Tag: Apple iPad

Introduction

A trend that we may be seeing with smartphones and similar devices is that they work with various third-party sensor or controlled devices through the use of various apps written by the sensor’s or controlled-device’s vendor. A main driver for this trend has been the “There’s an App for that” mentality that has been established around the Apple iPhone with that smartphone becoming the centrepiece of most people’s lives.

Examples of this include the recently-launched Parrot “ARDrone” remote-control helicopter that uses a dedicated Wi-Fi link to an iOS device running a special app that is its controller; a barbecue thermometer being launched at the Consumer Electronics Show 2011 that uses a Bluetooth link to an iOS device that acts as a remote temperature display. There were even other examples like the Nike running-shoe pedometer that uses a dedicated wireless link to an iPod Nano running an exercise-tracking application.

These applications may be novelty ideas of implementing an iOS or Android smartphone as a SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) device but there will be more applications that will become more real in our lives.

Examples application fields will include:

• Food safety (thermometers that measure temperature for areas where perishable food is stored)
• Personnel health and wellbeing (blood pressure and heart-rate monitors)
• Building automation and security (dashboard apps that work with HVAC, security systems, smart meters and the like; garage door openers that work with a touchscreen smartphone)
• Automotive and marine instrumentation (engine monitoring and diagnostics)

The current situation

The main problem is that whenever an application that works with an outbourd sensor or controlled device is developed, a lot of code is added to the program to work with the sensor or controlled device. This extra “bulk” is written by the app writer usually because the writer is the one who designs the device. The communications between these device and the host smartphone or tablet is typically using USB for wired connections; Bluetooth, dedicated or network-integrated Wi-Fi for wireless connections and the application developer has to work with the link that is appropriate to the device.

If the device designer wants to build a lively application-programming environment around the device, they have to either prepare a software development kit which usually requires the distribution of a runtime module with the application. This can take up memory and can put a strain on the battery life of the device.

What can be done

An improvement to this situation that would improve the lot for device designers and application developers who write SCADA for smartphones and tablets would be to establish a “driver” model for sensor and controlled devices.

Here, the operating system could run a “driver” for the application in a similar vein to how peripherals are managed by desktop operating systems. Here, the operating system can do things like manage the polling cycle for sensors or transmission of events to controlled devices, including responding to sensors that are set to trigger software events for the device class.

This can help with conserving battery power by disconnectiong from a sensor or controlled device if the destination apps aren’t run; or sharing data between two or more apps benefiting from the same sensor data. This could benefit some platforms, most notably Android, where one can write lightweight indicator applications like “widgets”, notification-area icons or active wallpapers which just benefit from sensor data or respond to certain conditions.

The problem is that the smartphone operating systems such as iOS and Android don’t support the same kind of programmatic modularity that desktop computing has permitted due to limitations placed on them by battery-operated handheld device designs with constrained memory and storage size. This issue may have to be examined whenever a subsequent major revision of the smartphone operating system is being worked on; and could include whether a separate “driver store” is maintained at the platform’s “app store” or that drivers are supplied as “apps”. This can then allow the manufacturers to update drivers as necessary, for example to add new functionality.

Conclusion

The idea of controlling or monitoring devices from computers or mobile devices is going to becoming something more mainstream rather than just a novelty and the operating system designers may have to factor this in to their designs.

 Is the MiFi Model the Future of Mobile Broadband?: Tech News «

My comments

The common situation is that most customers will end up buying many wireless-broadband-enabled devices over the years. First they will buy a smartphone, then they will buy a wireless broadband modem for their laptop or upgrade their laptop to a model with an integrated wireless-broadband modem. They will also end up buying an Internet tablet like the Apple iPad which has integrated wireless broadhand. This will become more serious as vehicle builders integrate wireless broadband in order to provide Internet-enabled services like Internet radio or always-live mapping.

Multiple service plans – one service plan for each gadget

Whenever this happens, the user signs up to one service plan per device, typically as part of a subsidised-device contract. Here, they end up with many different plans to take care of, which come with many SIM cards and different included-data allowances to take care of.

The carriers like the idea of signing up a customer to multiple plans no matter whether this yields one account or multiple accounts per user. As well device manufacturers like to integrate wireless-broadband technology in to their devices as a way of differentiating particular models in a device series.

But this can become unwieldy for most users because they have to keep track of their plan allowances and contract-available plans. As well, customers may end up using one device more and “burning up” its plan allowance then are on metered use or reduced bandwidth for that device. This may be OK for fixed locations where different usage patterns may occur. As well, there isn’t an incentive in the industry to allow customers to consolidate data plans for multiple devices into one “super plan” with one large allowance and this can  penalise customers who are loyal to one carrier or want to have “all their eggs in one basket”.

Use of “MiFi” routers or tetherable smartphones across multiple devices

A MiFi (wireless router with integrated wireless-broadband modem), a regular wireless router that has support for a USB wireless-broadhand modem “stick” or a 3G/4G smartphone which supports tethering via Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or USB could allow a user to share one plan across multiple devices that you own. The user could then be given the option to bind these devices to a high-capacity service plan so they could use the wireless-broadband service across many other Internet-enabled devices. Another advantage of these abovementioned devices is that they can provide Internet connection to devices like Internet radios that don’t have their own wireless-broadband technology.

For example, a battery-operated Internet radio like the Pure Evoke Flow that I reviewed previously or the Roberts Stream 202 can he linked up to a battery-operated “MiFi” device that is on a generous plan in order to bring the fun of overseas Internet radio in the same manner as a classic portable radio or boom-box. Similarly, a “MiFi” device can provide Internet connectivity a group of laptop computers used on a remote site.

Moving a SIM card between multiple devices

Another way of achieving this could be to buy wireless-broadband gadgets without being bound to a particular service, so you could move a SIM card between the different devices. This includes buying a prepaid USB modem or similar device on a deal where you can pay to unlock it later, perhaps by paying a modest fee. Then you use the service and unlock the device so you can move a SIM card amongst the different devices.

This practice can limit use of smartphones because the SIM cards in these phones are primarily to “present” the phone to the mobile network and connect it to its number.

Conclusion

This issue of users buying devices like notebook / netbook computers and iPad / tablet computers that are equipped with integrated wireless broadband connectivity will lead to user confusion when it comes to managing data plans and accounts. It will become an issue with wireless-broadband carriers and service providers as users want to consolidate their services in to one plan that they can think of without carrying extra devices or fiddling with tiny SIM cards.

Apple unveils the iPad | The Age (Australia)

Apple’s iPad: It’s Real, and It’s $499 | Internetnews.com

iPad d’Apple : magique et révolutionnaire ? | DegroupNews (France – French Language)

From the horse’s mouth

Apple’s iPad Website

My comments about the Apple iPad and Apple’s current direction

Over the past few months, there was a lot of talk about Apple releasing a “slate” computer. This was both in the computer press and amongst computer enthusiasts, including Apple Macintosh users. Most of the suspicions included tight hardware and software integration, including where you can purchase the software from as well as the form factor. Apple was positioning the iPad as an intermediary computing device between their iPhone / iPod Touch platform and the Macintosh computers, especially the MacBook Pro laptops. One Apple enthusiast that I know of was considering deploying it as a “simple computing device” for his mother to use when writing e-mails and doing similar activities,

Now that the Apple iPad is on the scene, I have noticed that most of these suspicions are real. For example, the computer is a larger version of the iPhone or iPod Touch and operates in the same manner as these devices. Like most Apple products, it will only work with a limited Apple-approved ecosystem of accessories like an “iPad desk stand” and an “iPad keyboard stand”. As well, the user won’t be able to replace anything in the computer, which will lead to the computer having to go to an Apple-approved repairer if the battery habitually fails to keep its charge for example.

As for software, you will need to go to the Apple iTunes empire to buy apps, music, video or “iBooks” which are Apple’s e-books. I was skimming through the CNET liveblog and they reckoned that there were many credit cards associated with the iTunes empire due to the many iPods and iPhones out in circulation. Apple had even ported their “iWork” productivity suite to this platform and made the individual pieces – the Keynote presentation program, the Pages word-processing program and the Numbers spreadsheet program – available as individual apps or as a package through the App Store. The plethora of existing iPhone apps – an app for every part of your life – can work “out of the box” with this device, but Apple had revised the SDK to allow App Store developers to design the app to work in a “best-case” manner with either the iPad or the iPhone. This may happen more so if the developer revises the app as part of upgrading it.

These facts about the hardware and software availability have had a few Apple enthusiasts that I know of worried that Apple was becoming a “dark emplre” – a monopolistic monolith of a company —  in a similar manner to what Microsoft was accused of becoming with the Windows platform. Some of these enthusiasts were even considering moving to other platforms like Windows or Linux. No mater what, there will still be the Apple enthusiasts who will prefer that their iT solution in their life has that Apple logo on it.

I also reckon that government bodies like the European Commission and the US Department Of Justice weren’t seeing the recent iTunes-iPod-iPhone-driven anticompetitive behaviour that Apple was showing in an “anti-trust” light, yet they see Microsoft as being anticompetitive with its integration of Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player in to the Windows platform.

The iPad works on an A4 processor which is optimised for this kind of computing and uses the same touch-screen and accelerometer-driven input as the iPhone. It uses a larger QWERTY software keypad for text entry but you will have to use the aforementioned keyboard stand which has a “chiclet” keyboard if you want to use a hardware keyboard/

There will be two levels of connectivity available for the computer – one with 802.11n WiFi and Bluetooth and one with 802.11n WiFi, Bluetooth and 3G wireless broadband. The latter version will most likely be available through the iPhone dealers. most likely as a subsidised device that is part of a 3G wireless-broadband contract. In the US, this would be with AT&T as they are Apple’s US partner. Each level of connectivity will have the standard memory levels that are available with the iPod Touch – 16Gb, 32Gb and 64Gb.

This unit will integrate in to a home network in a similar manner to how the iPhone and iPod Touch integrated in to such networks. This means that it will work with any 802.11g or 802.11n segment, but may not offer native support for UPnP Internet Gateway Device management. The iTunes software will be optimised to work with other Apple devices, but you can use iPhone apps like PlugPlayer to integrate this unit with a DLNA-based home media network.

Whatever way, I reckon that the iPad may build up a class of “internet tablet” devices from the main platforms and make basic computing and Internet-access tasks easier for most people.