Apple iPad: Wait for the Other Shoe

Well, the iPad has been announced, and it is the birth of another new form factor. And, it is meant to take the iPhone OS into new areas – witness iWork. But we must remember, this is a birth… there is much more to come.

What happened to iPhone OS 4.0? It didn’t come out. Instead, there is an incremental OS bump for the iPad. It has a few new features that support new applications. It introduces a split screen control, which you can see in things like the Settings application. On the left of the screen is typically a list, and on the right, a larger detail view.

The popover is also introduced, which is a popup screen with a list of commands, or some detail settings.

There is also a file sharing feature no one has really talked about yet, but it is key and necessary for software like the iWork apps to succeed. It will let you pass files, such as for presentation, word processing and spreadsheets, between the iPad and desktop computer easily.

But some people were wanting a lot more improvements in user interaction than those few, necessary tweaks. In particular, where is a new, updated Home screen? The iPad has the same general look as the iPhone, with a new customizable backdrop and slightly bigger icons, but that’s it. And where is multitasking? I think most of us were expecting that.

I predict we will see those things and more in iPhone OS 4.0. My guess is some time this Summer, iPhone OS 4.0 will come out, and it will have multitasking, and a new overall look, both in the iPhone and iPad.

This incremental OS bump implements the underpinnings necessary to introduce the iPad and iWork to the world. But the real bang will happen when the other shoe drops – OS 4.0. There, we will see some real interface improvements. I think we will see that in the Summer, after iPad is shipping, when new iPhone hardware comes out, and iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad all get a major software update to 4.0.

The iPhone and iPad both multitask already, truth be told. Many things do run in the background, but they are only Apple things, like the phone software, the iPod software, the push system, on and on. The restriction is merely that only one third party app can run at a time. I believe there are two reasons for this. First, Apple doesn’t want a runaway app to hog up all the available CPU time, or a user to run many apps and then see their device slow to a crawl. The second reason is to do this properly, new user interface paradigms must be invented – some sort of way for a user to see and control multiple apps, perhaps in multiple windows.

I think Apple has the horsepower in the device to multitask, and a nice user interface worked out for multitasking, and I expect we will see it when OS 4.0 arrives. So although I really wanted and expected multitasking in the iPad, with its bigger screen and faster CPU, I’m not upset. I think we didn’t see it at launch, but we will this Summer – when the other shoe drops and we see big improvements with OS 4.0.