Beyond Consumption vs Creation

When the iPad first launched, many people reached for a quick analysis that it was a device "only for content consumption". Despite time and experience having proven those people quite obviously wrong, the debate seems to persist as to what the iPad is, precisely, for.

My own opinion is that the iPad is for about 80% of all tasks you can conceivably do on a computer. I have never thought of the iPad as a distinct entity requiring a total first-principles relearning of what it means to use a computation device.

As I've written before, the question what you want to do with your computer has never had more impact on exactly the device you should buy. Therefore, it's still relevant and worthwhile to ask the question of the iPad: what are you capable of, and what are you best at? Further, as the iOS ecosystem has developed, another question: if I add these accessories to you, what can you do now?

Still, I feel that the consumption/creation split is far too simplistic a curve to grade these devices on. It recognises almost nothing about the user's task beyond whether it's an input task or an output task. There's far more subtlety that we can reach for.

I'd like to propose a more useful pair of axes on which we can place these devices - smartphones, tablets and traditional PCs - than simply consumption/creation. I've been thinking about this for some time and I think it has some usefulness.

Task Complexity vs Task Duration

I'd like to propose that we can look at the 'sweet spot' for each type of device along two axes: task complexity and task duration. Task duration is the more obvious of the two: how long of a continuous period will you be using your device for the task.

Task complexity requires a little more unpacking. When I talk of "complexity", I'm looking at a combination of factors that make a task complex:

• The number of steps to completion
• The extent to which you're combining data from multiple sources
• The amount of data that is being manipulated
• The linearity or otherwise of those steps - the less linear, the more complex the task

There may be other types of complex task that I haven't thought about. The exact specifics don't matter too much but these give you the general idea.

Given that, here's a chart of how I think about the 'sweet spot' for each type of device.

So what does this chart really say?

I place smartphones near the origin. They're good for simple tasks done for a middling duration or tasks of moderate complexity for a short period. For example gaming, which is a fairly non-complex task, can be quite acceptable on a smartphone for a reasonable amount of time. On the other hand, editing a spreadsheet on an iPhone can be done but it's not something you'd want to do for a whole day of working. Many of the most effective phone apps that take you through a series of steps do so in a very linear and directed fashion.

The iPad section of the chart has a couple of notable features: the dog-leg area at the top-left and the area at the bottom-right of the chart. Let's dig into those.

Firstly, consider tasks of maximum complexity done over any duration: the iPad doesn't reach into that area of the graph at all. That's simply because there are some tasks of sufficient complexity that the iPad cannot currently be applied to them. The reasons are varied but fall into one of three areas:

• The hardware is not powerful enough yet. Examples here would include managing an entire high-resolution photographic library in a hypothetical "Aperture for iOS". The iPad simply doesn't have enough storage to make this possible, although the new 128GB iPad may well take a bite into some of these data-intensive tasks.
• The software has not been written yet. An example might be doing some CAD/CAM design. Perhaps iOS doesn't offer all the APIs required for some apps yet. We can hope that iOS 7 will start to eat into some of these tasks.
• App Store policy doesn't allow it. The classic example here is all the programming tools that we might wish to have on iOS which can't be brought wholly to iOS until policy changes.

Similarly, there are tasks of low-to-medium complexity that can be adequately performed on an iPad for long periods of time. Examples might include annotating PDF documents with some of the excellent PDF apps on iOS, or managing photos in iPhoto, composing music in GarageBand, reading iBooks and so on.

In the middle of the chart lies a broad area of tasks which are moderately complex, done for moderate amounts of time. This is where iPad excels and why it is such an excellent computer for schools. I've never argued that any current or past iOS device can "do everything" - patently, it cannot - but I do argue that it can handle 95-100% of everything a computer is typically called on to do in a school setting. The majority of our classes now use iOS exclusively, despite easy access to Mac laptops being available.

Finally, there remain several tasks for which computers are used which tablets remain unsuitable for the reasons listed above. Simply think of the apps that are missing from iPads: Final Cut Pro X, Aperture, Logic Pro, iBooks Author, Adobe Photoshop. These tasks - for now - remain the preserve of the traditional "desktop-class" PC (in which category I include laptops).

What would it take to push iPad into some of those areas? Well, the simple addition of a hardware keyboard can extend the duration that many people can use their iPad for.

Taking another step into the PC's territory may also call for something I've never really discussed before: a larger iPad. It's possible that a 13" or 15" iPad with 128GB of storage might open up entirely new categories of application to be built for iOS.

You can see that, with the iPad mini pushing down towards smartphone territory and the 128GB iPad enabling a certain number of data-intensive use cases, the reach of the iPad is growing. I hope that, in time to come, future versions of iOS will enable software supporting tasks of greater complexity to be built.

I think that task complexity vs duration is a much more useful framework in which to place smartphones, iPad and traditional PCs. There may be other areas of comparison - for example the physical context of use - but I strongly believe that we have to move beyond simplistic arguments about consumption and creation.

The Refresh: The Device

In the last piece, I explained my thinking on the platform we're choosing for our refresh. We're sticking with iOS, not just because we're already on iOS but because I don't see compelling reasons to switch to any other platform.

A few people got in touch to ask why I hadn't considered Chromebooks in my analysis. There are a few reasons. I know there are several "Chromebooks" available but the one most people are talking about is the Samsung Series 3. From a hardware point of view, I was surprised that the Series 3 only claims 6.3 hours of battery life. That's pretty poor for an ARM-based device. Heck, I can get better than that from my Core i7-based MacBook Air. Long battery life is not something to be sniffed at - it's genuinely transformational in the classroom.

I also think the laptop form factor is limiting compared to a tablet. I don't disagree that a laptop can be a very strong form factor for document production but the laptop still generally requires a surface to work on, is difficult to use standing and lacks functionality as an integrated media capture device (i.e. shoot video on the device then edit it).

I'm also not totally convinced about ChromeOS. We use Google Apps, so actually adopting Chromebooks wouldn't be particularly hard for us. I just struggle to conceive how we would do the range of things we want to do with computers using only web apps. If your main uses are office-type applications, the web and email, I'm sure the Chromebook does a pretty good job. Right now, I think I'd need to see the platform mature significantly and reach into areas like video editing, audio editing, rich art tools and so on.

So, with that out of the way, let's talk iPads. The one question I got after the last piece that beat out the Chromebook question was why I had not written about iPad vs iPad mini. The reason I didn't include that discussion in the last piece is actually interesting in itself: last time, I was writing about platforms. The iPad and the iPad mini are not two distinct platforms to be considered separately. They are two embodiments of one platform and should not be considered separately from one another.

Of course, they are different devices and they are not direct substitutes for each other. Each does a different job, and that's what I want to consider now.

We have learned over the past couple of years that, in school, an iPad can handle everything we've thrown at it. As a result, our school now looks significantly different to most other schools that have "a few iPads" scattered around. We don't have a computer suite any more. We don't have fleets of desktops or laptops to fall back on if the iPad can't handle the task - mainly because it's impossible to justify the cost of fixed infrastructure for such rare occasions.

So, where does the iPad mini fit in? I look at this from the point of view of the job we are hiring these devices to do. We are buying them to be a pupil's only computer for three years. Where does that lead us?

For some time now, I have used the following framework to think about 7"-class tablets:

A 7" tablet makes a great adjunct to a computer; a 10" tablet can replace it.

I first wrote that about the Google Nexus 7 and, having used an iPad mini exclusively since release day, I'm fairly happy to say the same applies to the iPad mini. My experience has been that I use the mini as much as I ever used my 3rd-generation iPad - and I take it with me to more places - but I've also noticed that my laptop has become more important to me.

Two years ago, the iPad mini wasn't practical. Today it is. Why? The cloud got good. Let me explain: in 2010, the options for fluidly moving between a laptop and an iPad on one task were pretty limited. In fact, it was initially near-impossible. Today, this is much, much easier. iCloud is working well and applications like Evernote are increasingly powerful on iOS. Two years ago, iCloud didn't exist and complex applications like Evernote and the iWork suite were not close to parity with their desktop counterparts.

If I had the budget to provide two computers to each pupil, those two devices would unquestionably be a MacBook Air and an iPad mini. Unfortunately I don't, and there's no way I could persuade people to give up their iPads, so we're going with the device we know can handle everything: the full-size iPad.

Another consideration is the internals of the iPad mini. Last year, the A5 architecture looked like it was history. It had a good run in the iPad 2, which is still on sale, but clearly the future looked A6-based. The iPad mini, being essentially an iPad 2 in a smaller case, changes that. The A5 architecture is going to be a major part of the iOS landscape for the foreseeable future.

That said, it wasn't the A6 processor or the 1GB RAM specification or even the retina display that led me to decide on the 4th-generation iPad. Basically, it's about buying the newest and most capable technology we can get. We're signing a three year lease on these devices and, given how fast the mobile world is moving, I feel we need to at least start our leases on the leading edge of technology. To start with older specifications and hardware - even if that device is brand new - is something I'm wary of. We have no roadmap for how things are going to develop so I intend to equip our kids with the best kit we can put our hands on today.

Refresh: The Platform

Recently, I started looking into our upcoming device refresh. We are already two and a half years into the iPad project at Cedars and the first three years will be over before we know it. It's crazy to think how quickly the time has gone.

Anyway, the first question I had to ask myself was: are we sticking with iPad?

The question that naturally arises from that is: what else could we use? Since 2010, we've seen a lot of "iPad killers" announced by the media, but precious few have actually made a serious dent in the iPad's position as the leading post-PC device. In 2010, choosing the iPad was a radical and bold step. In 2013, it seems like the obvious thing to do.

But is it? Where is the competition? What's changed since 2010?

Well, we're now in a world where there are a few more players than there were before. I've looked at all of them in some detail - some more than others, I admit, since my research budget comes out of my own pocket - but we're essentially looking at the following:

• iPad or iPad mini
• Amazon Kindle Fire
• Microsoft Surface (or some crappier hardware running the same OS)
• Google Nexus 7 (or some crappier hardware running a vendor-contaminated version of the OS)

Let's think about each of these competitors in turn:

Amazon Kindle Fire

The Kindle fire is getting better with each iteration. I don't particularly like the hardware but, as I keep writing, I'm not that interested in hardware. I'm interested in software. Amazon's fork of Android appears to be designed to do two things well: connect you to the Amazon content you've bought and show you more Amazon content to buy.

This is hardly a surprise. It's a conspiracy but quite an open one: Amazon wants to make money when you use the device, not when you buy it. The Kindle Fire is sold at below cost and Amazon makes it all back and more when you buy stuff from Amazon. As a consequence, the design of the system will necessarily be biased towards leading you down this path of seeing and buying things from Amazon. That's a product that a lot of people want - and that's fine - I'm just not sure it's the kind of thing I want to put in front of schoolchildren.

As educational technologists, we can't be naive about the business models behind these devices. The Kindle Fire is a vending machine for Amazon content.

Microsoft Surface

In recent Q&A sessions, I've been asked about the Surface far more than Android tablets. I guess this is because most schools are "Microsoft schools" - not that prior experience with Windows 7 will necessarily help you much when confronted with a Windows 8 tablet. There seems to be an idea abroad that if you get a Surface all your existing software will work with it. Almost nobody seems to have grasped the impact of the distinction between Windows RT and Windows 8.

My line on Windows 8/RT and Surface has been this: we know from a decade of trying that nobody wants the traditional Windows desktop on a tablet. Swivel-screen laptops have sucked for years and I'm willing to bet this trend continues. The only interesting thing about Windows 8 is the Metro UI and the only interesting thing about the Metro UI is whether developers will redesign their software for it. Given that Microsoft themselves haven't managed to properly redesign Office or Explorer for Metro yet, I'm not holding my breath.

Windows 8/RT may be a smash hit but the early indications are not promising. Microsoft Surface may be a smash hit but the early indications are not promising. I'm open minded about Windows 8 but I'm going to need to see some compelling evidence that Windows 8/RT is gaining serious traction in the marketplace. Microsoft is way behind on tablets and I don't have any need to root for the underdog.

Google Nexus 7

I've written before about the Nexus 7 specifically and I don't intend to rehash that discussion here except to note three major failings in the hardware for school use: the 16:10 aspect ratio of the screen; the lack of a rear camera on the device and the Nexus 7's inability to be connected to a projector. I just don't think I could sell my teachers on the idea that they'll go another three years without a camera or the ability to project devices on-screen.

There's also the software problem. Unless it's gotten dramatically better in the two months since I gave my Nexus 7 away, there simply does not exist the same high-quality productivity and creativity tools for Android tablets as exist for iOS. As before, I'm not saying they can never be made; I'm just saying they still don't exist. Where good Android tablet apps do exist they are, broadly speaking, near pixel-perfect clones of the iOS versions - so what's the advantage?

I'm also seriously concerned about the Android malware problem. There seems to be growing evidence that Android is the main target for mobile malware. This is hardly surprising, given the ability to side-load apps onto the device from anywhere on the web. I can't find any way on Android to lock out the ability to side-load, so we have to assume that this is something that some users will do. We know from decades of experience with Windows that such a model is problematic. I'm not prepared to deploy a platform where I have to routinely run anti-virus.

Whatever is working for Android in handsets simply isn't translating into traction for Android tablets. I have my theories but that's another post for another time. I can't say I have any great excitement about any Android device that isn't "pure Google". The track record on timely updates to non-Google Android devices doesn't seem to have gotten much better. Given the threat-rich environment that Android devices now face, being unable to get updates and security patches in a timely manner is unacceptable.

Most people's interest in Android in education is about price. Yes, the Nexus 7 is cheaper than an iPad but my retort is that it's a lesser device with fewer hardware features leading to greatly reduced usefulness in the classroom. Again, I come back to my core belief about tablet computers: the hardware is irrelevant except insofar as it allows you to have a great experience of software. You don't buy hardware in isolation; you buy it to run software.

The next gambit is usually that you can get £50 Android tablets for school. To people seriously arguing this I ask you: what computer are you using? I'm only interested in hearing about £50 Android tablets from people who are themselves using £50 Android tablets on a regular basis - which is, of course, 0% of the people arguing this. This is because £50 Android tablets suck.

iPad

And so to the iPad. It's worked well for us, so why change? Nothing's perfect and I promise you that nobody has a more comprehensive list of things that are annoying about iOS than I do. Yet, despite those niggles, I still believe the iPad is the first education computer worth criticising.

The hardware itself has held up well. Our failure rate has been in the low single-digit percentages over three years. There have been zero unfixable problems. Over three years, I have not once had to completely 'reformat' a device. The only time I get an iPad back in my hands is when it's physically broken. The track record on updates has been excellent; we have now had three major releases of iOS on the same hardware for free. The software ecosystem has grown into an incredibly rich and powerful set of tools. We routinely do things today that I was told would never be possible on iPad. We got a free cloud-based backup system that genuinely works. We got a powerful and free course management tool in iTunes U. iBooks Author is another powerful and free tool. iOS deployment techniques have advanced immeasurably since 2010.

So what's Apple's deal? There's no free lunch, right? Well, it's again simple and not a secret: Apple wants you to buy a new device on a regular basis. That's how Apple makes their money. Apple's cut of the App Store revenues don't even move the needle on their finances. Apple doesn't want to sell you apps or content; they'd much rather give all that away for free to make the hardware a more attractive proposition. Witness the number of free apps on the App Store. Commoditising your complements is a great strategy and it's working very well for Apple - although perhaps not so well for the app developers. Apple is a hardware company that makes great software.

Apple wants to sell you a computer. Amazon wants to sell you stuff while you use the computer. Google wants to sell your activity on the computer to advertisers. At the end of the day, it's all about what you can live with. We are now three years along the iOS road. It was the right decision in 2010 and I think it's going to be the right call in 2013 too.

What's On My iPad Mini

My friend Marcus Zarra recently asked me if I would write an update on how I'm using my iPad for productivity. How has my hardware/software workflow evolved over time? I think the last time I wrote about this was pre-iCloud so I thought an update was well overdue. Also, as I recently moved to an iPad mini for most of my daily iPad use, it's been an interesting and useful chance to think through the use cases once more.

I guess the first thing to say is that the 'reboot' onto the iPad mini has been largely very smooth. I made what, in hindsight, was a mistake in jumping on a 16GB WiFi iPad instead of waiting for a 32GB LTE version. I guess I didn't know that I was going to like the mini so much but I haven't bought a WiFi-only iPad since my first iPad and I doubt I'll ever do so again. Cellular networking is absolutely essential to the way I work.

It's probably worth mentioning here how I get that cellular access. I have been with the UK carrier Three for a few generations of iPhone and I have been very pleased with their coverage in all the areas I need coverage (your mileage may vary). I don't have a contract. I just buy their pre-paid data SIM package and use it until it runs out, then get another. Typically, I'll buy their 3GB SIM, valid for 90 days, which costs about £20. There's also a 1GB/30 day/£10 package but I get the bigger one just to reduce the frequency of running out of data or time. We don't have prepaid SIM packages for LTE yet in the UK so I'm still slumming it on 3G.

So, what do I do with this thing?

Cloud Services

I use three main cloud services: iCloud, Evernote and Dropbox. iCloud is generally working very well for me. I sync everything that iCloud offers through that service except email. It's become my default location for all new iWork documents and I'm leaning on it pretty heavily. All my presentations live in Keynote on iCloud - including some rather fat presentations containing large videos - and it's been dependable. Interestingly, with my adoption of the iPad mini alongside my regular iPad, I noticed one big hole in the syncing landscape: iPad-only apps that don't sync. Until now, it wasn't really a requirement that an app that isn't on iPad and iPhone - or iPad and Mac - should sync. After all, who has two iPads? Well, now I do and it's pretty annoying. I'm not suggesting that this will be a common use case but it might crop up more often than before. Basically, I don't want to use an app that doesn't sync any more.

I've been on Dropbox for several years and have a large amount of data in there but it's increasingly feeling like a legacy service. I tend not to put new documents in Dropbox when I have the option of using iCloud - except when I expect to have to collaborate on them. The fundamental problem is that the Dropbox model - a folder that syncs - is perfectly happy on desktop operating systems but hopelessly hobbled on iOS. On iOS you either use their app or depend on all the apps you use supporting the Dropbox API. Many apps do, but I'm not totally happy restricting myself to only use apps that talk Dropbox.

Finally, Evernote. Evernote is for everything that's not a document and quite a few things that are. I tend to put reference PDFs into Evernote. The killer feature for Evernote on iOS is the ability to email things to your Evernote account. I do this all the time.

Work Apps

I use Evernote a lot for work. All kinds of reference material and records of work go into my Evernote account and I'll frequently use the camera on my phone or iPad to capture something and stash it in Evernote.

The second app that I critically depend on is PDF Expert by Readdle. I'm not exaggerating when I say that PDF Expert is the best PDF app I have used on any platform at any price. The only thing it can't do is create a PDF form (feature request!). I use it for presenting PDF documents to classes and I'm increasingly using it as the cornerstone of an all-digital marking workflow that goes like this: student emails me a PDF assignment; I open it in PDF Expert and mark it using the pen and text tools; I then email back a copy of the document and CC it to my Evernote account as a record. PDF Expert can also talk to numerous other cloud services including Dropbox, Google Drive and Skydrive.

I use the iWork apps at school but not in the way you think. I hardly use Pages at all, but I use Numbers to record class data and maintain certain registers. I use Keynote when I'm presenting about our iPad work but I typically don't teach in a Keynote-heavy way. I think I probably have about two actual Keynotes that I do in class. I much prefer a whiteboard and pen, with a device camera for capturing that.

We also make extensive use of iTunes U at school so I have that app as part of my toolkit. For the most part, though, I write into iTunes U and the students use the app. A weird anomaly with iTunes U is that you can't use the Course Manager component from an iOS device - despite Course Manager being web based.

Explain Everything always comes up in education circles and rightly so. It's a great whiteboard-recording app for iOS. When I was recently laid up after a knee operation, I used it extensively in conjunction with iTunes U to create short videos that my classes could watch along with the lessons.

Two other apps I use for teaching are Prompt and Textastic. These two tools are the iOS end of our programming classes, which is all done on iOS. I've written about this before.

Communications

I've recently been interested in the idea of using my iPad mini as a 'replacement phone'. This idea isn't unique to me - Stephen Hackett is going iPhoneless with an LTE iPad mini, and Greg Kroah-Hartman is curious about doing the same with a Nexus 7 (but can't because the N7 has no cellular networking option; something I complained about in my review) - but I certainly saw the possibility almost straight away.

To this end, prominent on my home screen are: Messages, FaceTime and Skype. I counted it up yesterday and, on my iPhone, I had eight separate ways to send a message to my phone that didn't involve making a carrier-based phone call or sending an SMS. Those options were: iMessage, Skype, FaceTime, Twitter, Netbot, Google+, Facebook and Mail. You could also count - at a push - Instagram and Photos via a shared photostream.

It is increasingly unclear to me that a £40/month contract is good value just to receive legacy SMS messages. Certainly, there's a portability question. However, from a technical point of view, I think I'm adequately contactable without a carrier contract. Unfortunately, I just signed a 2-year contract for an iPhone 5 so this experiment will have to live alongside my phone for now.

Reading

I enjoy reading on my iPad and I'm even grudgingly getting used to it on my iPad mini - making the fonts a size bigger than you would on a retina iPad definitely helped me. I buy all my eBooks on Kindle and use the Kindle app. This decision isn't software-driven - I vastly prefer everything about iBooks - but the range of books available in the UK iBookstore is far inferior to Amazon's selection and the price disparity between iBooks and Kindle is often shocking and bizarre. I recently bought a book for £2.99 on Kindle that was £8.99 on iBooks. That's fairly typical; books are either priced identically on both or Amazon is far cheaper.

I also use and love Flipboard. Flipboard has been my RSS reader for a couple of years now. Initially Flipboard didn't click with me but, when they announced their iPhone version, I suddenly saw how it could be a real part of my reading 'workflow' if you will. I have connected my Flipboard to Google Reader as a way to follow certain blogs but I have dramatically cut down on RSS over recent years and only subscribe to the few writers from whom I don't want to miss a single post. I read most of the big tech sites through their own Flipboard channels.

I also connect Flipboard to Twitter. I use Twitter lists as a way to gather like-minded people and read the links they post. You know how sometimes a person is a great curator of links but their actual tweets might not be all that? This is how I deal with it: put them on a list and read their links through Flipboard. This has become such an essential part of my knowledge-gathering that I'm genuinely worried about how this will work if Twitter cuts off Flipboard.

For my "read later" service, I now use Pocket over Instapaper. The main reason for this is that Pocket handles video much more elegantly and it's as broadly-supported as Instapaper in the apps through which I may find links.

It feels weird to actually bother mentioning Newsstand but, like many people, I've started to find it useful since Marco Arment's wonderful "The Magazine" shipped. I subscribed on day one and can't imagine unsubscribing any time soon. I also quite enjoy Distro from Engadget from time to time.

Media

I'm not a huge music guy and I've found iTunes Match meets my needs very well. I've never subscribed to any music services like Pandora or Rdio - it's just not worth the money. I can buy all the music I'm ever interested in for less than the cost of subscribing to any of these services. I don't subscribe to Netflix either but I do use the BBC iPlayer app.

For podcasts, I recently switched from Instacast to Downcast. This was a new change prompted by the switch to the iPad mini. The mini was so portable (and the audio so good) that I found myself wanting to listen to podcasts on the device. Up to this point, I had always used Instacast on my phone only. I owned Instacast HD but the syncing between the two has never, ever worked for me. Downcast syncs between the devices perfectly but there is literally nothing else I like better in Downcast than Instacast. With the upcoming release of Instacast 3.0, I hope I can go back.

Social Networking

Tweetbot, of course.

…but I'm also getting interested in Google+. I think there are some really great tools there and the iOS app experience is probably the best one that Google has yet shipped.

I also really enjoy Instagram and you're welcome to follow me there. With the advent of the iPad mini, I wonder if Instagram will feel some pressure to produce an iPad version? For now, I've hooked Instagram up to Flipboard and browse my friends' photos that way.

Games

I don't really play games on my iPad but the iPad mini is much more pleasant for doing so. I only have Need For Speed - Most Wanted installed, which is a simply wonderful game, and Deep Green Chess. I keep the Toca Boca apps installed for my youngest daughter, although I'm never all that happy about letting children put their filthy hands on my devices. We have a sacrificial iPad 1 in the house for that.

Miscellaneous

I have a few other utilities that I keep around:

• iTeleport for VNC sessions onto various Macs
• PCalc for hard sums
• The official Gmail app, in case I need to search my email (why is this operation still so awful on mobile?)
• Keynote Remote
• Flight+ for tracking my flights (syncs with iPhone; yay!)
• Delivery Status Touch for tracking packages
• WeatherPro HD - the design is nothing much to write home about but the data is deadly accurate for the UK and it syncs favourite locations through iCloud.

So that's how I'm using my iPad these days. I think it's an interesting look at the evolution of the iOS software landscape. Compared to 2010, I'm definitely using fewer apps but those apps have grown far more powerful, capable and - crucially - dependable than they once were.

It's also instructive to note that the home screen on my iPhone increasingly looks like a quick-access version of my iPad: Phone, Photos, Camera, Messages, Flipboard, Pocket, Kindle, Downcast, WeatherPro, Maps, Mail, Newsstand, Instagram, Skype, Netbot, Google+, Safari, Evernote, Calendar, Tweetbot. The only home-screen phone app I don't have on my iPad being Instagram.

I'm continually impressed by the range, depth and quality of top-tier iOS software. Sure, there's a bunch of dreck in the store - 90% of everything is crud - but that top 10% on iOS is some of the best, most innovative and creative software being built today. It's why I choose to use iOS. It was never about the hardware alone.

Thoughts on Amazon Whispercast

Recently Amazon announced - in the US only, naturally - Whispercast. Whispercast is an online tool that Amazon is marketing as a method of deploying Kindles in your school or business. Given my long-standing wish for a way to deploy electronic books to devices in a way that isn't astronomically expensive or entirely crazy-making, I was naturally interested.

As with all examples of using consumer technology in education, the devil is in the details. The question is: what does Whispercast actually allow you to do that you couldn't do before, and how does it compare to other content deployment systems?

Whispercast seems to be two things under one brand name:

• A basic Mobile Device Management tool for Kindles and Kindle Fires
• A volume purchasing system for Kindle content

Whispercast is said to work with both e-Ink Kindles as far back as the 'Kindle 2' - the last white version before what's currently known as the Kindle Keyboard - and all Kindle Fire devices although some configuration settings are not available on the original Kindle Fire and Kindle Touch. The content distribution part of Whispercast also works for the free Kindle apps on iOS, Android and the rest.

Whispercast MDM

As an MDM tool, you can now do a few useful things with Kindles, and you can do them wirelessly from a central interface:

• Enforce a passcode
• Configure wireless and proxy settings
• Block things: Facebook, Twitter, the Kindle browser and the Kindle Store
• Block factory reset, device deregistration and changes to network settings.

These are essentially the bare minimum things you might want to do when managing a Kindle. I'm surprised, though, that there's no adult content filter in this post-50-Shades world. I believe the new Kindle Fires can do this, but that it's not enforceable in configuration seems like an omission.

You may wonder how you're supposed to configure network settings on the device by a push from a remote website. The answer is that Whispercast will generate a configuration file for download that you manually install on each Kindle via USB. In this respect, it's not so different from installing a Configuration Profile through Apple Configurator. My understanding is that this step is only to configure the networking and the rest is configured via Whispercast push.

Whispercast Content Delivery

This is really the meat of any new features for these devices: can we get simplified access to books, apps and the rest? Unfortunately, Whispercast seems to fall short of my hopes and dreams: essentially, Whispercast appears to be functionally equivalent to Apple's Volume Purchase Program.

In the most basic form of using Apple VPP you bulk-purchase gift codes for specific apps, distribute them to end users and those users redeem their coupons in their own iTunes accounts to get a download of the app. As we have discussed before, this means that the end user now 'owns' that content and you have no way of getting it back.

Under Amazon Whispercast you bulk-purchase books, allocate those purchases to users and the users then see these purchases available in their account. Having spoken to some Whispercast beta testers my understanding is that, once a purchase is allocated to a user, it cannot be reallocated to another user at a later date.

The only significant difference between the Apple VPP model and the Amazon Whispercast model is that Amazon automates the "hand out the codes" step of the process. Most good MDM providers that support iOS can do the same for VPP codes.

Deployment Models

So, how could we use Kindles in school? I'm not all that interested - yet - in the Kindle Fire as a general purpose computer as it seems to suffer from many of the same problems as the Nexus 7 (in a nutshell: few great apps and none that aren't already on iOS). I am, however, very interested in finding a workable eBook platform for schools that combines ease of deployment, sensible pricing structures and year-to-year flexibility in reallocating purchased resources.

Essentially, the eBook problem comes down to: you, the publisher, want me to buy everyone a brand new copy of the book. I'm happy to do that, but you want £9.99 per copy. We're more used to paying £9.99 and giving it to 10 children over the course of years. Make your eBook £1 per copy and we can talk.

On the other hand, I'll buy 30 copies at £9.99 but I need to be able to reallocate those books next year.

Is there a way to square this circle? Maybe.

Whispercast, like the iTunes Store, requires that each Kindle have a separate Amazon account associated with it. Unlike the iTunes Store, Whispercast can bulk-create these accounts for you, which is handy.

Perhaps the model is this: create 20 generic "First Grade" accounts (e.g. fg01@example.edu through fg20@example.edu) and buy 20 copies of the First Grade reading list. Have the students use that account for a year. When they move on, give the account and password to the next set of pupils coming in.

This is harder to do in the Apple world because the use of AppleID/iCloud is so pervasive across the system. With the Kindle system (at least on the e-Ink Kindles, if not the Fire), it would potentially be easier as there's less actual data being stored in the user's account. The pupil logging into the account the next year would - I presume - find the last owner's book locations, highlights and notes in there but that's hardly different to the common experience of getting someone else's used textbook.

Such a deployment model might work in primary education - where everyone is in the same class, likely reading the same class novel at the same time. It doesn't really work for secondary education unless you buy all the books for every account because the pupil using the account next year is unlikely to be taking the same mix of classes as the last pupil.

I don't know whether Apple or Amazon is going to get this right first but the company who finally cracks it stands to win a lot of business the education market.

My thanks to Steve Kinney for reviewing an early draft of this article.