Searching for a good iPad stand solution that incorporates a keyboard has proven difficult. We settled on the InCase Origami because it’s a somewhat sleek solution that keeps Apple’s bluetooth keyboard protected, and when unfolded offers a convenient stand for the iPad that works in both landscape and portrait modes. The chief downside to this solution is that this setup works incredibly well on a flat surface, but is less useful when used on a lap.¹ That’s because the way the Origami works, the full weight of the iPad below its center, and that means there’s a slight balancing issue when on a surface with a central gap.

While we intially dismissed the WINGStand, we later opted to fund the project at Kickstarter after we realized that it might be a more elegant solution. The WINGstand is a two-part solution, where you slide two clips onto Apple’s bluetooth keyboard. If the clips sit towards the center of the keyboard and iPad, it obviously wouldn’t work on a lap because of the gap between your legs. But if the clips are positioned near the iPad’s corners in landscape mode, then the iPad’s weight is distributed across both legs. Portrait mode still presents a problem in this configuration, but works beatifully on a flat surface.

So for true mobile warriors who find it necessary to type on a physical keyboard resting on your lap, consider the WINGstand as an alternate solution. You’ll lose out on the keyboard protection that the Origami offers, but this shouldn’t be a big deal depending on your briefcase setup.²

As an aside, we’ll mention that the WINGstand project at Kickstarter was a wonderful experience. The timeliness of updates was great, and once shipments went out, funders were given a free WINGstand for their support. The WINGstand comes in two colours, though we didn’t realize that only the black version was “eco-friendly”. While we ordered the white, we got a black one for free, and it turns out that we like it better (even though we have a white iPad).

The WINGstand works with the Apple SmartCover, and will likely work with other thin cases/covers as well, though we tend to let the SmartCover hang over the WINGstand slot instead of keeping it against the iPad in the slot. This provides a greater angle between the iPad screen and keyboard, which we find more useful than the iPad standing straighter with the SmartCover tucked in. Granted, the WINGstand can be rotated around the battery compartment of the Apple bluetooth keyboard to alter the viewing angle of the iPad, but we like to have additional points of contact with the surface we have the iPad and keyboard on.³ Mind you, if you’re not using the WINGstand with a keyboard for some reason, the viewing angle of the iPad is not adjustable, as the clip needs the keyboard for this function.

About the only thing we’d like to see a future version of the WINGstand have is rubber feet. Each clip is currently made out of a single piece of plastic, and for production purposes, that means the cost is kept down. However, on a very smooth surface when the WINGstand is not positioned all the way “down” where it has maximum contact with the surface, the setup has a tendency to want to slide. Rubberized feet would fix this.

For most people, the real trade-off between the Origami and WINGstand is keyboard protection vs ability to adjust viewing angle. Setting the Origami up may be a couple seconds quicker than sliding the WINGstand onto your keyboard, but it’s a negligible difference in time.

For us, the WINGstand will likely replace the InCase Origami for our mobile needs. The Origami may act as a reserve, so we have a place to keep our iPad at our desk when we need to pull the physical keyboard out and don’t want to fiddle with the WINGstand, but unless we anticipate needing the Origami’s keyboard protection when traveling, the WINGstand seems like it offers a more covenient mobile footprint for traveling light.

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With the release of iOS 5, we had a chance to try out the upgrade on several devices belonging to us and family. The process, unfortunately, was rather inconsistent across devices, with some going smoother than others:

1. iPad 2 w/3G, 64GB: This was the first device we opted to upgrade. We did a sync first, then started the update. Everything seemed to go fine until the “restoring apps” window appeared to freeze about two-thirds of the way through. The screen on the iPad itself seemed to suggest that it was done, and we continued with the setup there. With the restoring apps status bar still not moving, we unplugged the device and had to force-quit iTunes. The device worked fine, but was indeed missing some apps. Some pictures were still present on the device. When we launched iBooks, all our eBooks seemed present, but they then deleted themselves after the device “phoned home”. The next time we connected the iPad to the computer, it did re-sync all apps, and the status bar actually moved.

2. iPhone 4, 32 GB: Didn’t do a last sync before updating, and the same thing happened with this device as with our iPad 2. Only this time, most of the apps were missing. When we installed a few of them from the on-device AppStore, we found that the data for the apps was still present on the iPhone, so we didn’t need to set every app up again. The same iBooks problem as with the iPad 2 appeared on this device, too. A second re-sync fixed the problem as it did with the iPad.

3. iPad 2, 32 GB: This device had very little stuff on it. Upgrade went perfectly smooth.

4. iPhone 4, 16 GB: This device also had very little stuff on it. Upgrade went smooth as well.

5. iPad w/3G, 16GB: Another smooth upgrade.

6. iPhone 3GS, 16 GB: Upgrade seemed to go fine, but then on restoring the last backup, we received the -34 error.¹ A quick web search suggested that this error was due to the device being almost full before the update, and because the down-convert mp3s to 128 kbps was checked in the sync settings, iTunes defaulted to trying to sync the full-size mp3s back to the updated device instead of down-converting them again. When the dialogue box popped up to try the restore again, we had to cancel out and do a manual re-sync. That worked.

One would expect these types of issues to have been resolved by Apple before the iOS 5 release. Whoever is behind the iTunes and iOS testing process, however, seems to be less serious about hammering out bugs than in other Apple products. After all, the iOS upgrade process has not been without error in the past, and this is a pretty significant update. At the very least, we’d expect there to be more system feedback on what iTunes is doing at any given time. For instance, instead of “restoring apps”, we’d prefer some indication of what app is being restored, and maybe even a count of how many apps have been restored so far, versus how many are left. Some window of where we stand in the process, and what’s left, would also be nice.

It also doesn’t help that the post-update things-to-do is not very intuitive.Our family was quick to note how they would have never known what steps to take after the update, which boiled down to getting their Mobile Me accounts upgraded to iCloud, and ensuring that syncing and the iTunes store were set up properly. To make most use out of iCloud, all of the options like Photo Stream need to be turned on, but they’re not all on by default. Further, the iCloud backup option wasn’t on by default either, nor was the ability to sync with iTunes wirelessly.². Owners who started using Mobile Me after using iTunes may also have two accounts, so they need to configure their devices with their Mobile Me/iCloud accounts, and then manually switch their AppStore username even if it was correctly configured before the update already.³

Fortunately, iOS 5 is a nice update, so the struggles are ultimately worth it. Still, it’s surprising that there are as many hiccups out there as people are reporting, especially this late in the game.

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Following up our post on handwriting apps for the iPad, we recently revisited some of the apps we tried, and replaced, with Notes Plus. We’ve been waiting for the new version of Notes Plus to hit the AppStore, but it’s likely still some weeks off, and in the meantime, the competition has released point releases offering more functionality. Maybe Notes Plus will retake the crown when 3.0 hits later this autumn, but for now, it’s not the clear winner in this genre anymore.

Penultimate has a paper store now, where you can download additional backgrounds to write on. It also allows importing of pictures to mock up, and as always, it offers arguably the best “ink” feel of any of the apps in this category. While a zoom feature is planned, the current lack of this feature keeps it from being a serious note-taking tool for more than quick sketches and notes.¹

We also took another look at Noteshelf, which now sports a zoom window that’s configurable and auto-advances. We’ve actually grown to like the non-auto-advance zoom window that Notes Plus has, if only because the auto-advance feature tends to introduce momentary lag; the Notes Plus zoom box is simply quicker to write on. That said, since the zoom window can be customized, it’s easy to write at exactly the size you want, regardless of paper style used. (And Noteshelf has a paper store too, now.)

Noteshelf has better notebook organization now, too, as notebooks can be grouped, which somewhat emulates folders. The design of the app is overall more aesthetically pleasing, too, and the inking is nearly on par with Penultimate. Between the design and ink quality, this makes using Noteshelf a far more pleasing experience than Notes Plus. Another new feature is importing photos, and while they can’t be resized once placed on a page, this is a top feature we want in this type of app, and the fact that it remains lacking in Notes Plus is unfortunate. What we’d prefer is if our scribbles over an imported photo remain independent from the photo, but this and the lack of image resizing isn’t a deal-breaker.²

Notes Plus still offers audio recording, which is an awesome feature, but one we don’t really use. It’s nice to know that the feature is there, but since we don’t rely on it most of the time, Notes Plus has fallen off our main screen and was replaced by Noteself. It’s interesting how close these apps are to one another in terms of quality, however, and we can easily see Notes Plus regaining the throne in short order, or even Penultimate launching itself to the top with the inclusion of zoom functionality.

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The iPhone 4 is indeed a great phone, and Shawn Blanc summarizes how he uses the phone quite nicely over at his blog. In contrast, here’s our take.

Unlike Shawn, we were a gadget-junky for phones for much longer. We started on the original Sprint cell phone back when they only had a single model, then moved to a much smaller model before switching from Sprint to T-Mobile. On our new provider, we picked up a Sony Ericsson T610, which we kept for quite awhile before getting a Sidekick 3. Our last phone on T-Mobile was the original iPhone, which we used until the 3GS was released, prompting our move to AT&T. After the release of the iPhone 4, we upgraded again. Since at least 2004, we’ve also carried a Nextel and a several models of Blackberry phones for work, so we’re certainly well acquainted with what’s out there.¹

We’ll echo Shawn’s comment about the iPhone 4 being our best phone to date. To be fair, it’s not the phone we used the most², or even the smartphone we used the most.³ But it’s the most feature-rich phone, and not just on paper. That is to say, it has the most features that we use:

• We also carry the iPhone 4 case-free for the most part. Typically, we slide it into a microcloth baggy, but we stopped using Apple’s bumper awhile ago. We dropped the phone a couple times, and there’s a small dent in one order, but otherwise the phone has proven its durability. Cases and bumpers really take away from the phone’s aesthetics, and the size is too perfect to alter with a clunky enclosure. By far, this is the most beautiful mobile device has ever shipped, and if the renderings of the iPhone 5 out there are accurate, we think the iPhone 4 will hold onto this title for another year.

• We disagree that the battery life is great. Maybe for stand-by use, but not if you’re actively using the phone. That’s not to say that the iPhone 4′s battery is worse than the competition, because we don’t believe that’s true but merely that the state of batteries in the modern mobile space simply isn’t that great. When we’re using the internet, or the GPS, for a couple hours, the battery life really takes a hit, so on days we’re traveling that the phone gets real use, it’s dead before the day ends. Thank god for car chargers. But Shawn is correct in saying that on a typical day, the iPhone doesn’t need a charge until we hit the sack,

• The camera is indeed great. It’s the only one we typically use, and we’re more likely to ignore our more expensive Lumix when we travel just because of how easy it is to snap pictures with the iPhone. Plus, we love our novelty photo apps like Hipstamatic. The iPhone camera is the perfect compromise of portability and quality, and if the iPhone 5′s camera is another major improvement, then that alone practically justifies an upgrade. Thanks in part to the flash, the iPhone 4 is the first phone that we religiously use as a camera. Before this, we didn’t bother much with phone cameras on account of the resulting picture quality.

• The retina display is indeed awesome. We notice it more often when we have a few minutes to spare somewhere and load up iBooks. Compared to reading on the iPad, the iPhone 4 reading experience is simply beautiful. We were so-so on the idea of upgrading our iPad 2 if the only major improvement was a retina display, but now we’re not so sure.

Will we upgrade to the iPhone 5? If money were no object, then certainly yes. But better camera aside, we’re not so sure just yet, because as great as the iPhone 4 is, a chunk of our iOS use has been taken up by the iPad, so whereas pre-iPad the iPhone received an enormous amount of use, a lot of the stuff we used our iPhone for in the past is no longer a function of our phone.

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Talking about stands for the iPad that would work just as well regardless of iPad orientation, and regardless of whether your work surface is a tabletop or your lap, we proposed a unique design back in May:

…a more convenient accessory for the iPad would be a well-designed “clip” that attaches to Apple’s bluetooth keyboard with a stand for the iPad in either orientation. This would be a fairly small gadget, would complement existing iPad accessories, and allow one to use the iPad in a lap environment without forcing the user into a given orientation. There are several accessories that exist to incorporate a physical keyboard into an iPad user’s workflow, but nothing yet that’s this versatile which maintains the iPad’s flexibility for supreme mobility when a physical keyboard isn’t needed.

Shortly after we wrote that, we placed an order for the InCase Origami Workstation, which we’ve used ever since. Our only complaint with the InCase solution is that because the Origami Workstation wraps around Apple’s bluetooth keyboard, there’s wasted space in our briefcase when we travel. Before, the bluetooth keyboard could be slid between papers, or sit battery-side down against the briefcase wall, but with the Origami Workstation wrapped around it, the keyboard is a larger “wedge” that takes up more room. It’s not a huge deal, but when space in the briefcase is at a premium, we’d prefer a smaller footprint.¹

Fortunately, there’s a solution on the horizon that’s a much closer match to what we described back in May. Before funding ended, we managed to support Kickstarter project WINGStand, which is a two-part clip system that attaches to an Apple bluetooth keyboard, allowing you to rest an iOS device on the resulting stand. As soon as our WINGStand arrives, we’ll be sure to comment on real-world use. But, if you missed the Kickstarter campaign and can’t wait to pick one up now, there’s a web site set up to take orders.

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Last November, when we talked about using the iPad almost exclusively since its debut, we touched on three things that we felt were still missing by the platform. The first was tethering to a computer for backups/updates, which sounds like it will be resolved come the release of iOS 5. The second, APIs, is an evolving issue that seems to be getting better over time, as there’s no shortage of great, innovative apps for iOS, and we’re not hearing nearly as much griping from developers as we did last year. The third issue pertains to accessing a Mac:

Screen-sharing: We mentioned how fantastic we find iTeleport, but why isn’t there a native solution to screen-sharing via an iPad? And, wouldn’t it be nice if we had a more powerful way to stream content from a server? We’re thinking something along the lines of OnLive, only connecting a video stream between you and a Mac you already own. While iOS 4.2 will allow us to stream audio and video from one iOS device to another on an app-specific level, being able to stream a Mac desktop to an iPad would be a fantastic ability to have.

There’s no indication that AirPlay will allow anything like this, which remains unfortunate. However, a third-party solution exists in the form of Splashtop Remote, an app we picked up some time ago but which never worked. However, over the weekend we found an update to the server component available, which runs on a Mac and allows the iPad client to connect to it. Since this update, we’ve managed to connect to our Mac without issue, and the result simply blows VNC out of the water.

We’ve expressed our love for iTeleport several times in the past, but it was ultimately unseated by Screens, a VNC client that John Gruber put us on to. Screens is a beautiful VNC client that allows you to hide the mouse cursor on your connected screen, and allows you to tap the screen where you want the mouse to click. It really made for a rather intuitive VNC experience, and became our go-to method for accessing our Mac Mini to sync with our iOS devices and access server apps that the Mac Mini is responsible for. The downside of these apps, however, is that VNC effectively draws screenshots on the iPad screen, and that means not always getting immediate visual indicators of what’s going on.

Splashtop remote, on the other hand, works just like we wanted screen sharing to work; like Onlive, Splashtop Remote streams the video of the server computer, which in this case is our Mac Mini’s desktop. So rather than our iPad getting a slow collection of screenshots, we’re getting 30 frames per second (FPS) of desktop video. This means that we could watch movies, or even play games, remotely via our iPad.¹

While the video was occasionally laggy, performance was good overall. The added bonus of the system streaming audio as well as video is great. While Splashtop Remote intends to support it in the future, it currently doesn’t work with applications utilizing 3D graphics in fullscreen mode, though they work fine when in windowed mode.²

Playing around with Splashtop Remote this weekend, it didn’t take long for us to move Screens off our iPad’s home screen altogether. We’ll still keep a VNC app on the iPad for when we’re in areas that have poor bandwidth and where streaming video doesn’t make sense, but for use at home, or even where we have good bandwidth, Splashtop Remote is now our go-to remote access app.

Before Splashtop Remote, we pretty much left the Mac Mini’s dock layout as-is, and accessed the hidden dock using Screens’ screen-pull mechanic that revealed the dock. We now have the dock showing at all times, and created a stack for our most-recently used apps. The interesting part of this is in how we interface with the Mac Mini’s desktop physically; because the video streaming is so good, and the resolution perfect for the iPad³, accessing our Mac Mini truly makes it feel like we’re running OS X on the iPad itself, serving as a good proxy for what the iPad experience would have been like had Apple managed to get a full-blown version of OS X on a tablet. Whether this would have technically been feasible (with the response typical of OS X running on our Mac Mini) is a matter we won’t address. What we will say is that while it’s nice to have OS X accessible from our iPad, the iOS interface is definitely better suited for a tablet; nerds may have flocked to an iPad running OS X without a second thought, but what makes the iPad the tour-de-force that it’s become is the fact that it’s not running a desktop OS.

While we though Microsoft was betting their money on the wrong horse before, after using OS X on the iPad via Splashtop Remote, we’re absolutely sure their bet is bad, now.

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Gary Arndt talks about using the iPad while traveling, and his review is perfectly reasonable until he mentions content creation.

[The iPad] is fine for sending out tweets, replying to email or updating Facebook. I have never written a blog post nor have I edited a photo taken on my SLR with the iPad. I could do it, but it just wasn’t designed as a tool for content creation.

There’s only one problem with Arndt’s take on this: it’s wrong. To argue that the iPad wasn’t designed for content creation because you don’t use it for such is ignoring a considerable number of iPad owners who do manage to successfully create content on the device, and ultimately speaks nothing of Apple’s intended use of the device; the fact that Apple has itself released content creation tools for the iPad (e.g. iMovie) tells us that the iPad was indeed designed as a tool for content creation.

Arndt seems a little confused, because he does mention doing some photo editing on his iPhone. And, while he complains about the virtual keyboard for longer written pieces, he states early on in his review that he doesn’t use an external keyboard. Well, why not? That would obviously address the issue of the virtual keyboard not being a good enough tool for sustained writing sessions.

Naturally, TUAW picked up the story and couldn’t help but chime in on the iPad hate, because apparently it’s trendy to dismiss the iPad as a long-term travel companion because the new MacBook Air is so damn sexy.

As Arndt points out, yes it’s great to be able to carry dozens of books with you on your travels, but what’s not great is the limited battery life your iPad is going to give you while reading (blame it on the LCD display, which is much more power-hungry than the e-ink screens of many dedicated ereaders). If you’re a huge reader, stick to a Kindle or my preferred choice, the paperback.

Only, bringing paperbacks on extended trips puts us right back in the situation Arndt used to find himself in (toting around media), instead of consolidating his media in one compact device. And we really have to wonder how much battery life you need in an eBook reader. Is the iPad’s 10+ hours of battery life in airplane mode insufficient for eBook reading? Who is traveling for that amount of time without access to electricity? For hardcore travelers, there are several backup batteries available that will allow you to do more than just read eBooks while on the go, and if you’re truly out in the country without access to the electric grid, there are solar chargers available that work wonderfully.

But yeah, Michael Grothaus back to the MacBook Air:

But the biggest reason I won’t be taking my iPad with me is because I do a lot of content creation on the road. I write books and for blogs and magazines. The level of writing I do makes the touchscreen keyboard on the iPad impractical — and the 11″ MacBook Air a godsend.

Again, use a fucking external keyboard. Thinking you’re a fancy-pants book and magazine writer has no bearing on your ability to write on the iPad, because there are several external keyboard options available to you. And when you don’t need it, the iPad’s smaller footprint kicks in and offers flexibility that your shiny new MacBook Air doesn’t. If you argued that you needed specific functionality in, say, Photoshop, or you needed to work in a CAD environment, you’d have a solid argument for needing a notebook, but you’re a writer, and there are plenty of solid writing apps for the iPad that people have used to, you know, write books.

Does anyone else think articles like this are just excuses for justifying a new MacBook Air purchase?

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Two years ago we addressed eBooks and the Kindle, pointing out how the $360 device required about 150 book purchases just to break even compared to the cost of buying paper books. Convenience aside, eBooks were no cheaper than paper books short-term, which is ridiculous considering the savings a publisher has by not having to acquire resources, print the physical books, and distribute them to retailers.

Today, the ad-supported Kindle runs $114. With an average price savings of $2 per book,¹ a Kindle owner still needs to buy 57 books to break even on print sales. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal from last August, the average eBook reader goes through 2.6 books per month, which means their average savings are $5.20/month. We can say, then, that the break-even point for the $114 Kindle will be in about 22 months.

So just under two years for the average eBook reader to break even? That doesn’t seem like a great deal, even considering the nearly $250 price drop on the Kindle from two years ago. Rumours suggest that Amazon intends to release another e-ink version of the Kindle for even cheaper later this year, but even a $99 Kindle won’t rectify this rather major pricing issue. As we pointed out in the past, this pricing discrepancy isn’t as bad when we considering eBooks on a device that does substantially more than just present eBooks, like the iPad and similar devices. Here, the savings are considerable, because we don’t have to make up the cost of the hardware on eBook sales alone, since most people aren’t buying devices like the iPad for the primary purpose of reading books.

Yet, eBook sales appear to be eclipsing print sales despite the fact that the average reader isn’t saving money. Is it a matter of the up-front hardware costs not being considered by the consumer, or do most people simply value convenience this much? We imagine it’s a rather thin line, which is why so many people are still on-the-fence about switching over to eBooks. Presumably, by the time the Kindle reaches a price-point of $60, where a $2 price difference between book versions means that savings start after the first year of ownership, a lot more people will jump on the bandwagon.

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Not typically a fan of extended warranties, we do make an exception: AppleCare. And that’s because had we not invested in AppleCare in the past, we would have been royally screwed. This, contrary to the Apple-products-are-rock-solid belief that many, including Shawn Blanc, share:

For the record, I bought AppleCare once. It was for my first Mac; a 12-inch PowerBook. I never needed AppleCare for that Mac, nor have I needed AppleCare for any other Apple computer or device I’ve owned since then.

Shawn’s an Apple enthusiast, so we can assume he’s owned his fare share of Apple devices. Still, our own experience has made AppleCare invaluable, as we can’t even remember every time some Apple device needed this or that fixed/replaced. But, off the top of our head:

• Our iPod Mini needed replacement after the battery stopped, well, charging.
• The RAM in our 17″ Powerbook needed to be replaced after the computer stopped booting.
• The logic board in our 17″ Powerbook needed to be replaced after the screen developed random, horizontal lines.
• Our iPhone 3GS needed replacing after it stopped turning on.
• The RAM in out 17″ MacBook Pro needed to be replaced after the computer stopped booting.
• The logic board on our 17″ MacBook Pro needed to be replaced after the computer stopped booting.
• The battery on our 17″ MacBook Pro needed to be replaced after it exploded.¹
• Our TimeCapsule’s hard drive died and needed to be replaced.

It’s not even that we beat up on our hardware – we’re actually quite anal about our equipment staying in a pretty pristine condition. And again, this is just off the top of our head, as we’re fairly certain that we brought our 17″ monsters into a local Apple Store more than this in order to get stuff fixed. Between these problems and those our friends/family have encountered over the last several years, we consider AppleCare a pretty good deal, as we’re well ahead in what we otherwise would have paid on getting things fixed outside of the basic Apple warranty.

Mind you, this isn’t to say that Apple quality sucks (because we still consider Apple gear better than competing products), merely that any sufficiently complex technological device is bound to have problems. We’re just on the opposite end of the spectrum than Shawn, who has apparently been very lucky with his Apple gear.² We’ve had no problems with our more recent Apple purchases (Mac Mini, iPhone 4, iPad, and iPad 2), but three out of four are different beasts compared to traditional Apple computers. If anything, we’d recommend AppleCare for any traditional Apple computer purchase, but may be hesitant to recommend it for Apple mobile devices.

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We’ve been somewhat critical of the Apple TV as a gaming console, and when we last wrote about the subject, we proferred that the key to Apple’s gaming platform success was already achieved in Apple’s mobile devices:

Technologies like AirPlay, or even video-out adapters, may well serve gamers to stream iPhone and iPad gaming to the big-screen, and this is where we expect to see additional innovation. Why tack on additional costs to the Apple TV by offering new controllers, or muse about potential storage solutions, when we already have capable storage on existing iOS devices?

John Gruber linked a comment from Phil Harrison, who was involved in the original Sony Playstation launch. The future of Apple, Harrison contends, is also the future of gaming. And Gruber responds by noting that the Apple TV doesn’t even support apps yet, as though to point out how the Apple TV will be another salvo aimed at the console industry. But as we pointed out back in April when we talked about the Apple TV as a console, the changes Apple would need to make to the platform to complete against the traditional console market is unecessarily complex, and the more likely scenario Apple will pursue is much easier to envision:

The Apple TV doesn’t need gaming apps, it simply needs to present the apps already on our iOS devices to the big-screen. Everyone thinks the Apple TV could be another platform for Apple to push, but its true strength is in acting as a bridge between our existing Apple devices and the television. Just as it already streams music, photos, and video from our devices, the Apple TV could be leveraged to present a gaming experience served up from these same devices. The issue then is not adding controllers and storage to the Apple TV, but adding an Apple TV to our iPhones, iPads, and Macs.

Or more simply put, mobile Apple devices shouldn’t be seen as accessories to the Apple TV; the Apple TV should be considered an accessory to mobile Apple devices. We can take this further to say that the Apple TV will never be a gaming console, but it will be the accessory that brings the console experience to the home, thanks to bridging audio and video from iPads and iPhones to the family TV. The proof-of-concept was playing iPad games on TVs thanks to a wired adapter, but the release version of this technology is AirPlay, which already works fairly well for conventional media. With iOS 5, AirPlay will work for streaming audio/video from games to the TV as well, and as Real Racing 2 for the iPad illustrates, the technology will allow mobile devices to display additional information, while the main visual output will show up on the TV.¹

There’s still the small issue of storage, because 64GB max on the iPad means that only a handful of truly deep games can sit in one’s future Apple console library at a time, but that storage limitation will slowly disappear. Plus, the reality is that many gamers are content playing games that don’t require massive storage requirements for graphics files and video, so just how serious this storage problem will be is questionable over the course of the next couple years.

We fully expect gaming developers to implement AirPlay functionality in future titles, to at least supplement the gaming experience There’s no need for Apple to compete for shelf-space in Gamestop, because beyond their digital distribution of games thanks to the AppStore, Apple’s console is already being shipped in several form factors thanks to the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. The Apple TV is just icing on the cake.

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