The iPad’s been released and everyone’s finally able to see what the thing does. One of the first noticeable things about it is that it’s crazy fast. That’s a good thing.

But I really don’t care too much about the iPad itself, I care more about what it means for the next iPhone operating system, OS 4.0 and what it means for the forth generation iPhone.

Netflix

One of the great new apps the iPad has, and the iPhone doesn’t have, is a Netflix app. This app lets you stream Netflix movies and TV shows on the iPad (as long as your on wifi, of course). Why is this on the iPad and not the iPhone? There are a few different reasons.

One reason is that the iPad has a nice, big screen and the iPad sorta’ expected to do things like this.

But another reason may be the processing power of the iPad. It’s got a faster processor, the A4, which is 1,000 MHz compared to the 3GS’s already fast 600 MHz. I suspect that the reason Netflix has shied away from doing an app before could have been because the performance was choppy on the 3GS, so much so the point where it wasn’t worth releasing one. Maybe it also could have something to do with the fact that the iPhone 3GS couldn’t download the content fast enough to keep up with the buffer, due to it’s hardware performance. If that was the case, users couldn’t simply watch a movie or TV show all the way through without constant pauses. If that’s the caes, we won’t ever see a Netflix app for any current version of iPhones, but if the forth generation iPhone has faster speed, I can see a Netflex app being available for that iPhone. Again, if performance is what’s kept a Netflix app off the iPhone.

The last reason, and possibly the most realistic reason, that there’s never been an iPhone Netflix app is because Apple’s kept (or discouraged) Netflix from doing one for the iPhone in the past. But with Apple trying to get people to buy the iPad as a way get media content to this device, they of course allowed, if not encouraged, Netflix to do an app for the iPad. But the good news is that, demand and pressure should make an iPhone version come out at some points (months or even longer). If that’s the issue though.

I use Netflix strictly for streaming movies and TV shows (mainly for TV shows), so I would love to have Netflix for the iPhone, even if it’ll only work over wifi.

iBooks

iBooks is a great application.  It functions like Stanza, but better.  It gives you the business model of buying books like Amazon, but better. Yeah, that’s all great, but it’s on the iPad and not the iPhone, so it doesn’t so us any good.

But, here’s the good news. iBooks will be released with the new OS 4.0. Do I know this for a fact? Na… but trust me, it will. It’ll function just like Stanza, but will have the better page turning and will have the ebooks market place. People will flock to the iBooks application to read their books from. And although it’ll take a while before Apple gets enough books and publishers as Amazon has for it’s Kindle market place, people can still use the Kindle app for the iPhone (like I do now) to continue to get the book they can’t find yet from Apple.

Content

The iPad has some great content, such as the Marvel Comics app.

The good news is that Steve Jobs wasn’t wrong about bring new ways to view content, such as magazines and other stuff. So what’s it mean for iPhones, considering iPhones don’t got any of this new content? Here’s the bad news… I don’t think that content is guaranteed to us (iPhones). Do I think we’ll start getting content for us? Yeah… but the problem is screen resolution. This new content for the iPad is designed for the big screen. It’s designed to be viewed without having to change the layout from print.

But when it comes to the iPhone, you have to either zoom the screen in or change up the content. So the same content can’t be put directly to the iPhone. But there are so much more people who have iPhones and iPod Touches compared to iPad owners, of course. So I think when the content publishers see some success with the iPad (if that happens), some of them will be eager to do things for the iPhone. But more importantly, iPhone users will be much more inclined to buy or use that content when they know that iPad users have been using it.

iPhone Forth Generation Speed

Now that we see the speed of the iPad and the supposed new content that’s on it because of its faster speed, what can we expect for the forth generation iPhone? Well Apple has developed their own processor, the A4. The Google Nexus One has a faster processor than the iPhone 3GS (but the Nexus One itself barely out-performs the 3GS because of the junky Android OS). People are now expecting a faster speed.

Because of people’s expectations for a faster speed, we can only think that Apple’s train-of-thought is already in that direction. The Google Nexus One isn’t a great phone compared to the 3GS, but everyone keeps referring to it as being great for two reasons alone; it’s the best Google Android phone so far and it’s faster than the 3GS. They knew about this well before the iPad’s release. They knew they had their own processor in the works for the iPad. So all signs point to the fourth generation iPhone having faster hardware.

Now do I think this new iPhone will have the 1,000 MHz A4 processor? I don’t know. The processor may or may not be optimized for the iPhone battery. In fact, it doesn’t have to be a 1,000 MHz processor to put out that kinda’ power. It could be 800 or 900 MHz. It could perform as fast as the iPad (I assume) because of it’s smaller screen not requiring as much CPU to get the same tasks done. As far as performing against the Google Nexus One, it’s almost as fast with it’s 600 MHz CPU compared to the 1,000 MHz CPU Nexus One, so any upgrade of the CPU would blow out the Nexus One.

But like Apple has done for the iPhone since the first version, it doesn’t set its hardware to compete with current hardware. It sets its hardware to compete with future hardware. Do I think this new iPhone will have a more powerful processor than the iPad? No, I think that’s more than powerful enough. But we’ll have to see because Apple likes to put out pretty nice surprises.

What The iPad Means For The iPhone

The iPad’s going to give a lot of new content to the iPhone, just has the iPhone will give do the same for the iPad. It’s like a little ecosystem. People who have iPhones should root for iPads because the more popular they get and more content they get (i.e. the Netflix app), the more that stuff will bleed over to us (i.e. iBooks). I think the iPad’s a great thing to happen to the iPhone and iPod Touch community. Bring it, iPad.

Peace, JbB