Waiting for the iPad Spawn

by Larry Magid
This article originally appeared in the San Jose Mercury News

The Apple iPad was so last week.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great product. It has a good screen, is easy to use and is a terrific way to surf the Web, check e-mail or watch video — as long as you buy or rent the video from Apple iTunes or go to a video site that doesn’t require Adobe Flash and is actually compatible with the device.

There is a lot to like about the iPad. But unlike that original tablet, the one Moses brought down from the mountain, it doesn’t have near-universal appeal. I’ve seen plenty of blog posts and online comments from people who say they have absolutely no desire to own one.

One thing I like about the iPad is that Apple has introduced a new ”form factor” that’s between the smartphone and the laptop. It’s not the first tablet PC, but it is the first one likely to sell in the millions.

What I’m most excited about is the products it will spawn. With any luck, we might soon have a vibrant market with some real competition for Apple.

Hewlett-Packard certainly hopes to be a player. Just a couple of days after the iPad shipped, HP posted a video to show off its upcoming slate device, likely to come out later this year. It’s the same device that Steve Ballmer held up during his Consumer Electronics Show keynote, which means that, for better or worse, it will run Windows 7. That’s a good thing when it comes to compatibility with lots of software, but possibly a bad thing when it comes to performance

and battery life.

Last week, Engadget posted what it says is an internal HP presentation comparing its Slate with the iPad. If true, the Slate will have an 8.9-inch screen, with “5+ hours” of battery life (compared with 10 hours for the iPad). But unlike the iPad, it will have a USB port, an SD card reader and a Webcam. The 32-gigabyte version is expected to cost $549, which is $50 more than Apple’s entry-level 16GB iPad and $50 less than the 32GB iPad.

There also will be tablet PCs coming out that run Google’s Android operating system — the same operating system that now runs on Google’s Nexus One phone, Motorola’s Android phones from HTC as well as phones from Samsung and others. Unlike the iPhone OS, Android is open source, which means developers can enhance it to suit their needs. And the Google “marketplace” is also open, which means that Google doesn’t have to bless an application or a peripheral before it will work with these devices.

I recently stopped using an iPhone on a daily basis and started using a Nexus One (Google loaned me the phone but I pay for my own service) and I am happy with the switch. My son, who used an iPhone during his last two years at college, also switched, mostly because T-Mobile’s $80 unlimited plan is more affordable than AT&T’s plan. But he says he wouldn’t switch back even if the service cost wasn’t an issue.

While it’s not quite as responsive or crash-proof as the iPhone (Apple has had three years to get it right), Android is nonetheless a very nice operating system. I prefer the GPS software on the Android to the rather lame GPS on the iPhone and generally am happier with the user interface.

One thing I don’t like about Android is that there are too many versions floating around. Not all phones support all versions, and even within versions, some applications don’t work with all phones. To be successful, an open operating system like Android should allow the latest version to work with all compatible devices.

I like that data for Gmail users is synced on Google servers, but I also find that worrisome. When I switched from a Motorola Droid to a Nexus One, all I had to do was enter my Google user name and password and, within minutes, my phone was all synced up and ready to use with my e-mail, my contact list and my calendar. It even had the same custom wallpaper I had on the Droid — a photo I took. But I found it a bit creepy for my wallpaper to re-emerge from a past phone without even being asked if I wanted that picture on the front of my phone.

What bothers me about this is that it puts Google in control of storing all your essential contacts, calendar and more. I’m not so worried about the company deliberately misusing my information but do worry about a possible data breach or what might happen with future generations of Google management.

It also means it’s easy for the government or a civil litigant to get their hands on the data. That would, of course, require a legal order but — again looking forward — who can predict how a future Congress or future courts might approach such orders? This is the risk we take when data is stored “in the cloud.” There are advantages but, to paraphrase a Joni Mitchell song, it’s important to “look at clouds from both sides now.”