Josh's Weblog: iPad Launch Only the Beginning

iPad Launch Only the Beginning

There is a point people have missed in the Apple iPad rollout, and I wonder if Apple missed it too.

A lot of people familiar with the apps and interface of this new device have iPhones. The “killer app” therefore should leverage this. Pair them with bluetooth. Allow the big pad to use the iPhone's camera and phone for video conferencing or other conversations. Show caller id on the big pad when your phone is in your pocket. Make the iPhone into a communications hub and the pad the presentation hub.

I didn't see anything about Nike+ in this, but there's another sensor network that could feed data into the iPad. Microsoft and others are worried about Media PCs, but this thing, done right, is a really slick Media Nub. Far better than any other netbook or tablet I've seen to date.

Another thing that is missing is iPhone v4. Will it be nano-sized and all the display work goes to another device? Will it complement the iPad in some other gotta-have-it way? Are a series of bluetooth sensors going to come out? People are so quick to dismiss a single product, but what Apple excels at is integration and user experience.

There are many other Apple products. How will this iPad interact with Apple TVs it finds on your WiFi network when it sends out its BonJour requests? How will it interact with the rumored Apple product that will be integrated into TVs, cars, and the like? What will happen with data visualization masters make apps for it? With a 1024x768 screen it's pretty limited, but that IPS screen has wonderful viewing angles and there's a possibility of bigger pads, and higher resolutions. Old acceptable printed pages had 300 dots per inch... I'd like to see 200 in an iPad. 1080p displays at 200ppi would be 9.6 in x 5.4 in. Sure, that would eat a lot of power, but a lot of strides have been made already.

Finally, I was disappointed with the book experience. Since Apple has a product they are unlikely to let other book products be made. They didn't even say what format their own book app will use. Will I be able to generate good looking content for the iPad with LaTeX? With Word?

The killer book experience I want something like the iPad to solve is my own ability to flag/highlight passages and write notes in the margin. I want to see what other people's notes are. I want links to related content. Some books live on their own but other books live in a context of other publications.

Josh Poulson

Posted Thursday, Jan 28 2010 05:26 PM