The new iPads: Want thrills? Look elsewhere

Apple today showed off new iPad and iPad Mini models. In the month before the iPhone 5c and 5s were announced, there were constant rumors about what they would sport. On the whole, the rumor mill was very accurate, no doubt thanks to a little help from Apple to keep the iPhone top of mind. By contrast, there were few rumors circulating about the new iPads.

Did that mean Apple has shocks in store — or there’s not much to say about them? It was more of the latter. As expected, the new iPad — named the iPad Air — uses Apple’s 64-bit A7 processor and M7 motion coprocessor (both introduced in the iPhone 5s), but not the Touch ID fingerprint scanner. The big deal is that it is 20 percent thinner and much lighter, weighing 1.0 pound versus 1.4 pounds. The cheaper iPad Mini gains the Retina display and A7 processor, though it doesn’t run as fast. They begin shipping in November at the same prices and configurations as the previous models.

Apple updated its iPad covers, but did not add built-in keyboard, à la Microsoft’s Type Cover for its Surface Pro, as some rumors suggested. Apple also announced the significant updates promised earlier this year to the iWork suite for both iOS and OS X.

But for most people, new iPads are what’s hot. A 64-bit iPad, coupled with the 64-bit iOS 7 and apps designed for 64-bit processing (there are now extremely few), could be a powerful alternative to a lightweight laptop. It could even run complex or compute-intensive apps such as Adobe Photoshop that today need more horsepower than what a tablet delivers.

I know many people who carry only an iPad while traveling, and at the Interop networking conference a few weeks ago, I met several CIOs who expected to have sizable tablet-only user communities in a few years, particularly for sales forces and field forces. The group could even extend to desk workers who require little beyond email, the Web, and core office productivity capabilities that you can already get on an iPad and and that Google, Microsoft, and Apple are all working to deliver via the Web.

But more is needed.

You can use just an iPad (or higher-end Android tablet such as the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1) for many things — I write and edit on it, as well as create and deliver presentations, for example.

But many people will still need a laptop for its ability to use a much larger screen and multiple windows, as well as to use a mouse for its precision, ability to manipulate interface objects on the Web (such as drag handles) that aren’t supported by touch gestures, and better ergonomics when using a vertical screen. (Keyboards are already easy to use with tablets.) Although you can mirror an iPad’s screen to a monitor, you don’t get more pixels, much less multiple windows.

I doubt we’ll such enhancements from Apple today. An adaptive iPad would be a huge leap forward, creating a tablet that is simple when used by itself and a portable PC when docked (wirelessly, no doubt) with other peripherals and resources.

I believe we’ll end up there in a few years — there’ve been unsatisfying attempts at adaptive computing — but the computer industy is focused on nearer-term issues. Apple makes a lot of money from both iPads and MacBooks, with many people buying both, so it’s in no rush to merge the devices and cut profits as a result. Smart Apple peripherals likely wouldn’t make up the difference. Google so far is treating Chromebooks and Android devices as barely related devices, and it has neither the apps nor the hardware skills to drive forward the adaptive tablet today. Microsoft’s Surface Pro comes the closest to the concept, except that it works terribly as a tablet, killing its chances today.

Apple CEO Tim Cook would rather cannibalize Apple sales with new Apple products than have other companies do it to Apple — he said so when the lower-cost iPad Mini debuted. I hope he takes that same attitude to plotting the adaptive iPad in the not-too-distant future. It would reinvent personal computing, again. But he didn’t do it today.

This article, “The new iPads: Want thrills? Look elsewhere,” 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.