The string that holds the iPad

Reading my feeds I found a good article by John Gruber at Daring Fireball. A large part of the article is about iPad and its relation to the PC. You know the first thing you must do after purchasing an iPad is to connect it to your PC, which runs iTunes. For this reason you just got to have a PC if you want to have an iPad. What do you need the PC for? This:

1. updating iOS
2. device activation
3. getting your stuff onto your new iPad
4. backing up and restoring your iPad

Cutting the cord to the PC means you have to be able to do all four points with the iPad. That's not easy, at least if you look at points 3 and 4. The obvious way to solve 3 & 4 would be to put all your data in the cloud. However that is not an attractive solution, because there can be an awful lot of data on an iPad. Some iPads can keep some 64GB of data. Downloading, or worse, uploading that amount of data would take a very, very long time with most Internet connections. So points 3 and 4 are some way off. Points 1 & 2 though are already feasible, because, as JG says in the article, Apple TV already does iOS updates and activation without a PC.
The conclusion is that the cord is there to stay for some years to come. I can definitely live with it. The worst thing about it is that Apple is letting all those people down who would like to own an iPad instead of a PC.

Read the whole article at:
http://daringfireball.net/2011/04/cutting_that_cord