadget to our lives.

For us, the iPad probably will replace our MacBook, though only if we pick up, say, a Mac Mini also as a sort of server for handling some of our larger media files. The big question for us now is whether we want to wait for a 3G iPad, or if we’d be plenty happy with a wifi-only version.

Similar Posts:

• iPad setup time is negligible. – Following up on [our comments](http://beastwith.in/?p=2203) regarding the iPad and MacBook Air, we’d…
• Conceptualizing an Apple sub-notebook: the Apple Annex. – When we commented [on the Macbook Air](http://beastwith.in/2008/01/16/macbook-air-fills-exactly-what…
• Three iTablet needs, three need-nots, and three things that’d be nice to have. – The reason we’re so enthused about Apple’s rumoured tablet computer is because its proposed mobility…

The reason we’re so enthused about Apple’s rumoured tablet computer is because its proposed mobility suits our lifestyle. Simply put, our MacBook Pro is too big to comfortably cart across the country often, and our iPhone doesn’t offer key functionality that we need in our road-warrior lifestyle. While there’s already some middle ground in the likes of a smaller MacBook, or even moreso in the overpriced MacBook Air, the iTablet proposes less power in a smaller package. The key with the iTablet will be in how Apple balances trade-offs, because their goal will be to ensure that the iTablet feature pendulum doesn’t swing too far in the direction of the iPhone, nor to the MacBook. This is consistent with the concern, mirrored by John Gruber, that the iTablet simply won’t offer enough over the iPhone to justify the price.

It’s eyebrow-raising that “too big” and “too expensive” were the major knocks against the Newton, and here we are facing the arrival of the mythical Tablet, which, according to the Wall Street Journal, has a big 10-inch diagonal screen and will cost around $1,000. But I’d argue that the Newton wasn’t too big, too expensive, period — I’d say it was too big and too expensive given what it offered.

For the iTablet not to succumb to the Newton’s fate, it has to set itself apart from the iPhone. This is even more important when one considers that the iTablet will most likely run on the same version of OS X that the iPhone and iPod Touch do. There will need to be some key differences in OS load-out, however, and these differences become quite clear when we’re on the road with only our iPhone, and consider what we can’t do well.

Three things the iTablet needs.

1. A readable screen size: The iPhone is small for a reason, and while certainly capable of browsing the web, the reality is that non-mobile pages are still inconvenient to browse at length. There’s a reason that mobile web pages are often preferred on the iPhone, and why iPhone apps designed to replace web interfaces are designed with a different interface in mind. This issue has already addressed, of course, because the iTablet’s screen is expected to be 10″ long diagonally. Arguably, this means that few users will need to zoom in on full-size web pages on the iTablet’s screen to read the respective content. Would a 12″ screen be better at this? Sure, but 10″ should be manageable, while anything smaller offers questionable benefits.

2. User-defined multi-tasking: When Backgrounder came out for jailbroken iPhones, it changed the way we did business. It didn’t play as important a role in our use of the iPhone before we picked up a 3GS, but now it’s an invaluable tool for us. We can run Pandora in the car while getting directions from Navigon, or we can jump back over to the iPod app to switch podcasts without having to restart Navigon (it still doesn’t handle podcasts properly). We can leave a game to check on e-mail, and jump right back in with nary a delay. The funny thing is, when we’re using Backgrounder, we rarely do it with more than a couple apps at a time. This is revealing: while people would love native support for third-party apps to have multitasking capabilities like the core Apple apps do, most people don’t really need to keep many apps open in the first place. So even if the iTablet has a much slower processor than what we’re used to in a MacBook, it shouldn’t matter too much. As of right now, the iPhone 3GS already meets our requirements for horsepower as far as multitasking is concerned, so a slightly more powerful processor would be sufficient for most users.

What Apple may want to consider, if they haven’t done so already, is letting users define a limited number of applications to run in the background. Say, a user can launch a given app, and via some gesture, send that program into a multitasking state. Maybe a small bar at one side of the screen has three empty boxes, and when a program is told to run in the background, its icon is sent to occupy one of these three boxes. That way, users can see which apps are running in the background, and with another gesture, stop the background process for a given app, whereupon its icon is removed from one of the three multitasking boxes.

Since we’re bloggers, we’ll use a typical blogging workflow as a perfect example for this. We launch Byline, our RSS reader. We drag its title bar to an empty multitasking box. We return to the springboard and launch a photo-editing app, and also drag its title bar to an unoccupied multitasking box. Finally, we do the same for the WordPress app. We can now jump back-and-forth between these applications by simply clicking on one of the multitasking boxes for the application we want to switch to. This allows us to easily copy content from Byline into WordPress, mock up graphics to do same, and voila, no needing to launch applications again and again just to switch between them. When we’re done with an app, we press and hold its icon in the respective multitasking box, and the icon explodes in a cloud of virtual dust as the application closes. This type of multitasking would make the iTablet a much more efficient work-buddy than the iPhone is today.

3. Decent text input: Dan Moren wrote a great piece collecting various text input methods that the iTablet could use. Regardless of which method Apple goes with, we’ve said for some time that text input is the iPhone’s greatest weakness. This is where the iTablet can really set itself apart from the iPhone, because most travelers will want some easy form of text input, and ideally one that doesn’t drop a giant virtual keyboard across half of one’s screen. Netbooks may have cramped keyboards, but at least they stand out of the way of the already-small display. A 10″ screen may be of a sufficient size for viewing full-screen content, but if half that screen is used as a keyboard, that 10″ will seem unreasonably small.

We figure that a bluetooth keyboard approach is the most logical, though definitely expect Apple to have something up their sleeve as far as a unique input method is concerned. Without this, the iTablet doesn’t seem like it would offer enough, especially when one can buy a Macbook for around the same price.

Three things the iTablet doesn’t need.

1. A cellular data connection: The iPhone has 3G data for a reason: it’s a phone. In a world where every telecom is on LTE, and it’s ubiquitous across the country, then it makes sense to slam LTE-capable hardware into the iTablet. In the meantime, there’s already the iPhone, which has the capability to tether its cellular data connection to any nearby computer. (AT&T just has to turn the feature on.)

There’s also the issue of Apple supporting CDMA if they decide to work with Verizon. CDMA doesn’t let one use data and voice at the same time, which would be an issue for consistent functionality if Apple released a CDMA iPhone on Verizon, but this is hardly an issue for the iTablet (since it wouldn’t have voice service anyway). Instead, the issue is one of customer satisfaction: if the iTablet is linked to Verizon, current iPhone customers who are tied to AT&T will be annoyed at having to get a second data subscription. Even if the iTablet were capable of both CDMA and GSM, so it could work under any of the major cellular services, one must wonder if this would be a solid business move. More likely, Apple would leverage the iTablet as yet another Apple gadget to compliment one’s life with. If the iTablet doesn’t sport cellular data, then users will still need to get an iPhone to enable tethered data access on the iTablet. It’s a win for Apple, and with so many iPhones out there already, one wonders who would seriously complain if the iTablet required an iPhone for data. Verizon iPhone hold-outs shouldn’t be too displeased either, assuming that the iPhone will eventually head to Verizon in 2011. In our opinion, the iTablet should be carrier neutral, insofar that it doesn’t support any cellular data subscription natively, and instead piggy-backs whatever the user’s iPhone is on.

2. GPS: Look, the iTablet is too big to sit in one’s windshield, and it’s too big to cart around while hiking in the back-country. Sure, one can argue that the hardware costs are negligible at this point, but so is the benefit to having GPS in the iTablet outside of location-based apps. Again, Apple doesn’t want the iTablet to replace the iPhone. There’s no reason Apple couldn’t integrate sharing of GPS data to a computer tethered to an iPhone, and that sounds like a much more reasonable business solution than throwing GPS into every device that’s not a desktop. After all, most use cases for the iTablet will be indoors, anyway, and that means not having a GPS signal in the first place. (Besides, tethered to an iPhone’s data connection, the iTablet could use cell-phone triangulation to roughly determine location regardless of GPS availability.)

3. Ports: With the iTablet using the AppStore, there’s no need for an optical drive because we wouldn’t be installing anything from CD or DVD. Apple wants people to use iTunes, and since most mainstream media can be acquired there, there’s no reason to let people rip optical media for playing on the iTablet, either. Maybe Apple will allow wireless sharing of a drive from another Apple computer (just as the MacBook Air can do), just to rip media in iTunes, but the feature isn’t really necessary. There’s also no reason to attach USB devices other than an iPod/iPhone, so while we may see a USB port for this reason alone, there’s nothing else we would expect to see connecting to the iTablet other than a magsafe power cord. Of course, we could just as easily see Apple finally integrating wireless synchronization of iTunes over wi-fi, so we can easily envision the iTablet without a single USB port also. Assuming Apple still requires the iTablet to tether to a computer running legacy iTunes, the question of a USB port is clear.

Initially, we proposed that the iTablet should have a mini display port, but with the realization that the device would be built around the mobile version of OS X, this seems less likely, since apps will be built around a certain resolution. Even with resolution independence built into apps, all attaching a large monitor would do is scale the existing graphics up to a larger size, not allow one to actually display more content. Perhaps there would be some benefit to this if text could be scaled down on a per-app basis when a larger monitor is connected, but we just don’t see many people doing something like this, even if we would.

In the end, chances are good that the iTablet will not have a single port to its name other than a power connection, be that a magsafe connector or a typical iPod interface if the iTablet is designed to synchronize with legacy iTunes.

Three things that would be nice to have.

1. No need to tether to a desktop: The iPhone isn’t a stand-alone product, even though many users probably use it as such. However, for the iPhone to truly shine, it needs to be tethered to a computer with a full-fledged OS, if only for the iPhone to interface with a full iTunes library. Sure, the iPhone can be used to purchase movies and music, but its limited storage means that older content needs to reside somewhere and the cloud isn’t quite there yet. Never mind that the iPhone will even complain when certain downloads fail, telling the user to try again via iTunes.

The iTablet, hopefully, will stand on its own: it should serve as a device that iPhones can tether to, and not become yet another Apple gadget that needs to be synchronized with a computer running a full-fledged version of iTunes. That would likely call for a magsafe power connector, versus the typical iPod connector a tethered device would have.

Of course, as a stand-alone media device, one would expect the iTablet to have plenty of disk space, so we’d expect to see a fairly large SSD drive. The MacBook Air sports a 128GB SSD HD, and we’d expect to see at least that much storage capacity in the iTablet, so it can hold most user’s complete multimedia libraries.

2. Front-facing camera: The idea of a device with a 10″ screen being burdened with a rear-facing camera is just silly. The iTablet won’t have a camera in the same sense as the iPhone, but we can definitely see how it might sport an iSight to use iChat with. In fact, with better text-input features than the iPhone, the iTablet will most likely sport iChat for quick, real-time communication. The ability to enable video-chats, however, would be nothing short of gangbusters.

3. Greater cloud connectivity: If the iTablet had everything already mentioned, it would already be a pretty spectacular device. But with greater cloud integration, thanks in part to a more evolved Mobile Me service, the iTablet could leverage features like Back to my Mac to grab files remotely, perhaps even to add such files to the iTablet’s own iTunes library (such as grabbing ripped mp3s remotely to alleviate the lack of an optical drive). With rumours that iTunes may well come to the cloud in the near future (as well as iWork), there’s some hope that Mobile Me will become a true competitor to the various free cloud-based services, and the iTablet is the perfect platform to showcase such cloud evolution.

Similar Posts:

• Initial thoughts on the iPad. – We weren’t exactly surprised with Apple’s revealing of the iPad today. Aside from our dislike of “iP…
• Apple will sooner release a netbook than an iTablet. – Why the Apple-faithful pray for an iTablet is anyone’s guess. Perhaps it’s their love for the long-d…
• iTablet AppStore has its downsides. – By now, the rumour-wagon has settled on the idea that Apple’s purported [tablet device](http://darin…