3 things the iPad should do

February 5th, 2010 – by Matt

We’ve had some great internal discussions about the iPad here at Intuit. In the Innovation Lab – (aka iLab – I wonder how long we’ll get to keep calling ourselves that?) – we started wondering about “always connected small portable devices” back in 2003 during contractor visits. Even then, a few of them had laptops and printers in their trucks so that they could deliver estimates and invoices on the spot.

I like my gadgets – I had a digital voice recorder when they first came out, one of the first Palm phones, even a “luggable” computer – about 30 pounds – with a 5″ Hercules monitor. THAT takes me back…

I don’t have an iPod or an iPhone, though. I was happy with my Palm phones before either existed – and happily synced my music and listened to it through the phone. I’m still happy now with my Droid, having gotten it working the way I want. My main computer is a tablet, small, easy to watch videos and such.

But what about the iPad? You know, I think that we can already check our email, stream movies, read books, browse the web, buy stuff from Amazon. I don’t need another device to do that.

I’ll tell you what I do need, though, and I’d sure like the iPad to do it for me. Video. The home movie experience is currently a pretty bad one. Not watching, or the quality, but the dis-integrated nature of all the video we have lying around.

So here’s the 3 things I want the iPad to do:

1. RIP my DVDs I’m tired of hunting for my DVDs. Is the one I want in the basement game room? Upstairs? Living room? Family room? In one of the myriad DVD cases? I paid for them – I don’t want to RIP rentals – I just want simple access to my collection. Oh, and it needs to RIP the video in high quality as well as preserve the surround sound.

2. Stream videos Since I can get streaming movies via Netflix, or stuff from services like YouTube, I want to quickly and easily select what I want to watch. On my XBOX 360, it’s a pain to find a movie that’s not in my queue. Voice recognition would be good here – sitting in a chair, typing using a remote = not good. Speaking into my remote = good.

3. Record my home movies I have a variety of home movies – VHS, Hi8, HD on SD cards, MP4 from a Flip and even MOV from some phones. Let me easily get those movies onto the device, or better yet, onto my RAID1 2TB NAS device. Simple categories and/or dates is fine.

It’s time for the final vestiges of SneakerNet to be abolished. I hope the iPad, or something like it, will do that.

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