Yes, again. Because I really do think about this S all the time.
In 2007, the all-new iPhone was meant to be a phone in an iPod. Or vice-versa. Apple couldn’t very well shed the ability to play media content, could they? Consequently they had to use tethering to get media onto the device, and you’d much rather do that with USB2 than try to do something over Bluetooth. Because let’s be honest – the idea of a consumer smartphone was still new-ish, aside from the Sidekick, and the first iPhone had to be both overbuilt (thus the protected headphone jack and the solid metal back) and limited in its capabilities for simplicity (one screen, no apps, not a lot of enterprise features, and nothing borderline like then-poorly-deployed 3G or anything else that would suck down the battery). Factor in the desire to exploit the existing iPod infrastructure – the existing dock ports, sync cables, assorted accessories, and of course iTunes as the computer-side interface – and you can see why the iPhone has, from the beginning, been linked to a computer.
By contrast, Android phones have, from day one, been tied to Google services – which only exists on the web. No application on the desktop, no required OS or hardware, no legacy technology to support – purely a cloud proposition, especially when you consider staffing out some of the CPU work (a la the voice recognition and dictation in Nuance’s Dragon speech apps for smartphones). So from day one, the notion that you’d need to connect an Android phone with a cable to a PC for anything simply wasn’t there. (Especially given what an afterthought the Android media players were for the first couple of years.)
As a result, this has carried over to tablets. If you buy a Samsung Galaxy Tab, or a Motorola Xoom, you pull it out of the box and go. Android makes it possible to build a completely free-standing device, especially if one was to use Google ID to instantly configure & sync with the whole range of services. By contrast, even the iPad 2 still calls for an iTunes connection as soon as you fire it up.
This, to me, suggests where Apple needs to go next with iOS 5. Right now, the iPad 2 still runs rings around its competition, and I say that with confidence after dawdling around Best Buy checking out the aforementioned Tab and Xoom (and the Blackberry PlayBook, ha*) – but the fact is, you can’t just pull an iPad out of the box and go the same way you would an Android tablet (or, for that matter, a netbook). This needs to change – and one of my hopes is that this new notional MobileMe replacement will include some sort of cloud storage sync solution such that you can buy an iPad, open it up, attach to a network, and immediately restore your settings and some data (bookmarks, mail config, the like), even if 14 GB of apps and music and movies would be impractical.**
The other thing I’m hoping for is more voice control. Right now, the system itself is largely limited to voice-dialing and controlling the music playback functions. I’d like to see something more Android-ish with the ability to dictate into any text entry field, and the fact that Apple has long since purchased Siri gives me hope that they’re working on that – not just in terms of speech-to-text, but in terms of being able to parse your meaning and turn “need a table for two at seven” into a localized OpenTable search with reservation options. (If you have an iPhone 4 and don’t have Siri, well, run don’t walk. It’s remarkable.) If the thing could read back incoming tweets and let me respond…well, that way lies madness, obviously, but hey, why not give it a whirl?
The Kindle, by the way, is still the best thing for reading – although I don’t find myself using the browser as much as I had expected to. Despite the Webkit-based browser, it’s still too tricky to get anything more complex than Google Reader up and running. (Maybe I should just get rid of two-factor authentication, because it means I have to have the iPhone with me all the time, and at that point you may as well just use an RSS app there.) But it’s great for reading, especially when you’re in a mood that means you need the entire Bigend Trilogy by William Gibson available.
* The Playbook is a joke. Something smaller and more expensive than an iPad that requires a Blackberry tethered to get your damn email? To hell with that. RIM is in deep shit and has no idea how bad it is.
** Especially in a world where your home internet access is capped. It’s going to suck trying to restore your device when it’s going to take a double-digit percentage of your allowed bandwidth for the month. Hell, I’m already doing a large chunk of my downloads and such over the network at work rather than at home, especially Mozy backups, against the day that AT&T starts metering our UVerse service. Screw you, AT&T…