Three iPad Questions
February 24th, 2010
I'm excited about getting my hands on the iPad. I think it will be a cool device. However, I have three questions:
Does the iPad have MS Exchange support?
if the rumors are true, I will be a lot less excited than I was on day one. Which rumors? The rumors that the iPad doesn't have MS Exchange support. Now I know that you can't put a lot of faith into rumors. I would also find it hard to believe that Apple would build in Exchange support into the iPhone OS (which the iPad runs on) and even include it in the Mac OS Snow Leopard, but not include in their shinny new tablet. Even the iPod touch has it. Sure there could be licensing issues or issues with allowing users to do corporate email over AT&T's data connection without buying a business plan but it would seem that Apple would work all that out and give users options for checking work email. You can hate Microsoft all you want. You can say how much they suck and that you wish they would die, but the truth is that more corporations rely on MS Exchange for corporate email/calendar/contacts than the ones that don't. So does the iPad have Exchange support?
Apple makes no mention of Exchange support on the iPad features page:
However, on the iPhone page they call it out big time:
I guess we'll find out soon enough. If it doesn't have MS Exchange support it would be a lot less appealing to me because I'd still need to carry a second device to check work email. If it doesn't, does that affect your buying decision?
Can I put my own EPUB documents on it?
It's a given that Apple will let you put your own music and movies on the iPad. You'll probably also have PDF support and be able to store PDFs on the device using 3rd party apps as you do today. However, the big question that I get asked a lot is "will I be able to put my own documents on it in EPUB format. Apple adopted EPUB as the Book Standard for the iPad. As an Adobe InDesign user this excites me because I'd be able to export my InDesign documents as EPUB as I can already do today. However, I doubt that we'll be able to roll our own books. Why? For the same reason you can roll your own Apps. Sure you can develop an App, but if you want to get it onto the iPhone, iPod touch and now iPad legitimately, you have to do so via the App Store. So it probably stands to reason that books will be treated the same way. Even if you can export your own EPUBs, you'll likely (purely speculation on my part) need to get them published via the iBooks Store to get them on the iPad. I hope that I'm wrong, but we'll see.
Does book formatting matter to you?
Apple likely choose the EPUB format because it's already a standard for electronic publishing of books and by choosing this standard they could launch the iBooks Store with a bunch of titles. While the EPUB format does work, it's not visually the same layout as the printed book. If you have a graphically rich book in print, that book is going to be very basic in EPUB format. While EPUB format is great for novels (mostly text), it's probably not going to look the same as the author intended. EPUB has to work on a variety of devices and display sizes. So the content has to be able to reflow accordingly. Traditional ebook readers like the Kindle have focused more on the text readability and battery life than the pretty layout. That's why they don't even have a color display yet. While I certainly don't do a lot of book reading in electronic format, I do appreciate good design and layout. It should also be noted that the EPUB format DOES allow for multi-media content such as sounds, video and dare I say it, even Flash support. The iPad will certainly be able to handle most of these features and I'm sure we'll start to see EPUBs with a little more pizzaz now that we'll have a device that can support these things.
So my question to you is, does the lack of layout focus impact your opinion of the iPad's iBooks feature?
As we get closer to ship we'll soon find out the answers to these questions. It's going to be interesting.
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