The iPad 2 includes a camera built in that you can use for video conferencing. It has built-in tethering for embedded hotspots. It has WiFi and 3G. It has AirPlay for streaming media to your Apple TV.
But what does it not have? For one, it lacks wireless synchronization. There is no cloud-based iTunes. MobileMe is pretty much the same as always.
So, what gives? Is the iPad 2 suited for the cloud?
Yes, of course it is.
Can you use an online storage service with an iPad 2? Yes. Egnyte is launching an enterprise app that syncs files from the device and back online. Box has its own iPad app.There are thousands of examples we can point to. The iPad 2 is the connection hub. It creates a space for online tools that use multi-tenant architectures. That space is fluid. The iPad experience is fluid. It’s through the experience of using the iPad 2 that we can begin to see what the cloud represents. And that’s a reality that Lewis Carroll shows in Alice in Wonderland when time and space, in the words of Marshall McLuhan, are neither “uniform nor continuous.” Are we not all Mad Hatters? Do we not all experience that instant, fluid embrace when we hold it in our hands?
No, of course it is not.
The iPad 2 is a device that does not have a wireless sync. It does not have the ability to access MobileMe in any fluid way. iTunes is still on the iPad. It is beautiful, but Steve Jobs is wrong. It is more like a PC than anything else.
What do you think?
