The new iPad is a gutsy device that only Apple could make. Apple is known for going out on the limb and bringing the future to the present. Every time they do this the initial reaction is split. Some are filled with awe and wonder. Some with doubt and even fear (fear for how they think computers should be).

Every single innovative product, wither successful or not, has received this treatment. The Apple I, the Macintosh, the Newton, the iMac, the iBook, the Cube, the iPod, the iTunes and App store, the iPhone, the Apple TV, and now the iPad. I would say 3 to 5 of those have been revolutionary devices that changed the way we thought about personal computers, media devices, and mobile phones. Apple is now attempting to revolutionize the personal computer again. They just are not directly saying it.

John Gruber at Daringfireball.net has some great posts on the iPad. His latest has inspired this post. So do yourself a favor and read his posts on the iPad. Actually do yourself an even bigger favor and subscribe to his RSS feed or follow him on Twitter. @daringfireball and @gruber. I’m serious. Do it.

So how is the iPad redefining the personal computer? First, let’s see where the iPad can fit into your life. Apple says somewhere in between your iPhone, a powerful mobile computing device that fits in your pocket and your MacBook, a serious mobile computing device when you need flexibility and power. These fit into our mindset of a personal computer pretty easily.

So how does the iPad fit in to that mindset? For most tech geeks our expectations are always to the ceiling. Geeks were hoping for a glorious Minority Report style interface. (Does anyone remember the plot and characters of this movie or just the tech?) Although it would be cool, it’s not practical in any way for most of our current computing applications. A complex interface like this would appeal to the geeks and confuse the average Joe. And guess what? It’s the average Joe that Apple truly cares about with the iPad. It’s the average Joe that goes into an Apple Store and walks out with an Apple product that they didn’t know would enrich and enhance their lives. The average Joe is the mind share Apple wants. Apple set out to make a device that simplifies computing and hides all it’s complexities. You know, the things that geeks love but your average user doesn’t care about and despises.

I work with low and high level computer users everyday in my business. Even on a Mac people still have a hard time understanding the Finder and where their documents are saved. For example, the initial expectation when creating a document in Word or Pages is that the document is saved in the Word or Pages application itself. Not some documents folder that is in a user’s folder that’s on their hard drive. This was especially confusing to those using Office 2004. When you launched Word, by default it would take you to a list of recently used documents. No matter where the files were actually saved. So many had the belief that their files were in the Word application. Trying to explain that they were not was a real task. And looking back, why isn’t it this way? Why doesn’t it work like so many new users think it should?

Many Mac apps do a great job of hiding where they store the users files. iPhoto and iMovie are a great example. You import media into these two applications and you never once have to go through a save dialog menu and choose where to save your work. You can also share that media between iLife and iWork apps and never touch a file in the Finder. Even though iPhoto saves a packaged photo library in your pictures folder and iMovie saves it’s various files in the movies folder. The user can get away with never knowing or even caring where their files are saved. But on the flip side there are those that by all means must know where everything is saved. It’s like being obsessed about filing cabinets and folders.

These users got themselves in trouble at times. For example, I believe it was iPhoto 6 and prior, the iPhoto library was simply a folder in pictures where all the photos, thumbnails, originals, databases, and more were saved. It was very easy to completely fudge up iPhoto if you went into those folders and began moving or deleting stuff. The iPhoto database wouldn’t see the changes you made outside of iPhoto and therefore begin to bork your precious photo library with the wrong thumbnails and what not. So Apple “locked down” the library into a package. This prevented a user from messing with iPhoto’s complex folder system. You don’t know how many people who upgraded to the new iPhoto screamed bloody murder that they couldn’t access there photos. Mostly for uploading photos to websites. Those on Tiger 10.4 didn’t have a way to access their photo’s in the open dialog box. Once Leopard came out it give easy access to your media in the open dialog box and people settled down.

This is one area where the iPad will change our definition of what a personal computer is today. If you think about it. Apple has always done this. Adding a graphical user interface and a pointing device to the Macintosh suddenly brought computers into our homes and made them personal. No longer was a computer just used for number crunching and data entry in business. It allowed you to learn and create.

Over the next 25 years the personal computer began to take on more and more roles. From productivity, creativity, learning, and gaming. To an internet powered communication device and digital media hub. The personal computer keeps getting more and more loaded on it. But the basic management of the computer has not really changed. We still have a hierarchy of files and folders. Heck, we still have a terminal and command prompt! Computers were supposed to make life simpler, do the work for us,give us more free time. Now we spend more time than ever in front of the computer and a good portion of that time is managing the computer itself.

John Gruber puts it’s best:

That’s where Apple is taking computing. A car with an automatic transmission still shifts gears; the driver just doesn’t need to know about it. A computer running iPhone OS still has a hierarchical file system; the user just never sees it.

The iPad suddenly takes all the complexities that the personal computer has compiled and takes the essential tasks the user needs and puts it in front of them in a simple and easy to use device. Leo Laporte describes it as an appliance. Just like your toaster or microwave. There’s no learning curve. You know how it works and what to expect out of it.

When the original iPhone came out I had been working at the Apple retail store in Oklahoma City for less than a month. I got maybe 10 minutes of play time before we had to open the doors to the customers. The first time I unlocked the screen with the swipe of my finger and went to the photos app to pinch and zoom. It was magical. Of course we had training on how it worked but I watched thousands of people pick it up and begin to navigate around. There was no need for much explanation. Beyond what they could and couldn’t use it for. Many Palm Pilot nerds wanted to see a folder structure so they could store and arrange files. And of course they wanted to use a stylus. Some didn’t believe us when we said it wouldn’t work but they proceeded to try them anyway. Having the opportunity to watch and teach the world how to use a new device was really amazing. But mostly because it was fun. Doing a demo wasn’t a chore like demoing an iLife or iWork app. Although now on the iPad that would be really fun. Unlike teaching someone how to use a mouse the iPhone was fun.

I’ve spent many hours training elderly customers who’s grandkids got them a Mac. It was there first computer ever. Try explaining single click, double click, right click (especially on a Might Mouse), click through, drag and drop to a 90 year old who can not read any font less than 30 point and who has a hard time keeping their hands steady enough to click a tiny, red, close button.

More proof of how Apple’s multi-touch user interface is changing how we interact with computers. Hand an iPhone to a 2 year old and they will have it down in less than 20 minutes. There is nothing more natural than touching a item to interact with it. I mean, that’s how our Creator designed us.

The iPad will be successful because it’s reshaping the personal computer. It’s dropping the learning curve significantly. People who have resisted the need for a laptop computer and need to replace their desktop will seriously look at this device.(Trust me, there are millions out there who still have tower PC’s.) As long as they can surf the web, view various media types, and share with their friends and family, they will be more than satisfied. Especially when they don’t need to worry about losing files, managing computer resources and a biggie, not running crap anti-virus software. I’ll save that explanation for a later post.

For the more than average user the iPad will entice them because of the 3rd party apps. Developers are going to make amazing apps for this device. Just like how the iPhone was born again with the App Store and OS 2.0. The iPad will constantly be evolving with every break through app released. It’s a blank slate (pun intended) with countless possibilities.

Email

Mobile Me provides you one email address @me.com (you can have up to 5 alias address that point to your main address)

Features: IMAP for syncronized email and folders across devices. The email also has PUSH abilities when used with a PUSH enabled device like the iPhone. Web access is available though me.com.

Pros & Cons: email through Mobile Me is that is very easy to setup with any Apple device. Apple’s Mail app and the mail app on the iPhone/iPod Touch. All you need is your user name and password. No settings to mess with. Simple. On the flip side the PUSH doesn’t seem to work as advertised. So results will vary.

The Email Alternative

Gmail from Google. 

Features: IMAP & POP for using with any email client. Great web interface. Over 7 GB of storage. Integration with other Google apps. Good server side spam filter. FREE. Setup as many accounts as you want.

Pros & Cons: I have never heard of someone running out of space with Gmail. The storage is always growing, although at a slower pace than a few years ago. 7 GB is a lot. The spam filtering in Gmail is really good. It also prevents unnecessary junk mail from going to your mail client. Apple Mail apps for mac and iPhone have the settings for Gmail built in. The only con is if you don’t like the idea of Google’s targeted advertising. Which only matters when you are using the web interface.

Gmail is an easy alternative to Mobile Me. No brainer here. All of my business email is handled Google Apps which allows me to have yourappletrainer.com email.

Calendars

Mobile Me works with the calendars you created in iCal.

Features: Syncing calendars made on iCal with other Macs and iPhones. Publishing your calendars online. Great web interface on me.com. PUSH updates.

Pros & Cons: A simple check mark in Mobile Me’s settings let you sync your calendars with any Mac and iPhone you own. Create as many calendars you want and share them all. The keyword is ALL. You can not choose which calendars get synced. The PUSH updates in my experience has worked really good. Another downside is that you can not use a PC calendar app like Mozilla’a Sunbird to view and edit your calendars. A PC user would be stuck with the web interface which is very good but not a local app.

Google Calendar

Features: Web based calendars. CalDAV for use with calendars apps and iPhone. Sharing calendars with other Google users. HTML embedding of a public calendar on your website. Works with PC apps like Sunbird.

Pros & Cons: It is integrated with the rest of the Google apps. CalDAV allows you to edit and manager your calendars right in iCal and on your iPhone. It even syncs the colors that you set online. Sharing calendars is really powerful. You can set permissions for each person you share with. You can allow someone to only read the calendar or full editing access. Also the options you have embedding your calendar on your own website is very powerful. Setting up Google to work with iCal and the iPhone isn’t super easy. Especially for more than one calendar. An average user would be lost.

I’ll just say that like Gmail I have switched all of my calendars to Google. Especially since the new iPhone 3.0 software  supports CalDAV. Now my wife and I can share calendars on our iPhone and post events to a public Google calendar.

Contacts and Bookmarks

Mobile Me let’s you sync your contacts and bookmarks wirelessly.

Pros & Cons: Simple and easy to setup. Works great with iPhones, Macs, and PCs. This is super useful for me and my wife who share the same address book. We each have of groups so we don’t have to scroll through each others contacts. But at the same time it’s nice because I know if she adds a new or updates a contact it will be on my iPhone within seconds. Bookmarks sync as well but I do wish it would sync the browser history too.

Contacts alternative:

Microsoft Exchange. If your with a company that has an Exchange server your set. Mail, Contacts, and Calendars will sync with your iPhone. When Snow Leopard OS X 10.6 is release your Mac will also be able to sync with an Exchange server.

For the majority of us who do not have Exchange there is another option via Google.

Google Sync actually uses Microsoft Exchange technology to sync contacts and calendars. It does not sync email.

Pros & Cons: It’s a another free service to Google users. It also works with those using Google Apps. It is also a PUSH system. So it updates quickly. However it is not the easiest process to setup. Setting up Sync on your iPhone requires going to the mobile site to turn on and off which calendars you want to see on your iPhone. Not a limitation to Google Sync but your iPhone can only be setup with one Exchange account.

File Storage

A standard Mobile Me account gives you 20 GB of total online storage. This storage is shared between email, iWeb sites, photo galleries, and general storage.

Features: Built in support on your Mac. iPhone and PC app available to manage files on your iDisk. Solid integration with Mac and 3rd party apps. Large file sharing. Size is upgradable for an additional cost.

Pros & Cons: If you have multiple Macs and PCs then this a great way to have a central file server that is available anywhere you have an internet connection. You can even turn on iDisk syncing so that every file that is on your iDisk is kept locally for when you are offline. Once again on the flip side I’ve had good and bad experiences with the syncing feature. Sometimes they just wouldn’t sync and it was hard to tell what files are definitely synced up with the online iDisk.

The File Storage Alternative

DropBox

Features: Synchronization between multiple Macs and PCs. Share folders with other Drop Box users. Free 2GB of storage. Sharing large files with anyone. Upgradable to 50 & 100 GB for a fee. Built in photo gallery.

Pros & Cons: It’s simple. Just like the iDisk you access it in your Finder and you can drag and drop files. Create folders and organize things just like your used to in the Finder. Dropbox also has a nice menu bar icon letting you know when it is syncing in the background. It saves local copies for offline access. The only con I have found is that the default is that your files are set to do a move instead of a copy like the iDisk. Example: I went to my iTunes folder to share some music with my wife’s PC. I drag & dropped a folder into the DropBox folder and I didn’t know I had just moved those files out of my iTunes library. I learned I need to hold down the option key so it does a copy instead. Your Mac treats it like a standard folder and not a mounted drive.

DropBox works great and for pure file storage it is a better deal. $99 a year will get you 50 GB. $199 gets your 100 GB which is almost enough to do a complete backup of your system.

Publishing Web, Photos, & Video

There are many solutions for publishing websites, sharing photos, and posting videos. Here we are looking at solutions that integrate with the applications on your Mac. Warning: this is a long one!

Mobile Me’s integration with iLife and other Mac apps is hard to beat.

Features: Publish websites with iWeb. Create Photo and Video galleries with iPhoto, iMovie, and Aperture. Post photos and videos from your iPhone. Web interface to completely manage your galleries. Password protect individual galleries and videos.

Pros & Cons: It doesn’t get much easier than this for Mac users. I think the web galleries are just beautiful. Makes it easy for people to navigate all your photos and videos. Also the option to let people download a high quality version is nice. There is even an RSS subscription. This is awesome for other iPhoto users. For example my mother-in-law has a MacBook Pro. I simply go to our photo gallery, select the group, select subscribe in iPhoto and her iPhoto launches and asks to confirm my subscription. All the photos download to her iPhoto and as we add photos to that gallery they will automatically download to her iPhoto the next time she launches the app.

For those using Aperture you get the Mobile Me galleries too with the added ability to post an optimized and master version. This is great for needing to share with those who may want a copy of the unedited version.

There is not one single service that matches Mobile Me when it comes to integration and sharing. So we are going to look at a few options that could be used together.

Photo Alternatives:

When it comes to sharing photos Flickr is one of the most popular and best sites out there. Especially if you want to share your photos with a community.

Features: Free & Pro accounts. Built in support in iPhoto 09. Private or public options. Great web integration. Community focused with pools, comments, and more. Many apps designed to browse, upload, and share photos in Flickr. You can also upload short videos in HD.

Pros & Cons: iPhoto 09′s Flickr integration is decent. I like that is shows your Flickr sets in the sidebar along with all your other albums. Unfortunately it doesn’t give more powerful tools like tagging. Aperture 2 so far doesn’t have the native Flickr support like iPhoto yet. However there is a 3rd party solution for both of these. Ubermind makes an Flickr up loader for both iPhoto and Aperture. They provide all the tools that one would need to get photos to Flickr. They run $20 for iPhoto & $25 for Aperture.

Another option is the open source Gallery. My web host DreamHost has Gallery as a One-Click install on my web server. This is an online photo organizer that runs on your server. I haven’t used it yet so I’m not going to proclaim any expertise on it. But I do think it can be very compelling solution for those who have a lot of storage space on their web server. My deal with DreamHost gave me “unlimited” storage space. Right now we have about 5 GB of photos on Mobile Me. Also since we use Aperture as our preferred photo app Ubermind also provides a FREE Aperture to Gallery plugin.

Pros & Cons: From what I can see it’s awesome because it’s free and your in complete control. On the other hand it’s a lot more work. Like any other open source software solution if it breaks you fix it. There are forums and groups of people that will be glad to help you out. So if you like to “roll your own” this is the way to go.

Our final option is Google’s Picasa. Thanks to Ubermind once again when can get a plugin for Aperture & iPhoto to send photos to Google’s Picasa service. I believe you get 1 GB of free storage. Just another option provided by Google. So if you like everything Google then this maybe for you.

Video Alternatives:

Let’s get the elephant in the room out of the way. YouTube is the only built in alternative in iMovie 09 to publishing your videos other than Mobile Me.

Features: Free. Public and private videos. Optional High Quality & HD. Easy sharing and embedding. Direct support in iMovie 09 & Keynote 09.

Pros & Cons: YouTube isn’t going any where soon with Google being daddy now. The quality keeps getting better and better. On the downside your limited to 10 minute long clips. You also have to deal with ads.

There are many other video social sites on the web today. Popular ones like Vimeo and Flickr may not have direct support on your Mac (yes you can upload via the web interfaces but we are going to integration) there is a new video sharing Mac app on the scene called Clipstart.

Clipstart is a very smart little app. First, it finds all of the video on your Mac, lets you tag and organize your videos, then let’s you trim them and upload them to YouTube, Vimeo, or Flickr. The app is $29. What I like is that if I have a video I’m edited in iMovie Clipstart will find it and let me upload it. It also allows direct import from my iPhone 3GS, this is much better than uploading the videos to iPhoto. As you can see in it’s icon it also also great for those with Flip cameras.

Web Publishing Alternatives:

In the past if you wanted to use iWeb for building easy websites you had two choices. Mobile Me and site folder export. Again Mobile Me makes this easy. One click publishing. The export into a folder option only worked for those used to sending those new files via a separate FTP app. Now in iLife 09, iWeb now has built in support for FTP. This is a big deal for those who like iWeb and it severs the exclusive need for Mobile Me. Any web host you choose is now supported in iWeb. I’ve really enjoyed Dreamhost as my web host.

Back to my Mac & Find My iPhone

If the stars align right with your home network then Mobile Me let’s you turn on Back to my Mac. The idea is that if you travel with say a MacBook and have another Mac at home then Back to my Mac would allow you to connect to that Mac just like you were on the same local network. Browse files and even share the screen and control your home Mac remotely. Pretty cool. This is basically a fancy and “easy” to setup VNC and VPN setup. There are many solutions to do both of this without Mobile Me. Chicken of the VNC is one that comes to mind. But once again for the non tech savvy user it doesn’t get any easier “if” like I said the your network doesn’t get in the way. If your running an Apple Airport router it is setup to allow the right NAT connections.

As for Find My iPhone, this is one feature of a Mobile Me subscription that I don’t think anyone else will be able to reproduce. Find My iPhone let’s you log in to me.com and track on a Google map where the phone is located. You can also PUSH a message with sound to the phone. And finally you can remotely wipe the iPhone of all your data. So if you happen to lose your precious iPhone you don’t have to worry about someone getting any of your personal data. For some this exclusive feature is alone worth the $99 a year.

The Verdict

For any Mac user, Mobile Me does a whole lot and makes it effortless and painless. It is possible to have almost every feature of Mobile Me for close to free. The alternatives are possible but require a lot more work. So if your the tech geek who likes things the hard way then some of these alternatives are for you. For me Mobile Me is worth the $99 a year for what I use it for. Contacts, calendars, bookmarks, photo galleries, and Find My iPhone. I’m using Gmail for all my email and calendars that are public. I also use Drop Box for shared folders with friends. As you’ll notice Google is providing many free alternatives that are good and getting better.

So what are your thoughts on Mobile Me? Is it worth it to you? Or do you have some other compelling options to Mobile Me that you use?

I upgraded from my beloved original, first generation, bought on day one, 8GB iPhone. My wife upgraded from a Sony Ericsson walkman phone that was four years old, still going strong too.

The best part about both of us having a iPhone now is that my wife doesn’t get jealous when I’m playing a game or tweeting, she has her own. We also can keep our calendars perfectly in sync. My wife loves setting alarms for up coming events and to-do’s. There is no way we will miss any alert when both of our phones go off and both of our notebooks.

One of the big factors that pushed us over the edge with the 3GS was video. The ability to take a picture or record a video an instantly be able to share it with each other or the world has been awesome. See we own a Nikon D40 which is great for stills but we did not own a true video camera. Now the iPhone’s video camera isn’t going to rival anything like the Flip Mino HD but I would say that any other cheap, non-HD cam is definitely up for a battle. Simply because the iPhone is always with us and the data connection. So we will have no excuse not to capture our little girls best and worst moments while growing up.

I did mention that we have no 3G coverage in Stillwater but the iPhone faster internal performance seems to make even loading large web pages faster than me previous edge (2G) only iPhone. It’s also been nice to use the GPS.  Which can tag your photos and videos with location data. So now you’ll remember where you took that awesome shot.

I could just keep gushing and gushing over this but if you have any questions about your iPhone or thinking about getting one I am here for you.

Chris