Questions about an iPad future
Is the iPad the liberating, enabling device that so many envision?…So much of the traditional OS cruft and file system confusion is abstracted away in the iPad’s updated version of iPhone OS. The user doesn’t have to know where their photos are stored or worry about accidentally nuking their entire photo library with a misplaced keyboard shortcut. You just tap the photos app, swoosh your fingers around like a maestro, and, indeed, magic happens.
But how will we get our photos onto the iPad in the first place? How will we create our iPod playlists? How will we print a Pages document? How will we create a backup of all our important photos, media, and documents? How will we wipe our iPad and start with a clean (*snicker*) slate?
Users will still need a desktop computer for many of these tasks, at least for some of the time or the initial setup, and any restore thereafter.
I think that David makes good points; there’s just a couple of things that I think he may have missed while on his cruise. Many of the tasks that he describes as requiring a desktop computer can be done wholly on the iPad, at least based on my understanding of the iPad keynote and product pages, which may be wrong. There’s the camera connection kit to get your photos onto your iPad. Apple very well could include printing from Pages, although that’s certainly not a given, so you may need a computer for printing. Backup and restore (and upgrade, unless Apple makes a change before the release of the iPad) will require a Mac or PC, unfortunately, but you will be able to start with a clean slate on your iPad: iPhones and iPod touches allow you to wipe your device from within Settings, and I don’t think that’ll change for iPad.
I think that the dependency that the iPad has on a desktop or laptop will eventually fade away. I don’t know how long that’ll take. Apple could do it at any time with the addition of over-the-air updates and backup to MobileMe. I just think that the iPad that we saw on the 27th is not the whole future, but merely a glimpse into what will come.
