One of the less hot but still exciting topics on the Mac Blogosphere of late has been whether the iPad is still sustainable as a business for Apple. It has been observed that the vast majority of the iPads in use get used and sold as "consumption" devices. Apple has been suggesting for years that they're good for productivity, but in the real world, most people use them to read books, watch videos, and a few other useful but not strictly "productive" tasks such as maps. There's also gaming, but nobody seems to talk about that.
Partly to prove a point and partly because I really do have a lot of thoughts about this issue, I busted out my iPad and wrote about 2300 words about it. Some of them were on the software keyboard, and some of them were on a few different hardware keyboard options I have. I have set that article aside, since it turned out mostly to be about my own disappointment with the way iPad photography workflow turned out three years ago.
I've been using iPads since within a few days of when they launched in 2010. Back then, they were the best inexpensive option for something to take with you. There were cheap laptops, but they were all either terrible or big.
But, it's not 2010 any longer and everything's cheaper for Mac, Windows, and Linux users. MacBook Airs start at $900, and pretty good PC laptops now start at $200. There are also devices such as the Dell XPS 13. The iPad has come down in cost too, and also new since 2010 is that the iPad has gained a lot of functionality.
However, it's said that not only is the iPad business not doing as well as people suggest that it should, but it may even be faltering. Apple doesn't really split the iPad out, but the suggestion is that iPads that do get bought are used primarily for reading books and watching videos, and that this implies a relatively slow hardware upgrade cycle. The original iPad does these tasks perfectly well, so if this is your use, there's no real need to get a new one, unless your breaks.
It's frequently paraded about how good the iPad could be for work, if only people would give it a chance. However, often when people do, they find out that it's good at a certain task if you compromise on workflow significantly.
And so, a new laptop gets purchased for "work" and the iPad is used for consumption or games. Mine's used this way, even though I bought the original iPad with an eye toward using it for writing and as a portable portfolio, and the iPad 3 with an eye toward writing, photo management, and as a portfolio. Neither ended working out long-term.
Today, the workflow for writing is a lot more sensical and newer iPads than mine will actually be fast at the task, but there's still some disagreement as to what it means to be productive on an iPad. Does it count if you can write on it, or does it need to be better at photography, audio, and video tasks? Must you be able to program on it?
There are both hardware and software components to this problem. There are heavy rumors that Apple is planning on addressing the hardware component of this with an "iPad Pro" which will have a 12.9-inch display with more touch points and presumably a faster CPU, more RAM, and maybe even more storage than existing iPads. (For reference, the current 10-inch iPad has the same 1024x768 work space as all iPads, 2GB of memory, and a massively over-powered CPU that few applications in the iOS ecosystems have caught up to, and up to 128GB of storage.)
I think that there are a few problems that either nobody knows any rumors about (as such, nobody's talking about them) or are simply going to go un-addressed. For example, right now in the iPad world, most accessories (except this one) require you run the iPad on battery while you're using them. The iPad has very good battery life, but this can change as it ages, and that can be drained by resource-intensive tasks, such as managing photos and videos. (And, cameras can draw power from the iPad during this process.)
Another problem I wonder about is storage: One of the big reasons I stopped looking into whether or not the iPad would be a good first stop ingesting photos is because there's simply not enough storage space on the device to clear several large memory cards. Imagine a scenario where you're a professional photographer (or you are helping one) generating hundreds of gigabytes of data throughout the course of some time. An iPad would be a great way to pull these images in and start rating and grouping them, adding keyword tags, perhaps even using the iPad's maps interface to geotag images or groups of images, and then later when you get back to the office, transfer them via USB or Wi-Fi directly to an iMac or Mac Pro running bigger monitors with more editing options.
There are two problems with this: Firstly, the iPad simply doesn't have enough storage space for this, nor is its battery good enough to pull in dozens upon dozens of gigs of image from cards or cameras. There are external storage options for iOS devices, but they're poorly integrated and you typically use them independently, which has some advantage and some disadvantage, but at this point you're entering into a territory where you're using the iPad only for viewing content, and a cheap android or Windows tablet will be as good at this as an iPad will.
The other problem is that few (any?) iOS photo software supports this kind of workflow or has the interface to do these things. I hate to promise things of engineers and programmers, but I simply can't imagine that this is impossible, or even difficult. Three years ago, I expected iPhoto for the iPad to be that application, but it never integrated with anything on the Mac side of things, and I don't even believe it supported tagging.
I think the last problem is going to be Apple: how long will it take for iOS to morph into something that encourages app development and workflows that either enable iPads to take on more tasks.
It'll be interesting to see what the iPad Pro is like and what other announcements happen alongside it. The rumor is that in September, there will be an iPhone event, and then in October, there'll be an iPad event. This is a pretty typical arrangement for Apple, so it's not totally out of the question. Hopefully the new device has some neat benefits in terms of hardware and accessories, or else it'll just be a Big iPad, which itself has turned into "Just a big iPod touch."
I don't know what's worse – the fact that I've tried to do more with the iPad and just can't, or the fact that even still, I know it's capable of it.