iPad 2 software improvements

[Gomff]

Having queued (but only for 90 mins) for an iPad 2 on Friday and used it a while, I have generally positive feelings about it. There's lots to like about the hardware but I think the software (iOS) still needs a few key features.

It seems to me that the iPad should have the facility for different user accounts, at least in so far as email and mobile me are concerned. In our household, there are two people and one iPad.....Since you can't set up different iCals and email profiles, neither of us are using it for this. I thought we might be able to at least go to me.com and check mail and iCal stuff that way but Safari diverts you to an Apple page that prompts you to set these things up on your iPad.

The iPad needs a file system. I know Apple are trying to think outside the box with "Post PC" devices but seriously, if you want to do anything other than consume content and buy a steady stream of apps, you need a better way to manage saved files and data. You can't encourage an eco system full of productivity and creative apps but then hobble it with a hackneyed system of exchanging files via iTunes or Dropbox.

I also think the iPad 2 needs more "Pro" apps. Garageband is OK, but very simple and limited if you've used apps like Logic. I know it's aimed at a certain target audience and you can't have an application as complex as Logic on the iPad but there's a huge chasm between the capabilities of both. Sequencing beats is very limited in GB, and as far as I can tell there doesn't seem to be a way to edit recorded keyboard riffs to fix wrong notes or timing.

The iPad 2 has a decent amount of processing power and could go so much further in acting as a device for creatives to capture ideas quickly on the road but it's held back by Apple's reluctance for it to compete with their laptops. The iPad 1 was lightweight enough hardware wise for that distinction to remain intact but with the beefing up of specs in the iPad 2, the user expectation for what you can do with it has risen, at least for me.

 

[ParishYoung]

It seems to me that the iPad should have the facility for different user accounts, at least in so far as email and mobile me are concerned.

A few people have mentioned this, and while I think it may have merit, I think that Apple will say it's cheap enough to buy one each. It's £100 cheaper than last years model.

The iPad needs a file system. I know Apple are trying to think outside the box with "Post PC" devices but seriously, if you want to do anything other than consume content and buy a steady stream of apps, you need a better way to manage saved files and data. You can't encourage an eco system full of productivity and creative apps but then hobble it with a hackneyed system of exchanging files via iTunes or Dropbox.

I agree.

I also think the iPad 2 needs more "Pro" apps. Garageband is OK, but very simple and limited if you've used apps like Logic. I know it's aimed at a certain target audience and you can't have an application as complex as Logic on the iPad but there's a huge chasm between the capabilities of both. Sequencing beats is very limited in GB, and as far as I can tell there doesn't seem to be a way to edit recorded keyboard riffs to fix wrong notes or timing.

The point of GarageBand is to show developers what's possible, and to challenge them to create better Apps. I think what you're after will come, as soon as someone works out how best to do it.

The iPad 2 has a decent amount of processing power and could go so much further in acting as a device for creatives to capture ideas quickly on the road but it's held back by Apple's reluctance for it to compete with their laptops. The iPad 1 was lightweight enough hardware wise for that distinction to remain intact but with the beefing up of specs in the iPad 2, the user expectation for what you can do with it has risen, at least for me.

Aren't there a bunch of Apps to help you do this already? I'm not sure.

 

[Gomff]

I know Apple might say that "you should just buy another one", but at £559 each for a 64gb wifi model, I disagree.....Especially in the current economic climate. Plus, there are times when friends, family or business associates might want to have a play around with your iPad but you might not want them to necessarily start reading your email or documents.

My point I suppose is that privacy is pretty much a very black and White affair with iOS. Once the device is unlocked, there's very little control over who accesses what.

With regards to creative apps....Yes there are some pretty good ones around when you consider the capabilities of the iPad 1, but the iPad 2 has more muscle and I hope app devs take advantage of that. Quite a lot of folks held off on the 1st gen iPad because it wasn't beefy enough for their needs. I think it will come though, but a file system would sure help things along.

 

[TheWheelMan]

Plus, there are times when friends, family or business associates might want to have a play around with your iPad but you might not want them to necessarily start reading your email or documents.

Not saying that I don't see your point, but quite frankly, if I don't want someone messing with my iPad, or my PC for that matter (and there are only a few people who I do let use them), then I don't want them messing with it at all. Of course they are much more than just tech toys to me, so that makes a difference too.

 

[Consultant]

Multi-user account might be nice but unlikely.

Still, write to: apple.com/feedback

 

[Stetrain]

All valid points. It's a good thing that Apple releases a major software update every year, maybe some of these will be addressed then.

 

[capriseyhaze]

I really don't get why people want different user accounts on an iPad. I mean come on, the iPad is a personal product not a product that people should share. It's like sharing an iPod it's just weird.

 

[aibo82]

I really don't get why people want different user accounts on an iPad. I mean come on, the iPad is a personal product not a product that people should share. It's like sharing an iPod it's just weird.

Kids maybe? Or other family members? see a pc, laptop and netbooks can be used as shared devices not everyone can afford to kit the family with 3-4 iPads/iPods! And looking at how many devices you have I'm sure you could do that!

Even if you don't share your iPad there are times a user account is great like a pestering nephew who wants to play a game, but you have to act a misery because you have *cough dodgy emails or pictures and aps! Or goes out of sight and he's logged into your accounts in aps!

Restrictions are limited or a pain to set up while user account I can have just games and content I WANT others to see! I don't want to be showing grammar websites or pics and I flick pass a dirty picture of someone

Or why's the dirty app on there comment!

See user accounts have benefits to me! I don't see the ipad as a personal device it's in the middle!

 

[astrorider]

Some kind of multi-user ability for email/calendar would be nice, but I've never felt the need for anymore of a filesystem. It might be because one of the first apps I downloaded for the original iPad was GoodReader ($1), which does a great job of basically adding a filesystem to the iPad...although I bought it for its PDF reader that worked with very large PDF documents. Seriously, you can store and organize your documents, open them in different apps, access iDisk/FTP/Dropbox, find files, etc.

 

[Gomff]

I really don't get why people want different user accounts on an iPad. I mean come on, the iPad is a personal product not a product that people should share. It's like sharing an iPod it's just weird.

It's not like sharing an iPad or an iPhone, principally because of it's size. It's awkward for two people to watch a movie on an iPhone or iPod but the iPad lends itself much more to that sort of thing. Likewise, there are games (Jenga, Scrabble etc) that encourage multiple users on one device.

You don't carry it round with you in your pocket....When not in use, our iPad is usually left on the coffee table, not tucked away somewhere. It gets picked up and used by either of us whilst watching TV to look stuff up, or to play with something.

And it's too expensive for a lot of people to just have one each (including us) and we're not exactly broke or anything....We just don't have over £1000 to spend on duplicate gadgets.

 

[thelookingglass]

Some kind of multi-user ability for email/calendar would be nice, but I've never felt the need for anymore of a filesystem. It might be because one of the first apps I downloaded for the original iPad was GoodReader ($1), which does a great job of basically adding a filesystem to the iPad...although I bought it for its PDF reader that worked with very large PDF documents. Seriously, you can store and organize your documents, open them in different apps, access iDisk/FTP/Dropbox, find files, etc.

I have Goodreader and I agree that it works well. The problem with not having native access to the filesystem, though, is that apps cannot share files. This means that I cannot be in the mail app and attach a PDF or a picture file (or both) without some workaround like Goodreader. It means that I can't open a file in Dropbox, edit it in Docs To Go and then have Dropbox automatically sync the edited file back to the cloud (and this can be done on the Android version of Dropbox). It means that I can't upload files through a browser, which is sometimes the only option.

I could list many other examples, but the fact remains that Apple unnecessarily crippled the device in this respect. I'm sure the current approach makes iOS devices more secure, but I think that security sacrifices too much usability. I'm not a developer, but surely there must be some sort of middle ground here.

 

[Goldie009]

With the increase in horsepower of the iPad 2 and the larger screen than what I'm used (coming from the iPhone) to I would like the following problem to be solved...

I'm logged into skype, or friendly, or an MSN client, chatting to friends. But I'm scared to leave it incase it A) stopps recieving new chats, B)shows me as offline C) miss the new messages because theres no visual que when i'm browsing the web or checking mail etc, any notifications that do appear are intrusive and stop me from my current activity.

Solution: I would like my message notifications to be a small corner flashing at the bottom of the screen that i can drag up when i am ready to reply to the messages, preferably within the little window that i drag up. I can then reply, and push it back down out the way again.

Most importantly though, the 'active' window does not dissapear or stop what its doing. I would LOVE to be able to continue watching a film for example, and just pull out a corner to reply to someone and then pop back into the film without it stopping etc etc...

The other items mentioned here (ability to switch mail / calendar / iDisk accounts from one window) is a nice touch. However:

If you're using it in a family, I suspect that only the primary iPad user is likely to have a variety of Email - Calendar - iDisk items that they will want to access regularly on the iPad - secondary users would want to play games etc...

If you have said accounts set up you probably wont want to be a 'secondary iPad user' and as such would probably get your own iPad - negating the need to switch accounts .

 

[Zcott]

To the OP who doesn't want to pay £559 for a top of the line one: why not just buy a £399 bottom of the range one? Or, pick up a first gen one? Chances are if you can afford an iPad you can probably stretch to a bit more. User accounts are hopefully a no-go.

 

[camelsnot]

in a "post pc" era as $teve Job$ claims, I shouldn't have to tether my iPad to iTunez to sync. Also, if I have to drag photos/videos/audio onto my ipad2 via the bloated iTunez, I should have the capability to REMOVE them from the ipad without being tethered to a pc (mac/win.. whatever). Seriously. It shouldn't matter how I load files on the ipad, I should be able to remove them just as easily. It's an asinine sandbox Apple wants you to play in. THAT is one of the reasons why DropBox is doing so well. You almost need them in an effort to share files across without leashing your ipad to a computer, in this "post pc era".

Real multitasking. Really Steve... no real multitasking yet? Real multitasking could lead to widgets running on your desktop to provide streaming information (fb, twitter, pandora, flickr, etc). yes, like Android.

The capability to have an app drawer. No, I don't mean the crippled folder implementation. I mean a real app drawer. With that, allow ME to put which app icons I want on the screen. There are some apps I rarely use. Those apps shouldn't clutter up my screen just because APple can't figure out how to create a better environment to house/display/run apps on a mobile device.

Configurable screens. Allow the user to drop icons on different screens which creates a more functional workspace. For instance, screen 1 you'd put work crap. Flip over to screen 2 and it's media related (pandora, vids, "ipod" and so on). Screen 3 is for news feeds. Screen 4 is social media. Or, with widgets, allow for widgets to be displayed on those individual screens.

Apple-made apps with better ties into social media. Really.. all Apple wants to give me is an "Email Photo" link? REALLY? Meanwhile Android allows you to post to FB, Twitter, Flickr, Picasa, ustream, and the list goes on. I shouldn't have to find an app that allows me to post to social sites. It should work with the apps that come stock with Apple. They don't want us to be social?

Advanced user features. This would include multiple user accounts (for business or home users w/a family). Yeah, god forbid people have a family and it would be easy for little Timmy to have his own desktop showing his kiddy books from the iBook$tore, instead of having him trudge through the long list of app icons on the screen (because Apple can't figure out how to make an app drawer). Adv features would also include a way to get to the OS if you want, including a FS. Maybe advanced features would include OTA updates? I'm not sure why that needs to be advanced, but apple doesn't want that for normal users. We're too stupid in their eyes. Another feature.. the ability to see what's currently running. Are there apps running in the background via multitasking? A listing of how much each app is taking up on your device. You'd be amazed at how fast a device can fill up depending on how the developer is pulling content and storing it.

That's enough for now. I doubt Apple will address them in iOS 5. I'm sure the new iphone5 will just be a rehash for which more people will leaved the walled garden for Android. I'm surely not getting an iphone 5 if iOS 5 is just a mobileMe update with nothing to actually take advantage of the new hardware bump they'll probably include (just to catch up to existing android hardware).

I'd post it to apple/feedback but I'm sure Steve Jobs would post one of his cocky dbag responses.

 

[camelsnot]

To the OP who doesn't want to pay £559 for a top of the line one: why not just buy a £399 bottom of the range one? Or, pick up a first gen one? Chances are if you can afford an iPad you can probably stretch to a bit more. User accounts are hopefully a no-go.

yeah because you should be forced to buy another hardware device (yaaay Green planet) just to have multiple accounts on a single device. That makes perfect sense. Yes, we should need to waste more money for something the OS can inherently do but just hasn't been implemented. YAAAY innovation. Apple would love for you to buy more instead of them continuing to be innovative. YAAAY!

Hopefully user accounts are a go. Let the end user decide how they want to use their device. $teve Job$.. quit assuming we're all iSheep and only give us basic features. I think we're beyond that. Your competition is way beyond that. Oh yeah Steve.. how's that FCS update coming?

 

[Gomff]

To the OP who doesn't want to pay £559 for a top of the line one: why not just buy a £399 bottom of the range one? Or, pick up a first gen one? Chances are if you can afford an iPad you can probably stretch to a bit more. User accounts are hopefully a no-go.

Add £559 to £399 and you still end up at almost a grand. Like I said before, we're not broke by any stretch of the imagination, but that's still a lot of money for us to spend on non essential gadgets.

Why do you say user accounts are "hopefully" a no go? If they were implemented, you wouldn't necessarily have to use them if you didn't want to.....it seems a bit bloody minded to hope they never materialise just because you don't want them.

I wouldn't be surprised if Apple change the manner in which the iPad interfaces with a host computer at some point because it is starting to become unwieldy. Having to do everything through iTunes on one computer is limited IMHO....it made sense with iPods, was ok for iPhones but the iPad is too different a beast, especially the latest version......its like tethering a laptop.