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Since this morning as I watched both TWiT's and GDGT's truly awesome coverage of the master showman Steve Jobs unveiling the new iPad I've been trying to some some kind of coherent thoughts about my feelings on the new device.  Someone on the TWiT coverage had the line that the iPad isn't a product you need but is a product you want. My friends and family were of course ribbing me about the device since I'm the resident fanboy and was apparently solely responsible for the bad name, their lack of excitement by the thing, etc. It's interesting to see how people like to teardown the king of the hill. Weird. I guess the first question I'll try to tackle first is do I want one?

This is where I feel like I'm a bit cursed by being a geek. I've always been a gadget nut, techie, computer geek, what have you. I generally consider myself a power user of OSX. The first thing that jumped out for me was when someone casually mentioned it is iPhone OS 3.2 not 4.0.  Which means, as many have remarked, this really is just a bigger iPod Touch with some redesigned UI for the build in apps. What that means is no multi-tasking. That's a deal breaker for me. It's just that simple, I actually jailbreak my iPhone so that I can get the ability to run background apps. Shortly thereafter I started thinking well why not Bluetooth but they want to charge for the keyboard dock. Or why not a camera, it doesn't run flash or TweetDeck, etc. But then I got to thinking if I weren't so geeky would these things be important to me at all? I really believe the answer is no. Of course many of those desires are born out of 15+ years of using what we've traditionally thought of as a computer and grafting those habits and paradigms onto this thing that is something new. I guess it's kind of an ignorance is bliss effect. All of that being said I'm still eager to check it out in the store and overall it is still tempting. I have felt for a while that if I had nothing else in the world to spend $500 on purely as a couch computer and this certainly seems perfect for that application.

Which bring me back to, as is often the case with Apple events, being more disappointed by what wasn't announced than what was. I think that it's certainly a quality device that represents Apple at their best, simple, polished in every aspect. I expect the iBooks Store will be a VASTLY superior experience for ebooks than Amazon's web based option for example. I've just always found the iTunes Store experience to be a very positive one, personally, and prefer it every time over something browser based. However I was really hoping for iPhone OS 4.0 news which would have impacted me directly as an iPhone user. There's a laundry list of things about the core OS that really need to be addressed. My big pet peeves are the notification system, multi-tasking, and the iPod app. The Unofficial Apple Weblog did a great series of posts about what needs to happen in general for iPhone OS 4.0 which I highly recommend. I suppose it isn't a huge surprise that we didn't hear more on the OS front as Apple will likely want to keep that for WWDC in the summer. However I'm approaching the point where WWDC is Apple's last chance to address these issues before the Google Nexus One starts to look even more attractive that it is already looking these days.

The game that everyone is playing post announcement is what's the market for this thing? Who will buy it? I have a couple thoughts my first thought and what I'm still sticking with is that I think for the iPad out of the box the prime market is more of a non-tech crowd. I explained it to my Mom (an avid netbook user, mostly surfs, etc) and it didn't take her long to declare she wanted one. Moving beyond that after hearing a lot of different people with a lot of different niche uses I think much like the iPhone success will depend largely on the apps. There's a lot of discussion about the idea that Apple has really created a multi-touch control surface with an SDK. Suddenly it's a Mixer, a lighting control surface, a Airplane cockpit companion, etc. I can see where there's some potential for revolution there although on the flip side, many people predicted the same for the iPhone and that hasn't materialized.

Bottom line Apple does what they do better than anyone and it will be exciting to watch the evolution of what at the very least is a cool piece of technology.

Well I recently migrated from my old iPhone EDGE/2.5G/1.0/whatever to a new iPhone 3GS.  All in all I have to say it has been a great update and I'm enjoying the little things I didn't have before like GPS, 3G, etc.  The 32GB of additional storage has been nice as well since I am, maybe one of the crazy few, who actually uses my iPhone as my primary iPod as well.  

Prior to the 3GS I had put a dock in my car and where the astray would normally go and used that to dock my phone.  One big advantage of this approach besides the connivence factor was the ability of the dock to provide a line-level out audio connection which is the ideal way to connect a device into an AUX port for example. Line-level audio provides a consistent level of audio out and relies on the amplification, etc. of the stereo the device is being connected to.

Okay fine so when I got the 3GS I decided I wanted it placed elsewhere on the dash so I could access it easier without reaching down at and arms length.  I figured, obviously very naively, that I could simply order a dock cable that would provide the equivalent of a physical dock.  When I had a real iPod I had several of these cables that were a dock connector with a simple USB pigtail and another for line-out.  What I have discovered after hours of Googling is that these cables simply don't exist for the 3G or 3GS. 

Now technically the various iPod cables that provide this might work but you will get the message "This device is not compatible with the iPhone, blah, blah, blah." Why? Because Apple has included a chip in the "authorized" devices that these cables simply don't include.  I suppose this perhaps might rationalize the upwards of $50 that apple charges for the one cable even remotely close to what I want to do, known as the "Apple Composite A/V Cable" but really $50 dollars!?!  

What does all this ranting really get me? Well in reality nothing I'm going to be forced to connect my iPhone to the AUX jack through the less than ideal headphone jack on the iPhone.  I suppose the reality is that the vast majority of the population wouldn't even think twice about this and just accept it as the way things are, which I am loathe to do.  

Ideally there would be a cable like the one I described above with a USB connection and a line-out and it would cost about $20 or so and be compatible with the iPhone and not throw up any warnings. But of course for as much as I wouldn't trade my MacBook or iPhone for anything this is Apple and the iPhone we're talking about here, I can hear the favorite refrain of a friend of mine, "It's not about what you want it's about what Apple wants you to want."

By now anyone with even a remote interest of the goings of of a certain fruit mascotted company from Cupertino has seen the keynote and various announcements of said company.  Of course I would be remiss if I didn't add a few of my thoughts on the various, product revisions, operating systems and "phones" announced yesterday to the ether. 

I should start off by saying that I was steadfastly predicting there would be no new iPhone announcements (beyond talk of iPhone 3.0 the software) without Steve Jobs on the stage doing his thing.  Obviously I was quite wrong but in true Apple fashion it took them forever to get to the point the everyone was waiting for.  Of course there was some notable news on the Mac side of things.  

As far as the MacBook announcements went I felt like the two biggest announcements were the replacement of the ExpressCard slot with an SD card slot and the rebranding of the Aluminum MacBooks as MacBook Pros. So the SD card slot, I was happy to see this as I have never once used my ExpressCard slot. However I have found myself wishing quite often for a built in SD card slot each time I have to go and hunt for the USB SD reader I keep in my backpack. It seemed some were wondering what was up with Apple's decision to rebrand the 13" Aluminum MacBooks to MacBook Pros. For one thing I think it just makes logical sense given who similar the design is but I also wonder if it might not be freeing up space in the lineup for a new MacBook or perhaps the long desired Apple netbook-like device.

Snow Leopard is the next version of Apple's OS X operating system I guess it will be version 10.6? Interestingly Apple bashed Windows 7 for simply being the next iteration of Vista and as only they could in the next breath declared that Snow Leopard would build upon Leopard by being primarily a refinement of it. Yeah. Uh Hu. Frankly as primarily an end user of OS X (and not someone who is going to dive deep into 64-bitness, or OpenCL, etc) I didn't see anything all to awe inspiring on the UI or feature front, though I'm confident Apple will come up with a couple 100 things before all is said and done. I of course applaud the $29 upgrade fee as a current Leopard user but was hoping maybe we'd see a release before September, but I can deal.  I've also been giving Safari 4 a trial run over the last day or so I can't tell if it really seems faster or what, I will say for as much as I miss aspects of Firefox it does seem snappier just for the fact that it is built on native UI.  We'll see how long I can really tolerate it.

iPhone, iPhone, iPhone. And yes despite not being able to get the hour of iPhone app demos back (okay ZipCar was cool even if I'll never use it) I am going to skip over them like the didn't exist.  So the iPhone in typical Apple fashion they decided to cram everything into about 20 minutes and any one of the announcements they made by itself is probably newsworthy.  For example though it wasn't the marquee announcement the iPhone 3G 8GB is now only $99 dollars (with 2-year plan) as if EVERYONE on the planet didn't already have an iPhone this should blow the doors open once again like the drop to $199 did.  Then of course there is the iPhone 3GS which I must admit as I'm still using the iPhone EDGE I am pretty excited about.  Biggest things for me are the Video, new camera, GPS (since I don't have a 3G), oh and I almost forgot Voice Control looks really nice and should be very convenient when driving.  Of course all the other iPhone 3.0 features like Copy/Paste, etc. certainly round things out to make the iPhone 3GS what I consider to be a very significant upgrade from the original iPhone.  From the iPhone 3G however I'm not sure it's as big an upgrade of course the most rabid of Apple fans are likely to disagree, and loudly.  Bottom line on the iPhone 3GS for me however is that I will likely pick one up when circumstances permit. 

Of course it's hard to talk about the iPhone these days without mentioning it's worst feature, namely AT&T. Aside from the obvious AT&T sore points like the fact that it is the most expensive network, the slowest 3G wise, the laughable hypocrisy of the "more bars in more places" (someday I'll find one of these places), the dropped calls, clearly I could go on.  However yesterday AT&T seemed determined that they were ready to stick it to iPhone user and delight while doing so. First there's their not being ready with MMS or Tethering for launch. There's also an additional $18 fee to upgrade an iPhone that's not present on other phones, why? Heck if you're AT&T why not?  Then of course there is the fact that if you are an iPhone 3G owner you aren't eligible for an upgrade to the 3GS yet and will have to pay retail.  Now personally I've always thought it total idiocy for the cell companies to penalize their EXISTING customers in this manner but sadly it is a very common practice throughout the industry and not just on the iPhone.  

I think part of the AT&T/iPhone problem here is that the rabid (and very vocal) Apple fans have come to expect something more from Apple.  Apple is the company with the genius bar so the stuff AT&T pulls on a daily basis seems at complete odds with the perception of how Apple operates. However none of that excuses AT&T for just being an overall poor experience.  It seems to me that AT&T is kind of taking advantage of the true Apple fans because they know that they'll put up with it for the promise of the latest iPhone. Which is of course also perhaps and indictment of Apple fans as well.  Then of course though there is the issue of Apple's lack of leverage what can they do? Threaten to go to the only other GSM network here in the US, T-Mobile? Seems like an empty threat to me and AT&T likely knows that.  Will Apple deny exclusivity and then go to Verizon with CDMA? I personally doubt that just because it complicates things for the international market.  I often wonder if all of this might not have been avoided by selling the iPhone unlocked and unsubsidized which of course would have meant FAR less iPhones sold.

Of course when all is said and done I'm still a fan of what Apple is doing, I can't help it really, and I look forward to the next chapter!