Ease into the Switch

You probably connected your iPhone or iPod touch to your computer when you first bought it to get your music. Have you connected it since then to synchronize it with your computer? If you haven’t, you should.

Syncing your iPhone with your computer will do three key things. It’ll update the apps, music, videos, podcasts, photos, etc. on your iPhone based on whatever you have on your computer. This may be all that you expected would happen. But, it will also backup your iPhone so that if you lose your iPhone (or replace it for any other reason) you can load the new one with a backup and get everything back as it was. It’s really seamless and will appear magical the first time you setup a new device from a backup. The other benefit syncing will give you is that iTunes will periodically check to make sure the system software on your phone is the latest and greatest version. iTunes will prompt you to download and install the newest version of the OS if your phone isn’t up-to-date. You’ll get new features and/or fixes for issues when your OS is updated.

These are three great benefits to regularly syncing your device with iTunes. Do it at least monthly. You’ll want that backup one day in the future!

I have an aunt that has never had a computer in her entire life. The only kind she has ever used were the Apple II computers in the elementary school lab before retiring from teaching. But, she’s recently started mentioning that she wants a notebook computer to write letters to her friends. I have an old iBook from 2001 that I was going to set up for her but it turned out to be dead. I planned to set her up with a Power Mac since it was the only other Mac I have that I don’t really use.

And then Apple announced the iPad.

It will be just about perfect for my aunt and other people like her. I don’t think I am going out on a limb by saying that no one makes an easier to use computer than the iPhone and iPod touch. My two and a half year old daughter is able to use an iPod touch to do just about anything she wants. She plays her favorite Pixar movies (Finding Nemo is her current favorite), looks at family photos, and plays great educational games like Monkey Preschool Lunchbox. My daughter is able to accomplish all of this because with the iPhone she is directly interacting with objects on the screen. There is very little about using the iPhone OS that is abstract – unlike the Mac or Windows. This is great for people that aren’t very familiar with computers. They don’t have to learn any of the conventions associated with traditional windows, icons, and pointer user interfaces. There is no need to know when to single click, double click, or right click. Just tap. Need to make something larger? Stretch it with your fingers. Flick across a web page the same way you would a piece of paper on a smooth table top.

My aunt wanted a notebook computer so that she could move around her house with it. She didn’t want to have to sit in the same chair at the same desk to write letters. The iPad will give her all of the mobility that a notebook would. But when she isn’t using it to type on, she’ll be able to use it in positions she’s familiar with. She can read the local newspaper’s website on the kitchen table just as she would with a newspaper. She can sit in a comfortable chair in her living room and read a book. And she can look at photos of her grand-nieces and grand-nephew anywhere in the house. Even if they were taken only minutes earlier halfway across the state.

For the times that she is typing, however, Apple offers a keyboard dock. When Apple first revealed the keyboard dock I thought it was pretty lame and that I would just use a Bluetooth wireless keyboard. But, after thinking about it, the keyboard dock is perfect for people like my aunt. With it you can use the iPad at a desk just like an iMac or MacBook. And, unlike a Bluetooth keyboard, it doesn’t require batteries! The keyboard dock will serve as a nice place to store the iPad while not in use and it’ll also charge the iPad’s internal battery.

What about the Internet? If I had given her my old iBook or Power Mac, she would have had to sign up for Internet service from one of her local providers. That starts at $20 per month in her area and at that price it’s slower than AT&T 3G. She would also most likely need to get a wireless base station that would add even more to the expense. Not to mention the added complexity of setting up and managing a base station and finding a place for it and the modem that it has to connect to. Most likely, she wouldn’t have bothered and her letters would have been sent only by the postal service instead of e-mail. With the iPad Wi-Fi + 3G, she’ll be able to access the Internet for $15 a month. And if she decides she doesn’t always need Internet access she can just not pay for the next month and resume service whenever she wants. Because the Internet access that AT&T will offer for the iPad is pre-paid and doesn’t require a contract. I really do think that this wireless deal with its low cost of entry and ease of use could be revolutionary.

There are details about the iPad that we don’t know about at this point. And a few of them may be show-stoppers for people that are looking to use an iPad as their only computer. People will want to be able to update to the latest and greatest system software and they’ll need to be able to backup the data on their iPad. I don’t think these two things will be an issue for my aunt, though. A great way to work around these two issues (assuming Apple won’t have their own solution by the time they release the iPad) will be for her to visit her sister, my mother, every now and then and sync the iPad with iTunes. iTunes will check to make sure the software is up-to-date and will create a backup just like it does with the iPhone.

I’m excited to see how the iPad affects the future of computing or takes us past computing. It’ll be interesting to see people who have never used computers before – older generations like my aunt and younger generations like my daughter – interact with the iPad. Watching them use it as their only real experience with a PC will be like looking at a character out of a science-fiction movie.

Is it possible for someone to use an iPad as their only computer? The short answer is “yes!” The longer answer is that all of the information we have about the iPad right now is still preliminary. Based on my current analysis I cannot see any reason that someone couldn’t use an iPad as their only computer.

But would you want to? Like any computer, it depends on what you’re going to do with it. Are you the type of person that mainly checks email and browses the web? The iPad is probably the best computer for you – I can’t imagine a better browsing experience on any other computer that is currently available. And, of course, you can download music, TV shows, movies, books, apps, and more directly from the iPad.

Likewise, people that are roadwarriors would also be well suited with the iPad. They get great browsing and email plus a very nice way to manage their contacts and what looks like the best user experience ever for keeping a calendar on a PC. Roadwarriors will also benefit from great prices on 3G cellular data service for the iPad and a computer that is always connected.

Of course there are people that can’t use an iPad as their only computer – for now. Some tasks people use their computers for are currently too complex for the iPad. For instance, graphic designers that use applications like Photoshop need to also have a Mac. Software developers need to stick with a PC that runs their developer tools. People with large music or photo libraries need more storage than the iPad currently allows. And people that edit photos or videos on their computer can’t make the switch. But, a lot of people don’t use their computers for any of that. And for those people, the iPad may be the perfect computer.

You’re probably thinking to yourself “why would anyone want to use an iPad as their only PC?” Because it’s better for them. It’s easier to use. They’re directly manipulating the interfaces instead of through two layers of abstraction – the mouse and the pointer. The screen is filled with the activity they want to focus on. They don’t need to bother with where to store files or how to install or remove applications. As easy as that is on a Mac, it’s easier on the iPhone and iPad. And they absolutely do not need to worry about any sort of system maintenance for the iPad like they do with their PC regardless of whether it is a Mac or runs Windows.

That said, there are a few questions that I have about the iPad when it comes to trying to use it as your only computer. I’m going to leave them in this article as open questions about the iPad and as I gather the answers I will write them up here.

Can it print?

Is there a way to backup the iPad other than syncing with iTunes? Will a Time Capsule work?

How well does the photos app work at cataloging photos imported directly into the iPad from a camera or SD card using the Camera Connection Kit? Can you touch-up your photos?

Retouching photos is something that can be easily added by a third party app since they all have access to the photo library.

Can you initially setup an iPad based with content and settings from your previous computer as you can with a Mac?

Can it sync with an iPhone or iPod?

Can it update its own OS without being connected to another computer?

It’s not an obvious feature of Mail, but it does support rules in a way that is similar to Microsoft Outlook. You can use rules to process messages as they’re received. This is very helpful for moving messages to a folder to get them out of your inbox, but still reserve them for reading later.

It’s easiest to create a new rule by selecting a message that is like the kind you’ll want the rule to automatically handle in the future. For instance, you may want electronic statements that you receive to all be moved to a new mailbox. First choose New Mailbox from the Mailbox menu and name it “Statements.” To set up a rule to move statements there, select one of the them. Then go to Preferences from the Mail menu in the menu bar.

The Rules tab of Mail’s preferences window

Select the Rules tab on the far right-hand side of the window. Choosing the Add Rule button will slide a sheet down from the preferences window. By default you’ll see one condition that specifies Any Recipient Contains something that is probably your e-mail address or whichever one appears on the to line of the currently selected message. You can work with this condition and add others. But, for the purpose of my example, let’s change the first part of this condition from Any Recipient to Subject. The text box will switch to the subject from the currently selected message. In my case, this is “Time Warner Cable Bill Statement” which is perfect but in some cases it may make sense to trim this text down to catch all the messages you intended. By the way, having this text box pre-filled is the reason you want to select an example message before setting up your rule. Selecting the right message first eliminates the need to type the values you want the rule to operate on in most cases.

The sheet used to create or edit rules

To finish setting up the new rule, specify the action you want performed. We want to move these messages to a “Statements” mailbox, so select it from the mailbox pop-up menu. Don’t forget to give this rule a description that will remind you exactly what it is for. Now choose OK and you’re done. Mail will ask you if you’d like to apply this rule to existing messages – you should, unless you have a good reason not to.

To confirm that it worked, simply go to the newly created mailbox in the left-hand pane of the Mail window and look at the messages that were moved. From now on any new messages matching the condition you set will be moved to this folder.

If you have other messages that you’d like to perform some sort of action on when you receive them, try setting up a rule for them now. The example I provided above is one of the more common actions. There are several others and you can even create custom actions via AppleScript to get really fancy.

There is a Mac-equivalent of the popular Windows command Ctrl-Alt-Del that is often lovingly referred to as the three finger salute. You just don’t have to use it anywhere near as often. If one of your applications isn’t responding, you can bring up its contextual menu in the dock by either right-clicking, control-clicking, or click-and-holding (clicking down on the mouse, but not up until the menu appears) on its Dock icon. This will allow you to choose the Force Quit command to… well, force the application to quit. But, there is another way as well.

Select any application and press the Force Quit button

You can also press the Command-Option-Escape keys on the keyboard to bring up a Force Quit Applications window. From this window, you can select the application that isn’t responding and press the Force Quit button. Pressing Command-Option-Escape again while this window is front-most will force the Mac to restart.