Where the iPad needs to go from here

What do you do as an encore for a a runaway hit such as the Apple iPad? Apple has sold more of them than HP has sold PCs. Android-based competitors such as the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and Motorola Droid Xyboard have gotten little adoption: Android devices account for just 5 percent of tablets in enterprises, and an unknown minority in consumer sales given the lack of real sell-through data from Android vendors — itself a sign of poor sales. And the Amazon.com Kindle Fire, more an e-reader than a true tablet computer, has sold well, but not at the iPad’s expense.

Many companies would just keep churning out such a successful product, periodically adding cosmetic enhancements but nothing more. After all, the less you invest, the more profit you make when you have a runaway bestseller. We’ve certainly seen this approach play out in automobiles and PCs. It took the success of the MacBook Air and the iPad to scare Intel enough to come up with an Ultrabook specification for a truly better PC, something neither it nor the multitude of PC makers have shown any real interest in making for years. And even today, what PC makers have done with that Ultrabook spec is underwhelming.

Apple surprised everyone last year when it announced the iPad 2, a major rework of the already amazing original iPad announced just a year earlier. Apple usually takes two or three years to do that level of rework, focusing instead on incremental improvements for a year or two to keep buyers interested while doubling down on bigger, higher-impact changes on a two- or three-year cycle. That’s been the pattern with the Macintosh, iPod, and iPhone lines for a decade, after all.

So I fully expect the iPad likely to debut in March or April to be an iPad 2S, not an iPad 3 — it’ll likely have the Siri voice-based assistant technology, a faster processor, perhaps LTE 4G radios, maybe a higher-resolution display (like the iPhone’s Retina display), and I hope an improved rear camera.

4G is no certain bet for several reasons: In the United States, coverage is limited, mainly to parts of a couple dozen cities on Verizon Wireless network, and availability outside the country is rare, which works against Apple’s local strategy. And current-generation LTE radios are power hogs, so Apple is not going to compromise its beloved 11-hour iPad battery life for an early-days network. A Retina display would be nice, but let’s be honest: It didn’t ultimately redefine the iPhone’s user experience, so adding the processing power for quadruple the number of pixels may not be the best use of performance enhancements. 

Maybe Apple will reposition the awkwardly placed volume rocker, which now is easily pressed by accident when you hold an iPad horizontally with a Smart Cover in use. But otherwise I suspect the next iPad to be very much like the current iPad 2 — just as the iPhone 4S was to the iPhone 4.

Why Apple doesn’t need to reinvent the iPad this year

That’s OK for 2012, given how Android tablets seem to be stuck. Not only are buyers largely ignoring them, so are device makers. There are still none that come with the new Android 4 “Ice Cream Sandwich” operating system, which for tablets is not a huge improvement over the Android 3 “Honeycomb” predecessor. So Android 4 itself won’t transform Android’s largely inferior user experience and ecosystem of apps and services. And you see nowhere the number of Android tablets announced as you do Android smartphones — it feels very much like the device makers are having second thoughts.

But at some point, Google may get seriously competitive with Android — the company says it’s working on its own tablet to show what an Android tablet should be. Google has done that for smartphones, with mixed results. Then there’s Microsoft, which is likely to ship Windows 8 this fall — an operating system that has a touch-based overlay operating environment called Metro meant to work on tablets and touchscreen PCs. We should see Windows 8 tablets based on Intel x86 processors that offer full Windows 7 compatibility plus touch-savvy Metro apps at the same time. And Metro-only ARM-based tablets should arrive as well.

I suspect Windows 8 tablets will appeal to Windows users who want to live in a Windows monoculture, much like Mac OS X users prefer a Mac/iOS hybrid monoculture. But I’m not sure it’ll be as satisfying an experience as on the iPad. Based on my use of the Windows 8 developer preview edition, the Metro UI is clunky to use, and both it and Microsoft’s limited palette of gestures gets in the way of rich, sophisticated interactions needed to do more than read and view information. iOS is able to handle both consumption and creation, whereas Windows 8 appears to still need a keyboard and mouse to do anything deep or sophisticated. That argues against the success of Windows 8 tablets and instead for Window 8-optimized touchscreen laptops, meaning that the iPad’s adoption is likely to be unaffected.

We’ll know better if Windows 8 has gotten more sophisticated when the public beta for Windows 8 comes out, which is expected in late February. But given Microsoft’s many years of work on touch interfaces and the unsatisfying Windows touch interfaces it has continued to ship during that time despite that work, I’m not too hopeful.

Apple should push the envelope, but in what direction?

But it doesn’t — or shouldn’t — matter what shortcomings Google and Microsoft may have in Android 4 and Windows 8, respectively. Apple should keep pushing the envelope in its usual focused, judicious, disruptive way. Letting the others close the gap, or simply allowing the gap not to continue to grow in Apple’s favor, is a bad strategy. Not that I think Apple will rest on its laurels — that’s not the Apple way. But how to go forward is not so obvious, at least not outside Cupertino.

Certainly there are some things to fix and mature. For example the iCloud syncing service needs to work better when you have a mix of personal and network services such as calendars in place; today, it does dumb things like duplicate network calendars such as Exchange and Google Calendar. The Reminders app lacks basic “how could they have missed that?” capabilties such as reordering tasks, and it’s not that well integrated with Apple’s other information-management apps in iOS. (Ironically, it’s slightly better integrated with the equivalent Mac apps and even Exchange.)

And iCloud would be much more useful if more apps could take advantage of it. For instance, allowing cross-app, not just same-app, syncing would be a huge boon to iCloud’s usefulness. After all, Apple’s iWork suite — as great as Keynote is even on an iPad — lacks key functions such as styles, revision tracking, and TinyMCE support that means real users can’t drop Microsoft Office in favor of it, or even do work on the iPad that is part of an Office workflow (and what in business isn’t?). So, iCloud-enabling iWork on the iPad and other iOS devices with Office on the Mac and Windows is a must. Of course, neither Apple nor Microsoft may like that idea, for selfish reasons. The concept of a digital wallet within iCloud could also extend Apple into a key emerging area that I believe would complement its existing directions.

And don’t stop at office productivity apps. Although often labeled a consumption device, the iPad is a serious creative tool in several industries. It’s already becoming a standard tool for musicians, for example. And if you explore the many ways the iPad is used in that industry, you can see how an amped-up iCloud that works across apps and services could be truly revolutionary. If only Apple would go beyond its same-app synchronization focus.

Yes, iCloud is not about the iPad specifically; it’s an iOS, Mac OS X, and partially Windows 7 service. But it’s the kind of background service that makes the iPad so compelling as a companion device that can take its turn as a primary device. (Which is why Microsoft is essentially copying it in Windows 8.)

Real printing support should also be part of iOS 5, although Lantronix’s amazing xPrintServer product gives businesses an inexpensive, simple, IT-friendly workaround to this glaring hole in iOS — one that is more an issue for iPad users than iPhone users. Likewise, lack of support for Bluetooth pointing devices should be fixed so the iPad can use mice as it does keyboards, which will cement the iPad’s use as a sometimes laptop replacement. The touchscreen works nicely, but it’s awkward to switch between a keyboard and the iPad screen when working in “laptop mode” such as with a keyboard-equipped cover or holder like Logitech’s very nice Tablet Keyboard for iPad. And connectivity to displays, such as through the AirPlay protocol, should be encouraged through broad licensing with easy terms (not Apple’s usual approach).

The iPad’s hardware is already quite good, so it’s hard to imagine any truly novel innovations crying to be added. Sure, faster, better, more-power-efficient hardware — faster processors, adoption of 802.11ac Wi-Fi when that is ready, better cameras, true stereo, more storage, perhaps adoption of nearfield communications (NFC), crisper screen, more scratch-resistant glass, and so on — is welcome but obvious.

I really do see the iPad becoming a primary computing device for many people much of the time. And what I believe Apple needs to do is drive the iPad that way — not to make it into a laptop but to let it become a laptop or PC as needed. That’s why support for peripherals through wireless docking (using AirPlay, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi) so the iPad can adapt its capabilities as needed is so important.

Making this vision happen mean enhancing the connectivity capabilities of the iPad and API support within iOS. It also means making iCloud more sophisticated and multilayered. And it means making a major push on creation apps on the iPad, Mac, and even Windows — figuring out, for example, how to pull Office into the iPad’s fabric, or revamping iWork to satisfy Office users’ core needs and making it available for Windows and not just iOS and Mac OS X.

And there could be something done with the iPad that lets it work with a Mac in a way in which the sum is greater than the parts (that is, not just for something obvious as being a second monitor). Although, I have no idea what that might be. Likewise, if the rumors of an Apple iTV are correct, having it and the iPad become something greater than either when used together could be a game-changer.

The key to the iPad’s future is not the device itself but the communications, application, and computing fabric in which it operates. That’s the extended ecosystem that once Microsoft defined in the more circumscribed world of PCs. Apple has shown with iTunes that it can think that way for content (and make a ton of ongoing money beyond the initial device sale by doing so, something that Google and Microsoft so far cannot). And iCloud shows some thinking along these lines for computing. But so far, not enough.

An iPad evolved this way with measurable, meaningful, and compelling capabilities in spring 2013 would not only keep the iPad well ahead of its competitors but also redefine the competition in a disruptive way. This is the approach that made Apple’s initial Macintosh such a touchstone of innovation and that made Apple the juggernaut of meaningful innovation it has become today under the vision and execution strategy set by the late Steve Jobs a decade ago.

More important, it could again meaningfully redefine computing itself, making it as delightful as the iPad has made tablets.