Apple introduced its new tablet computer yesterday, the iPad. The press coverage is extensive so I won't run down the details of the iPad itself here. If you want a good report, Dan Miller wrote a good one for Macworld, as did Daniel Eran Dilger for AppleInsider. I can see attorneys really loving the iPad. It could be a wonderful way to sit back and read and highlight cases and read a brief. And I'm sure that attorneys in trial will soon be reading their cross examination outlines off of an iPad instead of using a legal pad and a stack of papers, with quick access to depositions for impeachment and other material with just a simple tap.
For now, though, I have been thinking about the iPhone implications of the iPad. I had hoped that Steve Jobs would devote some time yesterday to making new iPhone announcements. Instead, his focus was on the new iPad, but that doesn't mean that we didn't learn something about what might be in store for the iPhone in the future.
You see, much like the iPod touch is a close cousin to the iPhone, the iPad is also a cousin of the iPhone — the cousin on the other, larger and more athletic side of the family. The iPad screen is about four times the size of the iPhone and its processor is much faster (more on that in a moment), but like the iPod touch, the iPad runs the same operating system as the iPhone. Indeed, people who want to write software for the iPad go to this page on the Apple website to download a beta version of not the iPad development kit, but instead the iPhone Software Development Kit (SDK) version 3.2. Thus, whenever iPhone OS 3.2 comes out of beta for the iPad (which Apple says will hit the market at the end of March) perhaps a version of 3.2 will be available for the iPhone itself. Or, perhaps, we will have to wait until this summer for new software for the iPhone.
Steve Jobs showed off many new features on the iPad yesterday, and it is unclear which of them will trickle down to the iPhone itself and which are unique to the iPad implementation of iPhone OS 3.2, but I have a few guesses. First, the iPad makes extensive use of pop-up menus so that when you tap a button, instead of being taken to a new screen, you just get a menu that appears on top of the current screen. Will we also see more of this on the iPhone? An Engadget report claims that Apple says that these new "popovers" are for the iPad only. However, the current iPhone OS already uses these types of menus to a certain extent — for example, the pop up menu to cut, copy and paste — and I suspect that we will see a lot more of this for the iPhone in the future. The larger iPad screen makes these menus more appropriate, but I can see smaller versions fitting in quite nicely on the iPhone.
Another potential new feature is a shared file directory. Currently, iPhone apps can only share access to a few types of files contained in the built-in apps. For example, any app can access your Photos, your iPod songs and videos, and your Contacts. But a Word file attached to an e-mail cannot be accessed by other iPhone apps, unless the developer comes up with a creative work-around such as what Dataviz did with Documents to Go (including what is essentially a built-in Mail app with the program so that it can independently access an Exchange or Google Mail server and get those attachments for itself). It would be useful to be able to download a Word, Excel or PDF file from an e-mail into a central location — much like the Documents folder on a Mac or the My Documents folder on a PC — so that any other app could access those files. Apple has come out with three iWork apps for the iPad (Keynote, Pages and Numbers) and according to MacRumors, the iPad features a shared file directory that can be accessed on your computer. Thus, you can create a Keynote presentation on your computer, dump it into that shared file directory on your computer, and then the file will be accessible from the Keynote app on the iPad. If Apple opens up this central file directory to third party apps, and if Apple includes this feature on the iPhone as well as the iPad, we will see a flood of new apps, and upgrades to existing apps, to take advantage of this easy way to share files and data between apps.
Apple also announced yesterday that you can plug a connector to an iPad and hook it up to an external monitor. Currently, third party apps cannot display to an external monitor. If iPhone OS 3.2 includes this feature for iPhones as well as iPads, then you would be able to easily run a PowerPoint presentation via a projector from an iPod app.
What about an external keyboard? I find the iPhone virtual keyboard very easy to use, but there are times when I carry an iPhone instead of a laptop and I would appreciate having the ability to type more quickly on a "real" keyboard from time to time. The iPad works with a $69 external keyboard that connects via the dock connector, the exact same connector on an iPhone. The iPad can also work with the Apple Bluetooth keyboard, and the iPhone, like the iPad, has Bluetooth. With the iPhone soon gain the ability to work with external keyboards? That would be nice.
I'm also very interested in the increased speed in the iPad. Joshua Topolsky of Engadget had a chance to try the iPad yesterday, and he reports: "The speed of the CPU is something to be marveled at. It is blazingly fast from what we can tell. Webpages loaded up super fast, and scrolling was without a hiccup. Moving into and out of apps was a breeze. Everything flew." In the past, Apple had to rely on other companies to make the chips for its computers, using companies like Intel to make the processor for the Mac and ARM for the iPhone processor. But in early 2008, Apple purchased a semiconductor design company in Santa Clara, California called P.A. Semi. That company had expertise making powerful yet power-efficient chips, and we are seeing the first fruits of that purchase in the iPad, which uses a new chip that Apple calls the Apple A4. Apple has always had the advantage on both the Mac and the iPhone of designing both the hardware and the software, allowing the company to fully integrate those equally important parts. Now that Apple is making its own mobile chips, it can come up with the best chip for the function that Apple wants for its mobile devices, without needing to worry about the R&D focus of companies like Intel. It's a given that each new generation of the iPhone will be faster than its predecessor, but when Apple announces the 2010 version of the iPhone (presumably in June), I wouldn't be surprised to see Apple use the Apple A4 or something similar (the A3?). With a specially designed chip, Apple might be able to do even more than would have otherwise been possible to boost the speed and the power-efficiency (and thus the battery life) of the next generation of the iPhone.
Apple also showed off the new iBooks Store for the iPad. You can already run the Amazon Kindle app on the iPhone, but I wonder if there will soon be an Apple iBooks app as well. Likewise, it will be interesting to see if slimmed down versions of the iWork apps are at some point available for the iPhone. (My guess is no because Apple would consider the iPhone screen too small for those types of apps, but who knows.)
Apple also showed some user interface tweeks to apps like the Calendar (which now has a week view) and Photos (which can now display a visual stack of photos). Some of these improvements are simply to take advantage of the additional space on the iPad, but perhaps we will see something similar on the iPhone in the future. Nothing more than eye candy? Perhaps, but sometimes it is nice to get a new fresh look.
The only thing that we know for sure is that Apple will improve the iPhone this year. Some improvements will be in software and will work on current iPhones. Some improvements will require new hardware. But because of the similarities between the new iPad and the iPhone, I strongly suspect that yesterday's iPad presentation was also, in part, a preview of what lies ahead for the iPhone.
