Why Everyone Should Be Thanking AT&T
I know the cool thing these days is to rag on AT&T for their huge amount of dropped calls, their removal of unlimited data plans for new wireless customers, their iPhone 4 pre-order debacle and their rip-off that is iPhone data tethering fees, but among all that is wrong with AT&T, we all owe them an enormous amount of gratitude for changing the face of the mobile industry in a very good way.
A few years ago, before Apple released the original iPhone, smart phones were pretty terrible. Blackberry was the most popular device for businesses but had almost no penetration in the consumer market. Phones such as the T-Mobile Sidekick were as close to consumer smart phones that had any sort of market penetration for non-business users, and anyone that ever used these phones was fully aware of the carrier’s “walled garden.” If you wanted to add a ringtone, wallpaper or game, you had to go through the T-Mobile store “T-Zones.” All carriers had their own market for device add-ons and were ripping off customers left and right. Companies such as Verizon were notorious in the tech community for disabling features on their devices such as Bluetooth data transfer that would allow customization by users such as wallpaper or ringtones without paying for them.
When Apple was shopping the iPhone around to carriers, Verizon did not want to give up the control to Apple that they were looking for. It’s even been rumored that a large contention in the negotiations was the inclusion of the Verizon Wireless logo on the iPhone itself. AT&T, formerly known as Cingular, was the company that ultimately laid down for Apple and let them put out the phone they wanted to and the rest is history.
Some mobile experts believe that AT&T is a victim of their own success and even have speculated that the data overload problems that have plagued them would have happened to Verizon, Sprint or T-Mobile should they have been the sole company offering the iPhone.
It’s not secret that the iPhone is a game changer. The one point Steve Jobs made in the beginning of the device’s introductory keynote was that customers hated their phones and the iPhone was going to change that. By completely blowing up the stranglehold that carriers had over device hardware and software, customers finally had a device they could fully customize and enjoy without feeling as though they were being ripped off by their provider. Ultimately it was the Apple App Store which really blew the door open for this phenomenon, but the App Store would never have occurred if AT&T didn’t allow Apple the power to run the device the way they wanted from the beginning.
Whether you’re an iPhone user or not, you should all be thanking AT&T for giving up the control that all providers once had over their phones and creating an experience that’s much better for the consumer. If they hadn’t, we would not have the wonderful competition between iPhone and Android forcing each other to up the ante on innovation, streaming free music from Pandora would be a pipe dream and social networking services such as Twitter and Facebook would not have nearly as much success as they enjoy today.
Try to keep this in mind the next time your iPhone drops a call, which will probably be in a few minutes! 
My Review of the Apple iPad
I’ve had my iPad for over 24 hours now. After many, many hours of playing games, watching video, listening to music, surfing the web and posting on Twitter, I’ve compiled my thoughts on the device which is predicted to sell over 7 million units this year.
My very first impression was that the iPad was not packaged nearly as delicately as the iPhone is. I wondered why that was, but once I took it out of its box, I understood why. This thing is sturdy. Sure, it weighs only 1.5 pounds, but evidently 1.5 pounds in my mind is a lot lighter than in real life. I’m not saying this thing is heavy at all, but it’s certainly not the feather I assumed.
Before you can do anything on the iPad, it must be synced with iTunes. Not that I really minded much since I’d rather have it set with all my apps right away so I can really dive in and play with this thing. Unfortunately, this step was extremely slow. Adding my apps and music wasn’t bad, but importing my iPhoto library took what seemed like forever. The photos are all optimized for the iPad and this can take quite a while. My iPhoto library isn’t even that huge coming in at nearly 3,000 photos. (I can only imagine how long this will take for my brother the photographer!)
After about 45 minutes, I was ready to start using the iPad. I was a little worried that holding it would feel a little awkward, but I was completely wrong. It feels so natural in your hand. Typing on the larger keyboard takes a little getting used to after three years of typing on the iPhone’s small screen, but after 30 minutes or so it was no problem.
Applications that are optimized for the iPad are beautiful. Unfortunately, iPhone apps not upscaled yet leave a lot to be desired, especially ones that are very text-heavy. Luckily, some of my favorite iPhone games such as Bejeweled, Peggle and Rock Band still look really good enlarged on the iPad screen.
Using Safari to surf the web on the iPad is a total delight. It displays web pages the same way my MacBook does, which took some getting used to as I was so accustomed to seeing mobile-optimized pages. Thankfully, the lack of iPad versions of some of my favorite apps won’t be that hard to live without until they are updated knowing that I can access them in their original form through Safari. This is especially true with sites like Facebook and Digg.
Another area that the iPad really excels in is battery life. Finally Apple’s promise of long battery life on a device is true! I had my iPad going for many hours yesterday before heading to bed and the battery was only down to 50%. Getting 10+ hours of life on a full charge is absolutely possible.
Apple’s iBooks app is wonderful. I’ve only had the chance to read a chapter of an ebook but it was very pleasurable and easy on the eyes. I don’t foresee any eye fatigue issues with an extended amount of reading on it, especially with the convenient brightness display option right within the app.
The only problems I have with the iPad right now are basically the fault of developers. For example, I find it insane that Major League Baseball’s iPad optimized app is a separate purchase from their “At Bat 2010″ app for iPhone/iPod touch, which sells for $14.99. They never said that it would be a separate app at the time I purchased “At Bat 2010″ for my iPhone since Apple has touted the universal nature of apps as a way for developers to hit all devices with one version. MLB isn’t alone in this practice, but they’re the most annoying right now given the fact that it’d cost me $30 to run both apps on my iPhone and iPad and still not have access to all the streaming video.
All this being said, the best quote I read last night on Twitter described the iPad perfectly: “It does not feel like a big iPhone, it feels like a small MacBook.” After an hour with this devices you will see that it’s truly a touch-screen computer.
If you’re someone like me that mostly uses their computer for music, video, social networking, email and surfing the web, the iPad is perfect. It truly is a new category of device that absolutely has a market out there. Obviously, power users that use their machines for coding, design or heavy spreadsheet work will not find the iPad fitting their needs.
I’ll be the first to admit that I’m an Apple fanboy, but I do have the ability to step back and call Apple out when they do something wrong. You know, like trying to get record labels to stop doing the AmazonMP3.com “Deal of the Day.” (Not cool Apple, not cool! ) With that said, I truly believe the iPad is a home run. I can absolutely see how someone that hasn’t used it would ask themselves “what do I need this for if I already have an iPhone/iPod Touch and a computer.” This is a perfectly normal question when a new category of device enters the market. I imagine that many had similar thoughts when laptops first hit the market, being unable to do everything that their desktop counterparts were capable of. Look at where we are today with countless households running only laptops.
Ultimately, what’s going to make the iPad a success is the developer community. The iPhone is an amazing gadget that completely changed the mobile phone market as we know it, but the thing that really pushed that growth was the community of app developers harnessing the true power of the iPhone. There are already some phenomenal iPad apps available now and once these developers become more accustomed to the platform, I can only imagine the type of innovation we will see.
Photo by Emily Chang
Flash on the iPad?
There are a lot of people unfairly knocking Apple for not supporting Adobe Flash on the iPad. For a device that’s still nearly two months away from hitting market, I think these complaints are very unfounded.
Yes, it’s almost a certainty that unless some miracle happens between now and April, the iPad isn’t going to support Flash out of the gate, but I believe anyone that thinks the iPad isn’t going to ever support Flash is mistaken.
Apple has their reasons for not allowing Flash on the iPhone, and some of them are justified. Any iPhone user will tell you that battery life is already an issue with the device, and flash could make it a lot worse. Flash also allows developers to bypass the App Store and run applications directly on the phone which also violates Apple’s current terms of service.
I won’t get deep into the whole App Store “walled garden” debate in this post, but Apple’s closed nature on the iPhone has kept the handset virus-free. There have also been no widespread problems caused by sketchy apps; something that could potentially happen if the approval process wasn’t so militant. I’m not saying that their closed-system is a good thing, but it isn’t all bad. Besides, it’s Apple’s store and whether we like it or not, they can do what they want with it.
Don’t let Apple’s history with the iPhone lead you to believe things will be the same with the iPad. This is a new category of devices with an extremely fast processor and a heavy-duty battery. Not only do I expect Apple and Adobe to find some way to bring Flash support to the iPad, I also expect to see background applications on it as well – something that the iPhone & iPod Touch still doesn’t support.
The bottom line is Apple really wants the iPad to be a success. Ultra-portable computing is the wave of the future and Apple wants to dominate that market the same way they are dominating the smartphone market. Steve Jobs isn’t dumb – he knows that Flash is too big a part of the browsing experience to not support it. Now that the shroud of secrecy behind the iPad has been lifted, I fully expect the two companies to start talking about how to bring Flash to the iPad in a way that makes everyone happy.
If they don’t, it’s not really accurate for Apple to make the claim that browsing the web on the iPad is the best experience there is.
Update: It appears that Steve Jobs addressed the issue of Flash in a town hall that occurred a couple of days back. Reports are starting to leak out that Jobs has in fact cited the buggy nature of Flash as the main reason it’s yet to appear in the iPhone OS. Jobs also seems to be placing a lot of stock in HTML 5 as a way to move away from Flash. HTML 5 is a great thing and is going to push the web forward greatly, I just wonder if it will do it quick enough where Apple can get away with never supporting Flash. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out.
The Obligatory iPad Post
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you probably heard that Apple announced the iPad yesterday. As a huge Apple fanboy enthusiast, I feel I must share my thoughts on the device that many will be drooling over for quite some time.
The iPad looks like an amazing device. Anyone that’s saying “what do I need this for if I have an iPhone or iPod Touch” either hasn’t really read up on what the iPad can do or isn’t in the target demographic to begin with. It’s going to revolutionize the publishing industry in ways that the Kindle has only just scratched the surface on and it’s going to bring the concept of minimalist computing (i.e. “netbooks”) to the mainstream.
There’s also a lot that it can’t do, which is why I plan on waiting a while before iPadding!
What It Can Do
The iPad is going to be an amazing device for watching video on. I’ve watched many movies and video podcasts on my iPhone and never had any complaints, but after watching video on the iPad I have a feeling it will make the thought of going back to the smaller screen hard to swallow.
Reading books & magazines is going to be absolutely amazing. If you haven’t seen the Sports Illustrated demo for tablet computers, this is the potential that the iPad holds:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntyXvLnxyXk&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&hd=1]
Surfing the web and running apps will also be a wonderful experience. Even with the limited demo that Steve Jobs gave during his keynote it’s clear that the browsing experience on the iPad puts the iPhone and iPod Touch to shame. This isn’t a knock on those devices, it’s just the simple fact that the iPad gives developers much more room to work with in creating apps without the tiny screen size limitations.
Aside from the above mentioned features, the iPad can do almost everything the iPhone can do. Almost.
What It Can’t Do
The biggest disappointment I have with the iPad is its lack of a camera. A device like this could be so wonderful for video conferencing that it really blows my mind that this wasn’t included. I understand that Apple is trying to keep the price as low as possible, but let’s be real here. The iPod Nano has a camera that records pretty good video and they kept the price the same as the previous model that did not have one. A camera of that quality would’ve been completely sufficient for simple iChat video conferencing.
Another thing I find strange is the placement of the pin connector. Putting it on the bottom really makes it look awkward when plugged into the keyboard dock. This is something that can most likely be remedied by a third-party accessory, but it just seems odd to me that Apple didn’t do this to begin with.
Imagine the possibilities if you could plug this into the keyboard dock sideways and use a bluetooth mouse. You’d basically have an iMac with a docking station.
Well, not quite.
Aside from the camera, my biggest complaint with the iPad is that it’s not really a true laptop replacement. Because its operating system is a modified version of the iPhone OS, it doesn’t give the user a true Mac OS X experience. The only apps that can be legitimately loaded are those available in the App Store.
With all the hype surrounding the launch of the iPad, there were many expectations out there. I think the iPad lives up to many of them, and I absolutely believe there is going to be a large market for this device. If I am Amazon, I’m very scared right now. The Kindle, which was called by some the “iPod of eReaders,” now looks extremely outdated. Sure, Kindle loyalists will tell you that “digital ink” is much better than looking at a screen, but you can’t get your email or surf Facebook on the Kindle. Yet.
So yes, I do want an iPad, but I am not going to shell out $500+ on one anytime in the near future, given that the next model will most likely be released in a year and feature a camera and much more than 16GB of storage in the base model. That being said, I certainly won’t turn away anyone that wants to gift me on.
I’ll be saving my money for the next generation iPhone which should be announced in a few months.
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