I'm curious about what will come out of the iPad 2 event from Apple that is supposed to happen today. With the market for tablets opening up, it's just a matter of time until someone releases a more functional tablet than the iPad that Apple provides. I say this having read about the reason that the iPad is so successful - Apple's ability to offer the device for a low price. But I think that the iPad is still just a bit deficient in a particular area.

Don't get me wrong, I use the iPad very often. It's not deficient to the point of being unusable. I'm using to write this post right now, in fact. With a bluetooth keyboard, the iPad is almost a computer. And that's the problem - "almost".

Sure, I guess that it's not supposed to do everything a computer can, and I guess that's ok, but later this summer, there will be many tablets on the market that can do just that. The Fujistu tablet I saw announced yesterday looks really nice (and I love their products otherwise), and even Palm come HP's TouchPad with WebOS on it looks like something I wouldn't mind having, because at least it's a light installation of linux at its core and can be augmented.

With the iPad, none of this is so. The only way to create applications for it is to use a Mac to compile one and then launch it (for widespread use, anyway) via the app store. For as much as Apple touts their products as educational devices, you'd think you'd be able to at least write a program on it in Logo, or something. It seems like a device prime for on-device coding; something that will make it possible to run small applications.

I guess Apple's getting miserly with their fortune. They must not be making enough money off of the sales of movies, music, and other apps to allow an app that builds apps to enter the marketplace. If they could make it possible for an app to build apps that could then be deployed via the app store, they'd just make more money. The only thing they'd lose is a few sales of Macs to people who really didn't want to buy them just to make apps but did anyway. Maybe that number is huge, but it smacks of the gym membership tax - charging people for something they stop using afte the first week.

Anyway, I'm not really sure what the problem is, or why Apple won't allow a high-level language app on their devices. It'll be the first thing that really differentiates other tablets besides price. I'm looking forward to that.

Every time I hear someone rave about how some new cell phone is going to kill some other cell phone, I get a little twitchy. Certainly some of this feeling comes from the same place that their angst comes from: The feeling that you're spending several hundred dollars on a phone and several thousand dollars on a plan to be locked in for a year or two using that phone and you want it to retain it's shiny "best new phone" status. Sadly, it never does, because new phones come out every year.

It wouldn't surprise me to learn that most of the reason we don't see any uber-phone released - a single device that does everything very well - is because they're simply taking their time adding the features consumers want just to make them long for the next year's phone release. The phone manufacturers are like cocaine dealers in that respect. It's kind of dirty. But we knew the cell companies were dirty, didn't we?

Anyway, I have my own thoughts about phone platforms, how they stack up, and their future.

Palm Pre

I'm no Apple lover. But I do own an iPhone. There were two primary reasons for switching from my Pre. The first reason is that the Pre's battery life was terrible. I go to conferences and my phone needs to last the whole day of me making calls, sending texts, and using the internet. The Pre couldn't do it. I'd have to charge mid-day just to make it the whole way through, and that was unacceptable. From a hardware standpoint, that's pretty much the nail in the coffin.

The second reason is more a social one. While all of my friends are talking about their iPhones and playing their games and using the apps that are iPhone-exclusive, I'm not. So there's the issue of peer groups leading to making a technology choice.

It's funny how well this relates to role playing groups I've dealt with in the past. There are little islands of roleplaying groups all over the country, each playing their own favorite game. Sure, you can try to convince people to play your game, but it's usually easiest just to consent to playing whatever they like. It's the same with video game consoles. If all your friends play Wii, then you should have a Wii to play with them. If you have the XBox, you're the outcast in the group of Wii players. I think this is a restriction that phones (and all technology, really, but that's a completely separate thought) should not have, and one of the things that the manufacturers/carriers will lead us on with as they start to run out of new features to woo us with over the years. But for now, there's no sharing between makes of phones.

The bottom line: The Pre has an excellent operating system, but somewhat underpowered hardware. Coupled with a poorly-timed ramp-up to launch, Palm kind of botched something that could have been good. My theory is that had Palm launched the Pre within a month of CES, they could have at least avoided the Droid buzz (which was fueled by deep-welled Verizon ad money) and capitalized on the hype they generated. Instead, they waited months. Their hype cooled and was replaced by excitement for Droid.

Android

Here's my take on Android: It's crap.

I'm not saying it's crap because I'm an iPhone owner. I've used it, and it's junk. That's not to say it'll always be that way. It's basically got all of the faults of an open operating system.

This is the crazy paradox. The Droid lovers all tout Android's openness as its strength. And that's fine. Generally, that is a strength. But Droid is like Linux. When Linux was young, many enthusiastic Linux developers jumped at it, creating all sorts of applications. But nobody really understood UX at the time. As a result, no two apps worked the same way, looked the same way, or shared any kind of common interface guidelines. The same is what's currently going on with Droid, but on a more advanced and visible level.

There is a second point that I find difficult to convey to proponents of Android, which is that the Droid model of producing a mobile OS is the exact same model that Microsoft used when they launched Windows Mobile. Usually at this point, the Droid folks plug their ears and start saying "la la la la".

Microsoft built Windows Mobile as a mobile platform OS. Yes, it was terrible. Why? Because Microsoft never intended it to be put directly on a device as-is and left to rot. They expected each phone manufacturer to customize the OS to suit their needs, but leave the underlying core there so that there would be some fundamental interoperability between devices. Really, that's a great-sounding idea. You can see that this is finally starting to take off (after how many years?) in some of the newer HTC devices that still use Windows Mobile 6.

Windows Phone

Many problems with this platform are evident simply in the name. Microsoft took some of its most recent design inspiration and slapped the familiar "Windows" name on it. I kind of half think that the culture at Microsoft is blind to how the rest of the world perceives them, and half think that they're trying to aim what is clearly a consumer-oriented phone at businesses that "trust" the Windows name. I suppose that they failed with the release of the Kin, which is a better attempt at a name than the dry "Windows Phone", but I think that may be more a fault of releasing another Windows Mobile 6 device right before Windows Phone was released.

Nonetheless, I think there are a number of things the platform does correctly. The advertising is interesting in that it has managed to focus on some of these things. For one, the home screen is informational, which is great. The user interface is also pretty dreamy in parts. I've always liked the look of the Zune HD (ug, yet another Microsoft platform that I should be put in charge of making significantly better) and all of its transition animation.

I haven't actually seen a Windows Phone first hand, but I've heard a couple of things. They're currently somewhat glitchy. This is surprising, considering that it's Microsoft we're talking about. Say what you will, Microsoft software may not do things how you want (and might have good reason) but at least is hasn't been outright buggy, which is why the Windows Phone is something of a surprise. Also, if app launching is anything like the Zune HD, I'd give up immediately. The concept of "loading" needs to die; taking 10 seconds to boot a phone app would make the difference between using the Windows Phone and using some other phone.

iPhone

I've been living with the iPhone for a while now. I never wanted to. What strikes me about Apple products is that, sure, they do what they set out to, and there's a reasonable amount of flash to it, but then that's it. You get what you get and that's all.

There are two prime examples of this. One is the interaction between applications. Things like this drive me crazy. Why does every app need its own integrated web browser? Why can't I create photo albums inside the phone without iTunes? (Oh, I'll get to iTunes in a moment.) Why can't applications easily share data? It seems simple, and I understand Apple's reluctance to resort to exposing a filesystem (hey, look at the Droid mess), but there's got to be a better compromise.

The other example of "getting what you get" is the home screen. It's changed minimally in how many years? Windows Phone has it right: When you turn on the phone, you should get some information instead of having to crawl through thirty apps on the phone to accumulate it.

Apple's reluctance to let app devs integrate more deeply with their hardware (like with Camera+'s take-over of the volume button to use as a shutter) is understandable, but bizarre. The need to jailbreak the phone to allow these features is such in demand that there is a whole independently-run app store that caters to people with these needs.

Conclusion

There certainly have been many innovations in smartphones in the past couple of years. I'm anxious to see what is to come. The continuing problem with phones is that no single manufacturer seems interested in evolution at the same time as focusing on the user experience.

I expect that the common consumer dodders along, taking what they're given, and doesn't see many mistakes with the products that they use day-to-day. Some products are pretty easy to get right the first time, since they're simple and elegant. Others, particularly those involving technology, are harder to get right, and usually require some revision to get as good as they could be.

My personal gripe with cell phones over the years to make them into the devices they should be is a great example of how technology exists to make a device really good, but for one reason or another, it just never gets there. Another great example is the iPad.

I'm not saying the iPad is "bad", just that it has a handful of currently unavoidable problems that limit it only to somewhat more than a really expensive toy. This is my short list of things that I think really need to be addressed in the next revision of both the hardware and the software.

The Dock Slot

I've complained about this on other occasions, but I'll do it even more now. The non-standard (read: proprietary) dock slot needs to go.

Worse than that is its portrait-exclusive orientation. For a device that is touted in part for its movie playback, you would think that docking would be possible in landscape orientation, but it's not. Well, it is if you don't mind the able sticking out to the side of the device. A second side-slot would have been a great addition.

Dock Accessory

The iPad also suffers from being too sexy for its own good, and interfering with the docking slot. I've had an iPod Touch for a while, and the back of the device is all scuffed from being spun around on tables and placed in pockets. The metal back looks pretty beat. I don't want this to happen to my new iPad, so I applied the thinnest protective skin I could find. Now the iPad doesn't fit in the standard (crappy) dock. Even with the Apple-branded case, inserting the iPad into the dock is impossible.

Granted, Apple probably doesn't want me to wrap my iPad in a protective sleeve, but frankly I'm not going to expose this $500 device to the elements for aesthetics and the need to buy a new one when mine gets too beat up from exposure.

The Apple-brand accessories are pretty lackluster. The dock accessory hardly holds up the iPad in portrait orientation. When the iPad is in the dock and you touch things near the top of the screen, it wobbles back and forth. There's no back support for the device. A better dock would have just the connector at the base, and some solid supports behind the device that reach farther up its back. The supports would also leave room for any reasonable case accessory I choose to apply. This simple design change would improve this accessory immeasurably.

Multitasking

The iPad does not need multitasking, but...

Data Sharing

What the iPad software desperately needs is the ability to more easily share data across applications.

Grabbing something out of email to paste into a Pages document is so tedious it has me grabbing for my netbook. The iPad can't replace a netbook due to this utterly simple failure. It's both a matter of speed, in the case where it works at all (which may be remedied by the upcoming 4.0 OS update), and of impossibility.

The worst part being since the system abstracts the idea of a saved file from you, you have no opportunity to share "files" between applications. For example, I can't save a "file" in one application and open it with another. At all. Ever.

And don't get me started on Google integration. My whole life is organized in Google (which is a scary thought in itself), and I can't get at it effectively on the iPad. One ical feed in the calendar app is hardly enough. I require at least 6, and the feed has to be bi-directional. As far as I can tell, there is no great solution that makes the native calendar app useful with Google. That's a big problem.

Obvious Poor API Choices

And yet... At least two apps that I have installed include HTTP servers that allow me to transfer files into the iPad. I can only imagine the inefficiency of code that would require both applications to include full servers inside them because real file transfer outside of iTunes doesn't exist. And the file transfer from iTunes (which is one of the ugliest, unwieldy, flaky programs on my PC, by the way) is less than what any real user would hope it to be.

Photo Management

Photo management is terrible. There exists the possibility to pull photos into the photo manager, but you cannot create new albums within the device. You must do it from iTunes. If there was one thing out of this whole list that Apple could do for me, it would be this one: Let me create new albums on the iPad itself.

Many apps support the only cross-app sharing that the iPad has -- photo saving. But it only lets you save to a single album on the iPad; a generic photos album. When the photos get in there, they can't be moved to another album without connecting to a PC. This further emphasizes that the iPad is not a netbook replacement, because it doesn't have the basic management and organization features that a netbook does.

Bluetooth

I had an amusing moment at a conference recently, when my Bluetooth keyboard turned itself on inside my bag and started playing the music on my iPad at full volume in the middle of a session. That's a problem with my packing, not the iPad itself. But there is a problem with the iPad's Bluetooth.

It's disappointing to me that devices don't implement more Bluetooth protocols. I want Bluetooth headphones. I want to connect to external GPS devices. I want to connect my camera via Bluetooth. I want to connect external monitors via Bluetooth.

Imagine being able to hook your iPad to your TV for video playback without physically connecting it to anything! Awesome!

Native Format Playback

I know there are or may be apps that will do it, but the native player is always preferred to some crazy 3rd-party thing. I want to play back DivX. Everything in my media library is in DivX.

Currently, the only way I can play back anything in my video library is if I connect to my home PC over the net (which isn't possible on a plane) and use the Air Video app to stream it. I suppose I could use a converter (I have a couple), but I don't want to keep a separate file in a different format anywhere on my network. I want one copy, and I want that copy to play back on my iPad, whatever it may be. Simple.

It's No Zune

I love my Zune HD. Seriously. It's an awesome piece of tech. If you're around me and need to see it (I have noticed that most people haven't ever seen one, and think only of the old brown bar-o'-soap Zune), please ask. It's sexy. It also has a better screen than the iPad.

But my point here is about the Zune Pass. Think "Napster". I pay a flat fee, I can listen to practically anything in the Zune Marketplace as much as I want. And every month I get 10 download credits so I can download and keep any 10 songs in DRM-free format.

The difference being, of course, that anything I listen to on the iPad must have already been purchased.

Note that the Zune Pass is different from Pandora or the like, because I choose what I want to hear. If I want to hear a specific set of 5 songs right now, I can do that on Zune Pass. I can't do it on Pandora. This happens to me a lot more than you might expect, actually, especially with the kids.

Form Factor

I hate to say it, but I think the device is slightly too big. If the device was overall as large as the actual display, it would be better. The weight is just a slight bit too heavy. The footprint just slightly too large. I think two inches off the length and width and a half-sized bezel wouldn't hurt it too much, and make for a much tighter product. As it is, holding it up with one hand to read a book is tedious after a few minutes. The Kindle's weight and size kicks the iPad all over the playground.

Buggy Piece Of...

The wi-fi issue needs to be corrected. There's no reason I should dump wi-fi when sitting in my house. It happens all the time.

There are a bunch of other little quirks, too. Before I left for Drupalcon, I started the download of the movie Ninja Assassin from iTunes. It didn't finish. All through the conference, the iPad nagged me for my iTunes password, no matter what I happened to be doing. At least, I assume that it wanted the password for that purpose, since it stopped asking me after I let the download finish. The password dialog would pop up in the middle of anything, though, and didn't mention why I needed to provide it. Annoying.

Simplicity For the Stupid

It seems like a lot of work has gone into including only those features that are essential to getting work done. I can appreciate that. Still, there seem to be many places where something more feature-rich would have done better than throwing away features based on them being too complicated.

A prime example of this is the color picker from iWork apps. No, there isn't a color picker. Instead, you can pick from an assortment of color themes. You can't just pick "green". You can pick this one particular shade of green within a pre-defined palette that includes coordinating colors.

This is great if you don't want to screw around with choosing a color palette that works and just want a pretty presentation. It's also great if you want your presentation to look exactly like everyone else's on the planet. For people who can successfully pick coordinating colors, its extremely limiting. How difficult would it have been to include at least a regular color picker, if not something that would help you create a coordinated palette? The idea that I can't pick a straight color is perplexing.

Documentation

A corollary to the "keeping things too simple" issue is that there is no documentation. While I appreciate an attempt to create a product that requires very little documentation, the docs on the iPad are so sparse, there is a ton of stuff you miss.

Discovery is fun, but I don't want to figure out how to "undo" (you shake the iPad - which is really kind of stupid) only after I stumble upon it by accident after weeks of using the device. Some docs are preferrable to none.

The Standard Complaints

The modal push dialogs are ugly. There's no camera. No GPS in the non-3G. Costs $8 billion. iPad-exclusive apps are more expensive than iPhone apps. Etc.

In Summary

These are just my complaints. I'll admit that I don't remember a day since I've had the iPad where I've not used it. It's almost a standard fixture when watching TV these days, since it's so easy to pick up, surf a bit, and put down again. This is something I was doing with my phone before, and the bigger screen is better.

The iPad is a nice piece of tech. I will likely continue to use it. The iWork suite is truly something cool. I hope things will improve with future OS updates.

Still, there is room for a competitor to come along with superior interoperability and broader connection options. I would love to see Microsoft release Courier in a smaller form factor, with pen and touch support, better Bluetooth, support for lower-level file access, and good UI that includes the obvious missing things that Apple removed in a failed attempt to balance simplicity with feature-richness.

Skippy posted about how his boss may get his department iPhones, and he wrote about how he thinks he may decline the offer for several good reasons.

I too, am impressed at first glance by the interface of the iPhone, but I think it's like the iPod - Apple's sheen veneer on a device that could stand a touch more practicality.

Some of the basic features are interesting. I would really like to have a MP3 and DivX player built into my phone with space to hold a decent amount of stuff (using a hard drive, not just flash). But there are way too many downsides to the iPhone:

• Apple's DRM policies. When I buy a license to listen to music, I want to be able to listen to it wherever I please from whatever medium I choose. This is not the case with most iTunes Music Store purchases, the primary supposed source for iPod/iPhone music.
• The proprietary hardware connector. Maybe it seems silly, but perhaps you do not have the array of hardware I have. Finding the special connector for a device when it becomes misplaced is a real pain. If everything used USB, my world would be much, much simpler.
• iTunes. There are many practical dislike I have for iTunes, but I'll choose to say that it's the chrome on the window (the Mac-like skin) that really pisses me off. Let's not waste all my CPU cycles to display a completely unnecessary window border, please.
• Lack of format support (OGG, DivX). I've got a lot of DivX movies. Can I play them?
• Lack of developer support for hardware. I enjoy a thriving developer environment with my Treo. In fact, I have even written my own software for the Palm using OrbWorks. All I can do for the iPhone is write web pages? Maybe a developer API will come out eventually, but Apple hardware isn't well known for its development tools.
• Locked into one of the lousiest cell networks for two years. I used to have Cellular One, which through a series of many mergers eventually became Cingular/AT&T. They sucked. And although it's the oldest cell network in this area, it's the oldest cell network in this area. So long reliability!

And no DUN profile for bluetooth? That's a complete deal-breaker for me and likely for anyone serious about mobile connectivity. On my list of things that my next phone must be able to do, this one is in the top three. It's the primary reason I don't already have a Helio Ocean. Seriously, $600 for a phone with missing and crippled features? I don't think so.

The touchscreen-only operation of the iPhone seems pretty neat, but from the point of view of someone who owned one of the early Pronto remotes that was entirely touchscreen, I can tell you that it's not all that. I really like the tactile response. I'm not sure why people never seem to get over the cool factor of the inductive scroll wheel on the iPod. I can only think it's a matter of time before people catch on that the emporer has no clothes, yet I'm shocked that people haven't caught on to the iPod ruse by now. It's got to be a byproduct of Apple worship.