Apple started accepting sales for the iPad this past Friday, and at the same time updated some of the pages on its website concerning the iPad. One interesting update was to add this page on the Apple website containing this picture:
Before this past Friday, Apple had not previously mentioned a "screen rotation lock" button the the iPad, and I presume that this witch was not on the sample iPads that selected journalists were shown back when the iPad was first announced — if it had been, people would have written about it. [UPDATE: iPhone Alley reports that this switch was on demo units, but Apple previously called this the Mute switch, just like we have on the iPhone. Now the function has been changed to a screen rotation lock switch.]
For iPad enthusiasts, it is exciting to see Apple adding new features to the iPad that were not previously discussed. Macword's Dan Moren wrote this helpful article to describe some of the features only recently learned from the new pages on the Apple website.
As an iPhone user, what interests me most about the iPad is that it may provide evidence of what Apple is planning to bring to the next version of the iPhone, which I presume Apple will introduce this June as the company has in the past. I would love to see a screen rotation lock added to the iPhone. At least once a week I find myself using my iPhone in a bed, while lounging in a chair, or in some other location where I must be tilting the iPhone as I look at it because the iPhone suddenly thinks that I want to switch from portrait to landscape mode (or vice versa) and the rotation changes. Ugh! Whenever it happens, I find myself wishing there was some way to tell the iPhone not to rotate the screen.
Of course, the iPhone is much smaller than the iPad, leaving much less space for buttons and switches, and thus I can see Apple deciding to include this as a software feature accessible in Settings instead of a hardware button on the side. Plus, a software update would be helpful for all current iPhone owners, whereas a hardware button would require a new purchase. On the other hand, pressing a switch to stop screen rotation is much faster than having to dig into the Settings app. However it is done, I just hope that Apple adds this feature.
I see a few other newly discovered features in the iPad that might also be nice on the iPhone. One example is the advanced data consumption information and warnings so that you know how much 3G data you have consumed. If you are in the U.S. on an unlimited data plan, this information is not all that important, but if you travel abroad and purchase one of AT&T's international roaming plans, you'll want to place very close attention to the amount of data you are using because the charges if you go over are very high.
Another example is that the iPad has a separate app for Videos, whereas on the iPhone your videos are part of the iPod. The iPad has an iPod app too, to play both music and music videos, but it appears that if you want to play a movie or TV show you use the separate Videos app. A separate Videos app would also make sense on the iPhone.
Since the iPhone was released in 2007, Apple has essentially only sold one model at a time. Sure, some units had more RAM than others, and there were different colors, and Apple continued to sell some older units at the same time as the newer units, but there were never truly different, equally new models at the same time. With the iPad, Apple will for the first time be selling two, current generation iPhone OS-using devices at the same time. It will interesting to see which new features on one pop up on the other.
