Prisoner of iTunes - the iPad file transfer horror

Complicating the iPad

You missed the point of the iPad. For the average person, email lets you read WORD, EXCEL & PDF's. Any notes you write you can EMAIL to yourself.

NOW, if you want more capability - you can complicate the situation by buying-downloading a PDF reader, mini spreadsheet app or mini whatever. IT IS AN OPTION and if you have the need or interest, there are THOUSANDS of add'l options but otherwise - NOT COMPLICATED unless you choose it to - that is the Apple ecosystem. Very SIMPLE - easy to use BUT if you want more and more complicated, YOU ARE FREE to go down that path - if it's too confusing for YOU personally, just choose the built path.

You are right but there's a solution

Apple's walled garden approach could hardly be better designed to kill the iPad as a productivity device if it tried. However, there is a solution.

The solution is in the form of three facilities. Two of them are iPad apps, the other is a generic service.

1. Dropbox. (Not the ipad app, the service). Use this instead of iTunes to transfer documents.

2. Goodreader. Use this as your file manager. Organise and rename files at will. Use it to open your files in your productivity app of your choice.

3. Documents 2 Go. This is your productivity app of choice. Forget about iWork. It is irrevocably broken - one hardly knows where to begin to describe its flaws, but they range from stripping out content, thru failing to display documents properly to countless others. D2G fixes all of this plus, and here is the killer feature, you can save back to dropbox at will.

So there you are, document reading, writing, organising and editing all in 3 applications. Clumsy, yes, but it works. The fact that it's taken this amount of trial and error to find a way of doing what I need on the ipad points to either of two things. 1. Apple didn't properly think through how to make the ipad a productivity device. 2. they don't really want it to be one. On the first point, this is understandable. Foisting "real" computing onto a device based on the iphone/ipod lineage is challenging and may involve slaying sacred cows. If it's the second, it's just plain wrong. Competition will soon commoditise the consumption features of the ipad. Unless they can make it into an all-round "do everything" device - and quickly - others will get there first. The "i" phenomenon will be dead quicker than you can say knife and so, therefore, will apple.

AC: Why the iPad works like this?

Spot on! The mac application model shows you a single icon for an app, but what is really going on under the hood is that this is actually the root folder of application, containing all the files that that application requires to run.

In the case of iPhone OS permissions of the application are restricted to this containing folder of the application... i guess it is a security thing. but i don't see why they don't put in a shared read, write but not execute (666) folder space on the device and trust unix permissions to lock everything else away nicely. It might be a pain to implement this kind of a kernal hack, but it would be so worth it. It would make me re-think switching to android when my contract is up.

Ha ha ha

Wankers!

How my mum got her ipad

This is exactly how my mom wound up with an ipad.

And she loves it. It lets her listen to music and read email and websites. She's never been able to sort out a computer with a GUI before, in part due to not wanting to.

I haven't yet shown her the youtube video explaining that the ipad is the magical and revolutionary computing device for housecats. Seems unsporting.

I have a large library of technical PDFs which I'd hoped to consult using the pad. But needing to use any of the kludges on offer was a complete fail - it simply wasn't worth the hassle to get the files on, and then to quickly update which were and which were not on it an ongoing way.

A second issue is that my home network has a Netscreen running it, and Netscreens don't put the wireless network and the wired network in the same subnet. Nor do they make passing broadcast traffic between routed subnets trivial.

Consequently, many bonjour based apps worked terribly in terms of reaching my filer. I was able, ultimately, to watch video from the filer - but I have a television for that, and if I want to watch something while out of sight of the TV, I want that something to be displayed on a screen that can be easily stood up, then repositioned.

Now I have a CULV laptop for my dicking around the house toy. It runs win7 if I need it to, but spends most of its time running ubuntu. It has a useable local file system and is able to reach things in the house by IP address rather than by broadcast.

It is not magical and revolutionary, but it is very much more functional for me.

love my ipad but

Having the same frustration as the author.

You get an email, with say a PDF attachment that I need to upload to our web based CRM system. Show me how!!

Its really annoying that web based upload from local filesystem doesnt work on ipad. how hard would it be to have even a single folder where you can save email attachments and then grab from from within safari.

As it stands I cant use my ipad for work while Im out.

Air Sharing HD

Great article. You forgot to mention that Air Sharing HD transfers (via wifi) at an amazing 0.5 MB/s so it will take about 36 hours to transfer 64GB. If you transfer via iTunes you can't transfer folders. As a viewer Air Sharing HD sucks. Apple has positioned the iPad as a tool to sell you more stuff.

Re: justifying a mass order

Hang on a minute.. your colleague recommends buying a shedload of expensive tablets (and then jailbreaking them presumably, to run a company app).

Over what.. buying a honking great (but much less expensive) server, writing a web app to do the same thing, and then letting your employees use any web browser/device that they want?

Could even buy them all a cheapy 3G netbook AND the server, and still probably save money over buying everyone an iToy.

Am I being thick here, or is it your colleague?

Airshare

Is an anagram of Arsehair.

iTunes proprietry control over iPhone will ultimately cost apple it's lead

Thank goodness it's not just me tearing my hair out with the iTunes and it's control freak grip it holds over the iPhone.

I bought the iPhone 3GS 32GB on O2 at launch and paid £275 cash plus signed an 18 month contract.

The main problems with this phone are;

1) iTunes proprietry control over iPhone;

File transfer limitations / MP3's / Photos (iTunes not populating track/album names properly for my MP3 collection and not being able to get photos off the iphone onto my PC without iTunes wanting to erase my photos)

2) Flash

3) Battery life

Two of these problems sound fixed with the new iphone 4 having LED flash and a slighty longer talktime with a bigger battery.

iTunes just needs to be totally opened up or Apple risks losing the mainstream to

technically superior next generation open smartphones that will play any media format

and sync content easily between any PC/Mac/NAS/Cloud which are just waiting in the wings

of the R&D labs of the other big players like Google, Nokia, Sony, Samsung, Microsoft.

A lot of friends with iPhone have also been moaning about how rubbish and locked down iTunes is when it comes to file transfers. Unless Apple ditches it's control freak habits I can't see the majority of iphone users queing up for an upgrade to experience a repeat performance of an iTunes lockdown. Google, Nokia, Sony, Samsung, Microsoft please take note.