With all the hoopla going on regarding the iPhone and the iPod Touch, many people are confused as to what they should call the Safari browser on it. There is more than one hint that it ought to be called “Mobile Safari”, but whatever people settle on, calling a site “Optimized for Mobile Safari” is a bit of a mouthful.
Never mind that the whole point of Safari is that there is no need to have optimized sites for it – geeks in pursuit of coolness (and ultimately futile efforts like duplicating a native UI in HTML) can be utterly clueless in an almost endearing fashion…
Anyway, I think I have a solution for the naming problem. Just call the things “iPads” and be done with it.
After all, that is what the iPod Touch does in browsing mode – it works like a web pad. And I don’t think we’ll be seeing only two variations on the platform (in the fullness of time, of course) – Apple might well come up with something the size of an A5 (or, for those of you hankering after the elusive Apple tablet, an A4) sheet and run the exact same OS and UI on it.
Yes, the sky’s the limit, and we’ll all be surfing around on iPads soon.
Ahem.
Anyway, three things I’ve been mulling regarding the “new platform”, as it were:
- The “higher res” angle I mentioned above. It would need a new graphics chip and higher res touch screen, but Balda has not mentioned anything but volume production increases. Then again, their PR borders on the terse.
- There is a lot of uncertainty floating around regarding video output capabilities, not the least of which is the usual accessory dance. I suppose this will be settled to everyone’s satisfaction soon.
- I have a nasty feeling that there will be another edition of the iPod Touch in six months or so with Bluetooth capabilities, but only when those aren’t a threat to the iPhone (otherwise, people would hack the Touch to bits and use it to get online via a 3G phone, etc.)
Update: Make that four things. The (apparently true and completely intentional) crippling of the platform (like the intensifying rumors around the lack of support for editing calendar events on the iPod) is becoming a major put-off. It is completely and utterly senseless to gift iPods with a top-of-the-line input device and then arbitrarily restrict its use.
As always, we’ll see. I must say that I’m not awfully keen on getting an iPad (of whatever kind) until things settle down a bit more.
Plus Apple’s insistence in sealing the batteries inside the units is absurd.
Paying hundreds of Euro for sealed devices with a battery design that implies planned obsolescence seems wasteful, to say the least, and I’ve been down that road before with my very first iPod (which is why I only bought a 1G Shuffle and a 2G nano since).
After all, what assurances do I have that Apple will service the device, say, five years down the line? Especially here in Portugal?