iPad/iPhone combo advantages/integration

[Mad Mac Maniac]

it seems like the playbook is going to have alot of cross platform blackberry to playbook advantages (like using as a hotspot for example), and I have the feeling webOS is also going to have some advantages to using their tablet/phone combo.

I'm planning on buying the iPad 2 to suppliment my current iPhone 4 and I was wondering what sort of advantages their is to using iOS for both my phone and tablet needs. I know the obvious with many apps being universal, and iphone apps being usable on the iPad... but those are third party apps.

What are the OS wide integration advantages?? And as a kicker what kind of integration would you like to see between the devices??

The only real advantages I can think of are safari bookmark/ical/contacts sync. But those are pretty simple things which I'm pretty sure android, webOS, and RIM can handle... What else is there?

Things I would like to see on the other hand...

• OS wide airplay to other iOS devices. Basically just screen sharing between iOS. Can connect thru bluetooth, wifi, or NFC?
• Wireless sync between the devices. Yes I know with MobileMe ($99 a year..) you can sync the cal, contacts and maybe others. But I would also like to be able to throw apps from on device onto another. or transfer music. etc. Also download an app on one device to another
• push active screens to another device. say you were reading a web page on your iphone, u could push it to your iPad. Playing a game on your ipad and need to leave, push it to your iphone... you could push a video... etc. Basically this would be similar to airplay but instead of viewing what was on another device you would be given the active duplication. (of course you would need the corresponding app to be installed on both devices, which can be transferred easily using the suggestion above

I'm sure there are plenty of other things, but those are just things I thought of now.

 

[joehahn]

I would love to see two things

bundled apps where you can get an iphone, ipad, and desktop app together for less than all three separately

and a free version of mobile me that just syncs info.

 

[maflynn]

Being that the iPad and iPhone service two different needs, I don't think apple will increase any sort of integration between the two. With that said, it would be nice to see wireless syncing.

 

[Mad Mac Maniac]

Being that the iPad and iPhone service two different needs, I don't think apple will increase any sort of integration between the two.

I don't see your point.... Apple could make it advantageous to iphone owners to buy an iPad, instead of one of the other 2011 tablets appearing. And vice versa of course. Why wouldn't Apple want to sell more products.... make the combo of having both powerful

 

[maflynn]

My point is that the two products serve different needs, and increasing the integration of the two will not benefit the users in any sort of material way. That is how many consumers would benefit from a tighter integration of the iPad and iPhone? In my opinion not that much, at least not enough to warrant the expense required to develop and support such a move.

 

[Syk]

it seems like the playbook is going to have alot of cross platform blackberry to playbook advantages (like using as a hotspot for example), and I have the feeling webOS is also going to have some advantages to using their tablet/phone combo.

It won't be a hotspot, it's a bluetooth bridge or tether.

The thing about the playbook*wifi model* is you will need a blackberry to take full advantage of it. The playbook as it stands can't do email unless it's tied to a blackberry,web based mail you can through the browser & RIM says native email/calendar will come as the software evolves.

About the only integration I'd like would probably be streaming media from one device to another.

 

[bilboa]

My point is that the two products server different needs, and increasing the integration of the two will not benefit the users in any sort of material way. That is how many consumers would benefit from a tighter integration of the iPad and iPhone? In my opinion not that much, at least not enough to warrant the expense required to develop and support such a move.

I don't understand this point of view at all. Sure the iPad and iPhone are different, otherwise no one would own both. But they're certainly not so different that their functionality doesn't overlap, and it's easy to see why more synchronization between them would be useful to people who own both. In fact they're so similar that I would say the problem isn't even specific to iPad to iPhone syncing, but is the same even for iPhone to iPhone syncing for anyone who has multiple iPhones, and for iPhone to Desktop app syncing. Apple already supports synchronization of certain things via iTunes or MobileMe between desktop computers and various iDevices.

• Addresses
• Calendar
• Mail accounts
• Safari Bookmarks
• Music
• Podcasts, audio books, including which have been listened to and remembering your place in them.
• Movies and TV shows, again synchonized your place in them
• Photos

What Apple has left out is support for a standard way for 3rd party apps to implement the same kind of synchronization, so each app that wants to support synchronization has to invent its own way of doing so. For example the Kindle app syncs to the Amazon cloud, MoneyWell syncs over wifi to the desktop app, 1Password can sync via a Dropbox account, etc. While this works ok, it's less convenient and seamless for end-users than the way it works for the Apple apps. For the Apple apps, I just synchronize all of my devices with iTunes and they're all in sync. For 3rd party apps, I have to take additional steps, like either running the specific app in question both on the desktop and iDevice at the same time while on the same wifi network and syncing, or signing up for a Dropbox account, etc.

This is similar to the way Apple supported multi-tasking for their own iPhone apps for a long time, but didn't allow 3rd party apps to take advantage of it, and I hope that Apple remedies this eventually similar to how they did for multi-tasking. Look at Palm for an example of how they could remedy this. Palm has an API for app developers to plug into the synchronization process. A 3rd party app developer can implement a Conduit, which is installed on the desktop computer and registered with the synchronization manager. Then whenever you sync your Palm with the desktop, the 3rd party conduits are also run, and have the opportunity of syncing 3rd party app data between the desktop and attached device. In effect, it allows developers to add synchronization for 3rd party apps that works just as seamlessly as Apple's calendar synchronization works with iCal on the desktop and the Calendar app on iDevices.