Ars Technica reviews the iPad | Hacker News Reader

Ars Technica reviews the iPad

arstechnica.com

114 pointsmhansen48 comments

Does it seem weird to anyone else that iTunes, ostensibly a music library program and music store interface, is now in charge of activating phones and tablet PCs, as well as managing their applications and shared files? Shouldn't there be a separate purpose built program for that?

Seems to fly in the face of Apple's vaunted design and organization.....

I think they're tacking on features to iTunes instead of creating a separate application because iTunes already works on Windows.

edit: well, for some definition of work anyway.

"edit: well, for some definition of work anyway."

I agree heartily.

When downloading podcasts, an activity that could be handled by a perl script and wget, iTunes likes to use my entire processor. I have no idea why, and its done so for several versions now.

I've so far avoided installing iTunes on my Win7 box, for much that same reason - it uses an obscene amount of resources, when I can use something like Foobar2000 with appropriate plugins to do the same job with no significant CPU or RAM footprint.

Considering the heritage of the iTunes code base (http://www.taptaptap.com/blog/media/feature-creep-polarizati...) it's amazing it even works at all.

Perhaps more importantly, everybody already has iTunes. Apple can leave out an entire step from the user experience (and one of the more frustrating ones, at that): "install new software".

iTunes could be the bootstrapper that installs a slimmed down version of itself and the other broken out applications.

Yes, and then you have to teach your users about this new program... for what exactly?

You stop having to teach new users that a program called iTunes does a wide variety of non tune related tasks.

There's quite a large install base to retrain. The iPhone is, uhhh, pretty popular.

Also, iTunes opens automatically when you plug an iDevice in which mitigates some of this problem.

Mitigates? The fact that iTunes is going to load up ever time I plug in my ipod to charge it makes the software's bloatedness way worse.

I'm pretty sure you can disable this behavior with a checkbox.

Imagine the Internet Outrage they'd get over iTunes "installing all these new apps and who knows what spyware all over my computer". I agree with you, it sucks (though, it's not the end of the world) that it all goes through iTunes... and if they still only supported Macs, I bet they'd have broken some of this stuff out by now. But it's tricky in a Windows/Mac world.

Considering that installing iTunes on Windows automatically installs the Apple Software Update tool, which then try's to sneak Safari in (by automatically selecting it to "update" the next time Apple Software Update runs), I don't think Apple is too concerned about frustrating the user with the "Install new software" step. They seem to relish it actually. ;-)

Correct. But now we have to wonder why the Linux desktops are so keen to follow their example.

"There is no step three"... once you figure out you should use the program whose icon is a CD (who uses CDs for music when you have iTunes?) to manage your phone and tablet, neither of which have optical drives.

I don't think the CD metaphor for music is dead yet, but both the iPhone and iPad show the iTunes icon when they need to be connected (i.e. at activation).

The CD icon is the new floppy disc icon.

So eventually the icons don't mean anything and it's all just a game of memory to match up the things that look similar.

There originally was... "iSync." However, Apple has all but forgotten this app exists, and the UI is very rudimentary anyways. About the only thing it was every used for was for handling old school file system syncing with Bluetooth and USB cell phones from about 3-5 years back.

Again, it's all about the ecosystem. Apple created a content ecosystem for the iPod. (iTunes + Store) This was part of game change involved in the legitimizing of music download. Then this ecosystem added the iPhone as a content delivery system, which was a smart move but nothing revolutionary there. The kicker is that they then grew a software market ecosystem out of it!

Now that the App store is established, they could separate the iTunes app. However there are proximity advantages to be exploited here. iTunes is free iPhone advertising to everyone not yet on the iPhone who has an iPod.

I think this is spot on. It's not iTunes per se that is the connecting point for all these devices. It's the iTunes Store that binds all of these devices together—all of them are dependent on the store for content and applications. Getting the music player thrown in gratis alongside the iTunes Store is really inconsequential.

At the very least, the title 'iTunes' is now wildly inaccurate.

iTunes seems like a very practical solution to me. Why confuse people with different apps? It would be more elegant, it makes people who love the compartmentalized UNIX philosophy happy and it just confuses everyone else. For most people the iTunes feature set: syncing, backup, restore, updating, organization, etc is a good thing. Having this process be mostly automatic is a big plus. I just can't imagine many people running iBackup on a regular basis to backup their device or iShare to put files on it, or iStore to buy music then opening iTunes to listen to it. Who has the patience for that?

Not being able to copy my files in and out is a deal breaker for me. That's sad as the device looks really neat.

I'm not interested in encouraging Apple to build an ecosystem where I have to pay every time I move my data around.

Dropbox (https://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTU0Nzc4MDQ5) is cool, though the iPad only lets you save pictures.

Airsharing (http://avatron.com/apps/) lets you (sort of) use the iPad as a target drive.

Why should something that is basic functionality require third party services?

The user experience gleans a lot of simplicity by abstracting hiding the filesystem. If you can't monkey with files, you can only break things programmatically.

It's definitely different, and frustrating for superusers, but I think it will be perfect for the majority of the population.

I'm sorry but you can both allow files to be moved (photo, music, movies, documents) and abstract the file system.

When I move the photos from my camera to my computer, I don't have to deal with the file system at any moment.

Exactly

I dig the ipad allot, but Itunes and the design imperative behind it (it organizes my files, not me) never worked for me, it never worked for my music, it wont work for documents.

Interesting choice of example, as loading photos from a camera is something the iPad can do without third-party software.

Superusers that want to write a document and put it on another computer?

The iPad is a $500 tax for being a fanboy.

Because it isn't basic for everybody. It's conceptually simple, but hundreds of millions of computer and cell phone users go through through most days without ever doing it at all. It is much more familiar and convenient to them to use messaging or the cloud or automated software.

What I mean is that from the perspective of a mass-market electronics maker, it's something you can leave at a low priority. It'd be nice for some people, but most won't miss it and you can sell tens of millions of devices without it. Why do what few want?

What if Apple were to add a "transfer" API that let one move files between apps? How about a window that you could open to see all of the App document collections as folders? That could let you drag and drop items to/from the desktop.

There are (apparently cludgy) ways of moving your informationi about, but the impression I've had from this and other sites is that the iPad is more of a read/watch platform than a text-input one.

Unless you attach an external keyboard, the speed limitation of entering punctuation and numbers would be more of a deal-breaker for me if I were on the lookout for a very portable semi-work machine.

...and how do you plan on attaching that external keyboard, since the iPad doesn't seem to have any ports?

It's a closed system, by design.

The ipad supports Bluetooth keyboards. It even has a special apple version available that also holds the ipad up as a screen.

Go to apple.com/ipad and look around a bit or watch th keynote of the ipad's release. How to attach an external keyboard is explained in both places.

No speed limitation for me. I can type at full speed in landscape mode with the iPad on my lap. With the autocorrection feature, I can even take the sorts of shortcuts one uses when texting on old cellphones, but with a full qwerty keyboard. (No need to hit the shift key to capitalize iPad correctly, for example.)

I have a feeling that if this was resolved you'd find another deal breaker.

The "base" Apple case is marvelous. It improves the usability by almost 50% by increasing friction and letting you place or hold it more easily. Outdoors, you can use the cover as a shade, and it is also two stands in one.

Before you complain about iPad ergonomics, get one!

A moment of impressive slickness. I was watching this movie in iTunes on my Macbook. I sync it to the iPad and play it in the Videos app just to try that out, and it resumes at exactly the point I left off!

Great plug in the review for a kickass iPad app called StreamToMe ($3). I've been using it to mount my entire video library on my mac mini (with external HD), and have access to view everything on my iPad. 1tb of movies / tv shows + iPad is an amazing combo.

BTW... anyone know a good site to get like an RSS feed or something for new ipad apps?

You could check out http://landingpad.org/ but it doesn't seem to be updated that often. Pretty though.

Apparently plugging in your device to a computer and mounting it like a flash drive is too sophisticated for Apple's customers. These device manufacturers need to get on the ball and start coming out with Android/Chrome tablets that compete with the iPad like the Nexus One competes with the iPhone.

fwiw, the author of the iSSH app mentioned in the article is already working on better bluetooth keyboard support (http://twitter.com/canadacow/status/11572336655) and even implementing a split-screen mode with an integrated web browser to have a terminal next to a browser for remote web app development (http://twitter.com/canadacow/status/11603198915)

>The first is the arrival of the "app for that" era. Apple will provide you with a free book reader and a Web browser with basic PDF rendering capabilities. But if you don't like any of these, you can simply replace them, or use a different approach entirely.

Excuse me, what? Are they really touting the fact that apple allows you to install some apps that have been blessed by Steve The Jobs himself on a device that you own as a feature? An era even?

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