The (Slight) Differences Between the Verizon and AT&T iPhones

The Verizon iPhone 4 is nearly identical to the one currently on offer from AT&T, but there are a few minor differences worth noting which may be decision makers or breakers for some. The biggest difference with the Verizon phone is a change of the internal antenna and cellular radio to ones that will play nicely with Verizon’s CDMA network. The advantage of this is that the phone will now run on Verizon’s much touted network, and many iPhone users should experience better signal and call quality in places where they found AT&T’s coverage lacking.

There are two disadvantages to the CDMA technology that Verizon uses however. One is that it is not as fast as AT&T’s HSPA network (should one have excellent reception and bandwidth). This means that, compared to places with great AT&T coverage where few people use their phones (if such places do indeed exist), users will find the Verizon iPhone slower.

The second disadvantage is that Verizon’s CDMA technology does not allow for simultaneous voice and data use. That means that it is impossible to, say, browse the internet while on a phone call. This is likely not something people do terribly often, but sometimes it can be invaluable to look something up in Wikipedia or refer to an email during a call.

There is one feature that may be an available only on Verizon however, and that is the ability to use the phone as a Wifi hotspot. This feature is already available on many phones Verizon sells, including most of their Droid lineup, and typically requires an additional monthly cost. What it allows you to do is turn your phone into a Wifi router that your computer can see and connect to, allowing you to access the internet on a computer or tablet (up to 5 devices at a time) using your phone’s cellular connection. The mobile hotspot feature could come to the AT&T iPhone at some point in the future (should AT&T choose to implement it), but there are no announced plans.

Price-wise the two phones cost exactly the same, but the monthly fees associated with them may be slightly different. Fifteen dollars a month buys you 150 megabytes of data on Verizon and 200 MB on AT&T. For $25 dollars a month, you can buy 2 gigabytes on AT&T and $30/month will get you unlimited data use on Verizon. This means that light data users (which is likely most people) are essentially paying the same on either network, medium data users (200 MB-2GB) can save $5 a month on AT&T, and heavy data users (>2GB) should choose Verizon.

Why you May Want to Wait to Buy a Verizon iPhone

All that being said, the best course may to be to wait a few months before buying any iPhone, and here’s why.

Apple has, like clockwork, been coming out with a new version of the iPhone once a year, always in late spring or early summer (June or early July). If you buy an iPhone now, you will be committing to a new two year contract and won’t be able to upgrade to whatever new phone Apple comes up with. Since the next iPhone is only 4 months away (assuming Apple keeps to its schedule), it makes sense to wait for the new model. You won’t want to miss out on whatever improvements Apple makes to the next iPhone.

It is also important to note that many people won’t be able to buy the new iPhone, at least not without paying additional amounts to their carrier. If you are currently on contract with a carrier that’s not Verizon, you will almost certainly have to pay some kind of early termination fee to cancel your plan. If you are on Verizon and you’re not eligible for a phone upgrade (which typically only happens when two years have elapsed and you need to renew your cellular contract), you will have to pay the unsubsidized price for your iPhone. Currently, the unsubsized prices for the iPhone are $599 and $699, adding $400 to the price of the phone.

I have no doubt that Apple has something exciting up its sleeve for the next version of the iPhone (they always do) and it makes sense to wait for it — it’s only 4 months away, and it might cost a lot of extra money to get the Verizon iPhone now. But, if you’ve been waiting a long time for a Verizon iPhone and just cannot wait any longer, you will not truly go wrong buying an iPhone 4 on Verizon. There’s no telling whether the Verizon network will fare better than AT&T’s when it gets slammed with iPhone users, but the iPhone 4 is a great device and Verizon is not charging any more for it than the competition.

…and yet I feel my thoughts about the product from back in February 2008 still hold true.

I was recently asked to write a short piece on “My Favorite Gadgets of All Time”. I decided to take that topic and write about

For me, the original iPhone was a revelation. It wasn’t that it had a touchscreen — I’d seen a lot of stylus driven Pocket PCs and Treos. It wasn’t that it had a completely integrated iPod — many phones had mp3 capabilities and some, like the Walkman series, were even more than decent at it. It wasn’t even about the UI — it was intuitive, fresh, and new, but very simplified (especially the original 1.0 release). It was all about the web browser.

Mobile Safari showed me that it was possible to have a true, desktop-like internet experience on a mobile device. I could carry around the internet – and it was the true internet, as I was used to experiencing it — in my pocket! This blew my mind, and opened up new worlds of possibilities of what I could do and where I could do it. Plus, I could consistently get “woah!” reactions from people who’d never seen it by whipping out my iPhone and navigating to their favorite site.

Another of my favorite gadgets was the first crop of netbooks — the original Asus EEE PC and the competitors that came shortly thereafter. Whether running Linux or Windows XP, all of these machines were new in that they were computers small enough to take practically anywhere and cheap enough so people could actually afford to buy them (as opposed to UMPCs). Like the iPhone, they allowed me to have real computing power wherever I was, whenever I needed it (I personally had an original Acer Aspire One). Now, the current netbooks are even less expensive and get phenomenal battery life, and have been largely responsible for pushing down the prices of laptops overall.

I’ve finally had the opportunity to spend some time with an iPhone 4. I’ve got some quick initial impressions on the device coming up after the break. (To find in-depth impressions and run-through of the software — iOS 4 — click here).

• Since the exterior of the phone is made entirely out of glass and metal, it really does have a higher quality feel than the plastic iPhone 3G and 3GS. That said, the metal and glass give the phone an unexpected heftiness. While the iPhone 4 is a smaller than previous iPhones (particularly in width), it is not any lighter, which makes it seem surprisingly heavy for its size. The weight won’t be a problem for those used to the previous iPhone models, but those coming to the iPhone for the first time may need to adjust to carrying a heavier phone.
• The phone is really thin. Apple says it’s the thinnest smartphone out there, and while that may or may not be true, it’s more than svelte enough to fit into narrow pockets. It’s not as astonishingly thin as the iPod Touch, but, then the iPod Touch doesn’t have to fit cellular antennas inside or include as large of a battery to make them run. Without a doubt, the iPhone 4 is extremely attractive and sexy device.
• The iPhone 4 has an amazing screen. The clarity, resolution, and brightness surpass any display I’ve ever seen. Everything is spectacularly sharp — it makes the screen on my iPhone 3GS look fuzzy and pixilated by comparison. Having a screen like this makes using the phone a real pleasure, since text is easier to read and everything on the phone just looks fantastic.
• The new 5 megapixel camera seemed to take really nice pictures. That said, the iPhone’s screen will make any picture look good, and I never had the opportunity to load pictures onto a computer. But, there seems no doubt that the iPhone 4’s shooter is a nice improvement over the fairly mediocre cameras of the previous iPhones. Video looked good too, and played back smoothly and stutter-free on the phone.
• After reading the reviews online, I was expecting Facetime to produce crystal clear video calls. My expectations probably shouldn’t have been so high — after all, the resolution of the iPhone 4’s front camera is VGA so the quality can only be so good. In my experience, calling from one iPhone 4 to another in an Apple store, video looked compressed and pixilated and often stuttered and froze. This was true when using both the front camera and the rear camera, though the rear camera was, as you would expect, better. For comparison, the video and audio performance seemed of comparable quality to a medium to low-quality Skype call — not spectacular, but certainly usable, and making out the image of the other person and their surroundings isn’t a problem. However, it definitely does not compare to a high-quality Skype video call using nice webcams and high speed internet connections. It should be noted that Facetime performance will likely better over a faster and less-crowded wifi connection than that found in the Apple store, but in the real world people are often going to be making Facetime calls from mediocre wifi connections like those found in coffee shops, airports, and hotels.

Keep in mind, these are all first impressions, and I reserve the right to change them once I’ve gotten to spend more time with the device. After I’ve had a chance to use an iPhone 4 at length (which may not be for a week or two), I’ll do a more in-depth post about the device.

Related Posts:

• iPhone OS 4.0 (iOS 4) — Run Though, Impressions, and Tips
• The Dark Sides of iOS 4
• Apple’s Long-Term Strategy for the iPad

Yesterday, I wrote an extensive run through of iOS 4 that was very positive about the new operating system. I found that my phone ran faster and could do more with the new software, and said so. My phone is still running smoothly, but now that the OS has been out there for a day and a half people are reporting issues, and some of the dark sides of iOS 4 are starting to emerge:

Battery Life:

Multitasking definitely causes battery life to take a hit. This shouldn’t be too surprising — it’s the reason Apple was reluctant to implement multitasking in the first place. After just an hour or two of running apps in the background (mostly Pandora) while using other programs in the foreground, my battery was down to nearly 50%. That said, the battery life doesn’t seem to have changed for instances when I’m not running things in the background. So, my battery life isn’t actually worse with the new software — iOS 4 is just allowing me to take actions that I couldn’t before and these are more battery intensive.

Privacy:

Upgrading to iOS 4 requires accepting a new privacy agreement from Apple, which carries a few alarming clauses in the fine print. One is that Apple can now monitor your phone’s GPS and track your “real-time geographic location”. It also reserves the right to sell that information to partners and licensees. The company says that it will only sell the location data anonymously and for location-based services only, but it is still frightening to know that you have agreed to let Apple keep tabs on your movements.

You have also agreed to allow Apple to monitor your browsing habits, so that they can serve you targeted advertisements using their iAd platform. iAd hasn’t been launched yet, but starting in July should be featured in a lot of apps. Targeted ads are nothing new, and it can be less annoying to see an ad for a product you are interested in than one that is irrelevant to you. Nevertheless, it can be disconcerting to know that information about the web sites you’re visiting is going to Apple. Fortunately, there is a way to opt out of this — using Safari on your iPhone (or iPod Touch), go to http://oo.apple.com. Unfortunately, most people won’t know about this, but at least you can keep your privacy intact if you prefer.

Lots of People are Having Issues:

My phone is running fine, but many people are having serious issues with the new OS. This Engadget poll shows that thousands of their readers are suffering from problems which range from random crashes to contacts getting deleted to an inability to connect to data networks. I know from the search terms people are using to find my blog that my readers are suffering from the same issues, which include “os 4.0 issue with 3g network” and “ios 4 freeze crash on phone call”. Unfortunately, not having suffered any of these issues myself, I am unable to offer any advice on how to troubleshoot or solve these problems. However, this serves as another reminder of why it is so important to back up your phone before making an upgrade. You never know what’s going to happen, and it’s critical to have your contacts backed up somewhere should your phone annoyingly decide to delete them all.

Related Posts:

• iPhone OS 4.0 (iOS 4) — Run Though, Impressions, and Tips
• Apple’s Long-Term Strategy for the iPad
• The iPhone 3GS: My Impressions

This morning, I downloaded the latest major software update for the iPhone and iPod Touch — iOS 4 (renamed from iPhone OS). I’ve been playing with it all day on my iPhone 3GS, testing the new features and exploring how it performs and what it can do. I have an extensive run though, some thoughts and impressions, and some useful tips.

iOS 4 is available now for all iPhone 3G and 3GS users, though original iPhone users have been left out and iPad users won’t get it for a few months. To get it, you just need to plug your iPhone into your computer and hit update, but if you don’t have iTunes 9.2 yet you’ll have to upgrade to that version first.

Let’s run through things one at a time:

General Impressions

It’s fast. Rather, on the 3GS the new OS is noticeably snappier than the previous version (3.1.1). Icons seem to fly around and I haven’t run into any noticeable lag, even when running many apps in the background (which I’ll get to below). That said, reports from users of the iPhone 3G are that the new software is not any faster on that device, but it isn’t purported to be any slower either.

It’s pretty. Not only can you select a background wallpaper for the homescreen (you can check mine out in the post image), but the look of the dock has changed to more closely resemble the one in Mac OS X and some of the icons (notably the calculator) have been made a little more attractive. iPhone 3G users are apparently not able to set their own homescreen wallpaper, but it should be noted that these changes are purely cosmetic.

Multitasking

It’s the big, headline feature of iOS 4, and so far it seems to work as advertised. Multitasking allows apps (or rather, specific features of apps) to run in the background while you are doing other things on the phone. For instance, I can listen to a station on Pandora while surfing the internet, or answer a phone call while using a GPS app without losing my guidance. Apps have to be specifically updated to run in the background, so many or most of your non-Apple apps won’t work in the background right off the bat. The first thing to do after updating to iOS 4 is to hit up the app store to see which of your apps have updates and download them, so you can take advantage of the new features right away. It should also be noted that iPhone 3G users won’t get multitasking – apparently the 3G doesn’t have the processing power to handle it.

How multitasking works: When you hit the home button and the part of an app that supports multitasking is running, it will stay running. So, if you’re listening to a song in Pandora, or are getting GPS voice guidance, and hit the home button, it will keep playing (whereas before it would cut out), even if you open other apps. Other apps that don’t actually have something going in the background will ‘freeze’ in place, so that when you open them up they should be in the exact same place they were before you froze them. This means that you can browse the web a little, go check your email, and come back to Safari without fear that you’ve lost your webpage. For that matter, you could start a page loading in the background while you go and check something else.

To see which apps are frozen or running in the background, you double click the home button. This brings up the app switcher, which pops up from the bottom of the screen and shows you the icons for those apps. Clicking an icon takes you directly into the app — this means you can move from one app to another without having to bounce to the home screen first. If you have more than four apps open, swiping to the right will take you to the rest of them. In my experience, once you open an app for the first time it will appear in the app switcher, with the apps most recently being those furthest left.

A few app switcher tips:

Swiping left on the app switcher will provide playback controls for whatever music player you are currently using/were using most recently (such as iPod or Pandora). You will also find an icon there for locking the screen orientation into portrait mode, which could be useful in some instances.

Multitasking performance is remarkably good. Switching apps happens really fast (with a neat little animation), and streaming music in the background did not seem to affect the performance of other apps. In fact, even as I opened more and more apps, I did not notice the phone slowing down at all. Now, I haven’t had the chance to use a really heavy duty app, such as a turn by turn GPS program, but so far the phone has handled everything I’ve thrown at it.

The other big question is battery life. It’s too early for me to tell if running all these apps in the background has really affected the phone’s longevity, since it’s spent most of the day plugged into the computer getting updated.

Folders

Users can now group the applications into “folders”, which allows them to name them under a shared icon. Clicking the icon (which is a box containing a grid of the apps it contains) opens the folder and lets you click any of the apps it contains. To create a folder, you hold and drag one icon onto another, and name it. For some reason, there seems to be a limit of 12 apps per folder, which I found a little annoying. Also, and this is my opinion, the folder icons do not look nearly as good or distinctive as most of the application icons they’re replacing, which can leave your screen looking boring and make it hard to quickly find what you’re looking for.

iBooks

iOS 4 grants the iPhone access to Apple’s ebook reader and store, iBooks. iBooks isn’t automatically included on the phone – you must go into the app store and download it yourself (it’s free). It comes with one book — Winnie the Pooh — and using the built-in store you can buy many, many more. If you have iBooks on the iPad, logging on will automatically sync your library (including your notes, bookmarks, and current location in the books) between the two devices. I will do an entire post with my impressions of the iBooks software — look for it in the next day or so.

Email

Many people are really excited about the new email features, which include threaded email (like you see in Gmail) and a unified email inbox for users with multiple email accounts. Unfortunately I haven’t gotten to use those features since I only have one email account and don’t like threading, but they reportedly work as advertised.

Lots More Tips

Zoom in the Camera: The camera now has a 5x digital zoom. To use it, tap once on the screen while in the camera app, and you’ll see a zoom slider which will let you move in and out. It should be noted that with a digital zoom, you’re not actually zooming in. You’re essentially doing the same thing as cropping the image on the computer — moving in on a portion of what’s being picked up by the image sensor and blowing it up, which will detract from the quality of the image.

There are lots of other small changes to iOS 4. For instance, you can now search your SMS messages using a search bar at the top, use a longer alpha-numeric password to lock your phone, and tether your phone to your laptop once you set up your plan to allow for it with AT&T. I have not gotten to try all these features yet, but several of the ones that I have not touched on can be found at this fairly comprehensive Gizmodo post.

Wrap Up

So far, iOS 4 has more than lived up to its promise. Multitasking, folders, and all the other improvements seem to work, and work well. Moreover, performance is quick (at least on the 3GS), and I have not had the phone freeze, crash, or even stutter in the one day I’ve been using it.

My only gripe is that the iPhone 3G is getting a watered-down version of the OS, and the original iPhone has been left out entirely (despite having the same processor as the 3G). I get that Apple wants people to upgrade to the latest hardware, but it seems unfair to their loyal customers who just want to hold on to their still-functioning phones.

Nevertheless, I feel like my phone has a lot more utility and functionality than it did this time yesterday, and to that I can only give a big thumbs up.

Related Posts:

• Article: Apple’s Next iPhone
• Apple’s Long-Term Strategy for the iPad
• The iPhone 3GS: My Impressions

This is my last article for the Occidental Weekly, so it’s only fitting that it’s a Tyler the Tech Guy column. I discuss the forthcoming iPhone model, including the upcoming software (OS 4.0) and the leaked phone prototype.

Click here to read the story >>

A complete archive of all my writing for The Occidental Weekly, including past Tyler the Tech Guy articles, can be found here.

I wrote the following article for the April Fool’s edition of the Occidental Weekly, which, unfortunately, isn’t available online. However, if you are around Occidental be sure to pick up a copy — the entire thing is hilarious.

The Apple iPad comes out this Saturday, April 3, and I am bringing you the world’s first review of the device. No, I haven’t used it yet – nobody has. It doesn’t matter, you should go and buy one right now (or go start forming the line down at the Apple store).

It’s a magical device! Apple says so. There aren’t any other gadgets out there that let you perform actual supernatural feats.

Any old PC can let you read your email, but only the iPad lets you read your friends’ internal monologues (in 3D). And while I can create a classic lolcats image using Photoshop on any desktop, the iPad can summon a real, talking lolcat (or laser cat) that keeps getting itself into adorable situations.

Those are just examples. The iPad still does all the things that the iPhone can do, like find your precise location in Google Maps (as long as you’re not in China… then Google has NO IDEA where you are), or watch a cat play the keyboard on YouTube.

And, as always, “there’s an app for that”. The iPad has access to thousands of applications. This includes apps that can make it look like you’re drinking a keg of beer, send you back in time to 1986, tap for mana of any color, and let you pass through the barrier onto Platform 9 and ¾.

Now, the iPad isn’t perfect. Sometimes, seemingly at random, it will crash and give you an error message, stating, “You have displeased the iPad.” Currently, the only fix is to coddle the device for a while, whispering lullabies to it.

Also, the iPad has a tendency to disappear in a puff of red smoke with Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ laughter audible in the background. It will usually reappear hours later in a completely different location. When asked for a solution to this problem, Apples’ Geniuses shrugged, stating that the device wouldn’t be magical if they or we knew how it worked. However, they did say that this behavior is “definitely not covered by the warranty.”

These minor flaws are no reason to not run out and pick up an iPad right now. What are you waiting for? Go. It’s not too late to for you to be that one guy who camps outside the store overnight for no discernable reason.

Related Posts:

• The Apple iPad: Impressions and Analysis
• Apple’s Long Term Strategy for the Ipad
• The iPhone 3GS: My Impressions

Are students soon going to be carrying around all their textbooks on devices like the Kindle? In an article I wrote this week for the Occidental Weekly, I discuss the implications of textbooks as ebooks, and why I think e-textbooks aren’t yet ready for prime time.

Click here to read the whole story >>

Also check out what I’ve written about the pros and cons of electronic textbooks, and how publishers can make electronic textbooks successful.

A complete archive of all my writing for The Occidental Weekly, including past Tyler the Tech Guy articles, can be found here.

A few weeks ago, I gave my initial impressions of the iPad. To quickly sum up my view, I said that the iPad doesn’t make sense in its current incarnation — that it does less than an iPhone, costs more, and definitely can’t fit in a pocket. If you’re going to be carrying around a bag anyway, you might as well throw a netbook in there, since they are less expensive, more capable, and get equal (or better) battery life.

What I didn’t qualify in the article however was that “in its current incarnation” part. You see, I think that this first generation iPad is just the tip of the iceberg. Apple has some big, big plans for the iPad. Remember, they’re trying to create a whole new third category of computing. This is what I actually think is going to happen with the iPad over the long-term:

1. Early adopters are going to pay up front in order for Apple to get the price down and make improvements.
This isn’t saying anything new or revolutionary. Apple always lowers the prices of its products after a while. However, I think that this could be a situation more akin to the price drop of the first generation iPhone, when Apple slashed $200 dollars off the price after only two months (though they wouldn’t be as quick and drastic about it this time, to avoid a repeat of the customer backlash from that move).

Apple knows that they have a number of die-hard customers who will buy whatever they put out right away, and because of this they can charge a premium for their products at launch. In a way, it’s a form of price discrimination, and the revenue from the early adopters helps them achieve greater economies of scale to bring down their costs.

Apple has to realize that it will be hard for them to sell a lot of iPads to price-sensitive people when there are so many competitors and that netbooks appear to be a better value. Because of this, it can’t be too long until they drop the price down to netbook levels (but they can never bring it down to iPhone or iPod Touch levels, because they need to keep the iPad distinct as a third category between phones and laptops).

2. Apple left a lot of features off the iPad both to keep the price low and to save things for future iterations of the product. Wait a generation or two, and the iPad will have all the things that people have been clamoring for.
That 9.7 inch capacitive touch screen is an expensive component. There’s a reason we haven’t really seen large capacitive screens on devices before now — capacitive touch technology gets really pricey as screen sizes go up. The technology will obviously get cheaper over time, but Apple needed the iPad to come in at a reasonable price point now, so that meant cutting costs where possible.

As part of this, Apple is producing the chips for the iPad themselves, which will save a lot of money in the long run (and also makes sense since they can build the chip specifically for the device). Apple also left off a lot of basic features, such as a camera.

Macs, the iPhone, and even the iPod Nano all have cameras — it almost seems weird for an Apple product not to have one these days. The iPhone OS obviously already supports cameras and, if they can engineer a camera into the Nano, they can definitely find a place to put one (or more) on the iPad. This is especially perplexing, because there are so many compelling uses for a camera on the iPad, first among them video calling.

There can only be two reasons for its omission — either it pushed the cost too high, or they want to save it for the next generation to differentiate it and get people to upgrade. Chances are that both are true.

What this means is that all those features people have been clamoring for are likely coming in future generations of the iPad. Remember the first-gen iPhone? It had a camera that couldn’t shoot video, no 3G, no GPS chip, no app store, no MMS, and no copy and paste, to name just a few things. It gained all these features incrementally. People were disappointed with the iPhone at first, and now they call it revolutionary.

The same thing is going to happen with the iPad. A front facing camera, a proper GPS chip, and yes, multitasking will all eventually show up on the iPad (and possibly on the iPhone as well). Apple will just space out its rollout of these features to provide a compelling upgrade path for its customers.

(That said, I’m not sure if and when Adobe Flash will ever make its way onto the iPhone or iPad. Apple really seems to hate Flash. However, once Flash starts making its way onto all the other smartphone platforms, it may be hard for Apple to holdout.)

3. To quote Walt Mossberg: “It’s all about the software, stupid.” Once the iPad gets some really unique, compelling software — and it will — it can transform into the must-have third device that Apple’s hoping it can be.
Apple already reworked some of their standard iPhone OS software for the larger screen, but it’s arguable if any of these changes are providing a new and unique experience. Sure, it’s nice to be able to view the list of your emails alongside the messages or browse the web on a screen that can display the entire webpage, but using the email app or the browser is really not that different from using it on the iPhone. Both email and web are still going to be better on a full blown computer, especially with the lack of Flash on the iPad. The reworked app that comes closest to providing a radically new experience is the photo app, which looks a lot more like iPhoto than the iPhone photo app, and seems to utilize pinching and zooming really well.

It’s only a matter of time until some really compelling software is coded specifically for the iPad to take advantage of what it has to offer. Apple already announced its first attempts at this, iBooks and the with the iWork suite for the iPad.

There’s not much to say about iBooks. Apple recognizes that the iPad is the right size for an ebook reader, and has coded a fancy app to take advantage of that fact. The question will come down how the ebook experience on the iPad stacks up against other ebook readers, especially dedicated ones like the Kindle or the Nook. Really, iBooks is less about creating a new unique experience with the iPad as it is trying to match and surpass the ebook experience found elsewhere.

Of all the things announced recently by Apple, iWork for the iPad baffles me the most. The iPad is clearly a device meant for consuming content, not creating it. It’s portable, has a high-res screen, and has great media software, but what it doesn’t have is easy ways to enter information. The virtual keyboard looks problematic, especially since it apparently requires that the user use two hands, and it will be hard to see the screen if you’re putting the iPad down flat on a table to type on it. Sure, Apple will sell a dock with a built-in keyboard, but I don’t know how many people are going to want to carry that around, and it defeats the purpose of having the iPad as a portable take-anywhere device. So, for Apple’s first real software for the iPad to be focused on creating documents, spreadsheets, and presentations doesn’t make any sense. These uses play to the iPad’s weak suits. Perhaps Apple thought that the software would allow business users to talk themselves into getting iPads, or would sway the person who needs to create the occasional document away from a netbook.

Still, even with Apple’s seeming misstep of focusing on iWork instead of more compelling software, it has an ace in the hole — it’s app developer community. Any iPhone app can be used on the iPad already, but once developers start coding specifically for the iPad, it’ll only be a matter of time until they come up with some really exciting and original software. There are so many possibilities, and I’m sure the best haven’t even been thought up yet. Ideas I’ve heard include medical apps that doctors and patients can use to run tests and access patient histories, remote desktop apps that allow users to log in and run their home computers from the iPad, and magazine reader apps so good they’ll save the industry. This unique software experience is what will make the iPad a “must-have” device.

Apple has laid the groundwork — they’ve built great-looking hardware and created the fundamentals that users and developers needed. Now, it’s up to Apple’s developer community to create the software that will ultimately get mainstream people to accept a third device. Apple has so many great iPhone developers — and so many people hoping to become rich off the app store — that I have no doubt they’ll do it. I’m just excited to see what they come up with.

Related Posts:

• The Apple iPad: Impressions and Analysis
• The iPhone 3GS: My Impressions
• Article: Kindle Textbooks — Are Universities Going to Lead the Way to a ‘Paperless Society’?