Randomize

Just in case anyone has been wondering, yes, I still intend to blog occasionally.

Watching Jobs et al on stage yesterday, there were a few lingering questions I have that I hope Apple addresses before the release:

• Camera, pretty please? I’m hoping a front-facing camera is a “one more thing” added at the end. This does seem like a no-brainer, a 2MP camera would add $10 to the cost.
• No GPS for wifi users? Apparently only 3G customers get the GPS feature. I see what the issue is: (1) GPS without cell tower assistance can take 40 seconds to get a lock, and (2) 99% of the time, if you don’t know where you are, you don’t have wifi coverage. Hopefully the wifi-based location services will be good enough to at least get me in the neighborhood when I do have a wifi connection and I want to use the map, movie listings, etc.
• Sync? Is Apple going to provide a way for iPhone users to sync their app settings between the iPhone and iPad? Sure, it would require developers to make some changes to their code, but would be very handy for people with both.
• Number of devices? Our household already has five authorized devices for iTunes content: my iPhone and Delanea’s, my Mac Pro and her Macbook Pro, and the Mac Mini we use as an HTPC in our living room. Adding an iPad to that will require me to de-authorize one device, and I can’t make that choice. If Apple doesn’t expand the number of devices, I won’t be considering buying new locked iTunes content.
• Stylus? I know Apple wants to be all intimate with their iPad, but I want to take notes in a meeting without looking like I’m finger-painting. ThinkGeek sells styluses that work with the iPhone, will they also work with the iPad’s touch sensor? If so, maybe someone will write a note-taking app (I don’t care about handwriting recognition, just handwriting and the ability to get electronic signatures on documents).
• Magazines? The only magazines I subscribe to are fashion magazines. It would be nice to get rid of those dead trees and keep it all on one device, and bookmark pages I like. No news about any sort of periodical subscriptions for iBook during the demo, just the same old “look it’s a newspaper web site with columns!” demo.
• iTunes Plus content? Will the liner notes, etc. for the fancy iTunes albums be viewable on the iPad? Seems like a natural fit.
• Bluetooth keyboard support? Or will I be forced to use the dock-connected one when I already own a perfectly good bluetooth Apple keyboard?
• A4 Chip? So, is this thing instruction-compatible with the ARM processors used in the iPhone/iPod, or are they doing a little Rosetta magic on us? If the latter, I would expect iPad-specific compilation to result in better performance and longer battery life vs. running iPhone apps directly. What are they doing to allow apps to be downloaded with both iPhone and iPad native binaries?
• Keyboard-like accessories? The keyboard dock tells me there is a way for an accessory to use the 30-pin connector to emulate a keyboard. Looking forward to seeing devices like bar-code scanners and credit-card swipers that dock snugly to the bottom of the iPad and merely emulate a keyboard for data entry.
• Audio reading in iBook? Kindle has its computer read-aloud feature, and while it caused a stink with stingy publishers, it is a useful feature. If Apple isn’t going to add accessibility features like this to the iPad, will they at least work with publishers to “bundle” audiobook versions of books with the ebooks? It would absolutely rock if the user had the choice to switch back and forth between a human-read audiobook and an ebook format, or even have them running simultaneously.
• Voice control? iPhone has it, and iPad has a microphone. So, will we be able to control our iPad by voice command? Please say yes.
• Free book library? iTunes has some free content, so does the App Store. Google offers more than 1 million public domain books in ePub format. Will we be able to get to these through the iBooks store, or at least add them manually?
• iBook on iPhone? I have used the Kindle app on my iPhone to read a few books, so will Apple offer similar functionality so those without the iPad can still enjoy the convenience of the iBook store?
• Kindle for iPad? Speaking of the the Kindle iPhone app, will Amazon upgrade the app for iPad use, and will Apple approve it? It would be smart for both of them — Apple needs to woo Kindle users who’ve already amassed a library, and Amazon’s unsexy etch-a-sketch is going to start losing the important market share (the books, not the reader) to the iPad at some point.
• SVG? Come on guys, Safari supports it on Mac and Windows. Can’t be that hard to give us iPad/iPhone support for scalable images! And it would shut up most of the whining about Flash (which I have absolutely no interest in seeing added to the iPad or iPhone).

Ok, that’s it for now. Guess we’ll see in the coming weeks how all this pans out. Despite a few small disappointments, I will be among the first in line for an iPad. I’ve been waiting for it since I was a kid watching the PADDs on Star Trek: The Next Generation.