Apple’s Own Apps On The iPad
There has been a lot of conversation about what is going to happen to some of Apple’s preloaded apps on their journey from the iPhone to the iPad. Apps like Weather and Stocks. John Grubar is pretty much saying they won’t be there (at least on day 1).
Honestly, I could care less. While those apps are elegant and beautiful, their utility is pretty low. It’s mildly useful to know it’s going to snow on Sunday, but I would really like to know how much (especially this year). Long ago, I started using Weather Underground’s excellent iPhone site instead of Weather.
Which brings me to the other apps that Apple built. These are the ones that didn’t come preloaded on the device. Apps like Remote and iDisk require a user to go to the App Store to download them for free. Part of this was because they were for a subset of iPhone users who were using other Apple products like iTunes or MobileMe. I think the iPad version of these apps will be let the device be something much more useful.
Imagine a version of the Remote application that can let you do what you can already do with the iPhone version… control iTunes and let you enjoy your music at any Airport Express-equipped set of speakers. But in addition to this, you can enjoy that audio and everything else iTunes plays on the iPad itself. You can stream music and video to the device and not have to store local copies. It makes little sense to have to transfer half a gig of data to enjoy a movie on the porch instead of 10 feet away in the study.
Similarly, what if the iPad version of iDisk lets you browse the files you store in the cloud and your whole hard drive while you’re on the same network? I’m salivating just thinking of it.
There hasn’t been much indication of what Apple is thinking of doing in the evolution of these two apps. The ideas I’m describing seem so obvious I have to hope that’s where they’re going.
