The iPad is Apple’s surprising blind spot in its iOS/OS X vision

Apple’s iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite are going to work together more closely than ever, using a set of technologies called Continuity and Handoff to let you start work on one device and automatically pick up where you left on another. More information will be shared via iCloud, so you can stop worrying about what data is stored where and instead access it from whatever you have at the moment. Tablet? Phone? Computer? The distinctions are blurring.

Except when they’re not — for some reason, Apple has a blind spot about the relationship between the services and apps on its iPhone and iPad. Specifically, it doesn’t provide some apps on the iPad that exist for the iPhone.

Apple’s clear direction in the last few years, accelerated by iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite, has been to treat computing and information as services available across all your devices, rather than start with the device as computers have done since they were invented. Yet it doesn’t do that for some key services, including the new HealthKit-powered services meant provide a central portal for gathering and sharing your health information.

The beta HealthKit apps that Apple has shown so far for iOS 8 are iPhone-only. There is no iPad version. That’s expanding the same disconnect that current iOS users experience with Passbook, Weather, Stocks, and Calculator.

It’s a dumb disconnect, but I think I understand Apple’s logic: Passbook, Weather, Stocks, and (in iOS 8) the HealthKit apps rely on real-time data, and of all of Apple’s devices, the only one you’re likely to have with you all the time and know is connected is the iPhone. It’s portable, and you can have it in a pocket or strapped to you when in a train, on a treadmill, at the airport, in a lobby, and so on.

By contrast, most iPads sold — about 90 percent — are Wi-Fi-only models, so they can get such data only when connected to a Wi-Fi network, which means they can’t be connected to real-time data most of the time. And they’re not as portable as an iPhone, so chances are they’re set down somewhere out of reach for whatever you’re currently wanting to track.

To protect us from ourselves, Apple doesn’t provide us real-time-oriented apps on our iPads. Even though the iPad is a perfect device for accessing and working with that data, whether real-time or stored.

(Calculator’s omission on the iPad is, I suspect, due to a very different logic: An iPhone is roughly the size of a pocket calculator, so it makes sense to provide a digital version for the pocket-sized iPhone but not a larger-screen device like the iPad. I guess Apple has forgotten aboout desk calculators — or that it has the Calculator app on the Mac.)

In Apple’s connected, synced world, devices shouldn’t matter for app availability Apple’s apparent rationales for not providing iPad versions of connected apps like Passbook and Weather are flawed, penalizing iPad users unnecessarily and contradicting the “connected fabric” direction the company has embarked on.

First, there are cellular iPads, so why are those devices not preinstalled with these apps? Because, I’m sure, Apple wants a consistent iPad experience more than it wants a consistent connected experience. That was always dubious logic, but it grows more dubious the more connected Apple makes its product ecosystem.

Second — and the logical flaw that matters most — is that Apple already has plenty of real-time connected apps on the iPad: Mail, Calendar, Reminders, FaceTime, Messages, Find My Friends, and Maps, for example. It doesn’t make sense to exclude the others. If my iPad is not connected to the network, I know I won’t get the current weather, just as I won’t get the current email. But when I am connected, I should be able to check it. Why aren’t both apps available? Apple doesn’t seem to get that users know this. This disconnect makes even less sense with apps like HealthKit, which is designed to be not just a collector of health-related data but also a viewer, organizer, and sharer of it.

Yes, there are plenty of third-party apps I can (and do) use for those that Apple doesn’t make available for the iPad. But why must I? If the native Apple apps were on all Apple devices, they could sync with each other, so the cities I monitor in Weather in my iPhone, for example, would be automatically monitored on my iPad (and Mac), exactly as my bookmarks and photos are synced for me.

At least part of Apple knows you don’t need a device in hand to want it to access the data you are collecting and have collected. In fact, such eventual synchronization and multidevice access is the major thrust in iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite.

Apple is using ad hoc networks via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi Direct to let iPhones, iPods, iPads, and Macs share information and work together automatically even when there’s no network. That’s the Handoff technology it has previewed publicly. And it’s using iCloud and other cloud services to keep devices in sync even when they’re nowhere near each other — it’s how the mail filters on my home and work Macs stay in sync even though they’re kept miles apart, and how my bookmarks stay in sync across Safari on all my devices.

Thanks to the cloud and ad hoc networks Apple is relying on in iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite, you’re connected to devices you don’t have with you, and devices not on the Internet can connect to those that are or sync later when they are connected. So why not have all the apps on all the Apple devices?

Case in point: Why can’t I check in to a flight on an iPad? As an example of how Apple’s iPad app disconnect makes no sense, take Passbook, its ticket wallet app. If you are using your iPad and get an email notification that it’s time to check in for your flight, you’ll check in from your iPad. But when you do, there’s no Passbook app on the iPad, so you can’t send the digital ticket to Passbook so that it’s available when you get to the airport on your iPhone. No, you have to check in from your iPhone instead to get that ticket placed in Passbook. That means unnecessarily switching devices.

I should be able to check in to my flight from my iPad (or Mac) if I happen to be using it and have the ticket sent to Passbook via iCloud or an ad hoc network connection so that it’s available to my iPhone. Apple has iCloud do that for Safari bookmarks, contacts, calendar entries, iWork documents, and other cloud-delivered data. It’s using ad hoc networks in iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite to go even further, such as for AirDrop file sharing and Handoff’s “pick up where you left off on a new device” feature.

So why not do syncing or handoff for Passbook, too. After all, Apple already lets me send an itinerary on my Mac from its Maps app to the Maps app on the iPhone or iPad in iOS 7.

In iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite, Apple seems to be adding more of the same senseless disconnect, this time for its new technology like HealthKit.

In the HealthKit context, it makes sense for an iPhone to be a physical monitor, both directly (that’s why Apple created the M8 motion coprocessor) and through peripherals (why it’s made low-energy Bluetooth part and parcel of its devices for years).

But it doesn’t make sense to restrict the access to that data to the iPhone. An iPad can interact with the same Bluetooth peripherals that an iPhone can, so it too can be a hub for sensors. Even when the iPhone itself is the sensor, it can send that data through iCloud or via direct Bluetooth or Wi-Fi connections to the iPad. After all, one of the big advances in iOS 8 is the use of direct Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connections to let devices interact directly, without going through an existing network.

In Apple’s connected world, let’s leave no devices behind Apple’s path to devices interacting with each other directly via ad hoc networks and indirectly via the cloud makes a ton of sense. That’s why so much of what Apple will release this fall via iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite is so compelling. It’s too bad Apple doesn’t seem to apply that vision to the iPad as broadly as it is doing to the iPhone and even Mac.

We’re three or four months away from the releases of OS X Yosemite and iOS 8, so Apple could still rectify these aberrations in its Continuity and Handoff strategy for the iPad. Let’s hope it does.

This article, “The iPad is Apple’s surprising blind spot in its iOS/OS X vision,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more of Galen Gruman’s Mobile Edge blog and follow the latest developments in mobile technology at InfoWorld.com. Follow Galen’s mobile musings on Twitter at MobileGalen. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.