Why A Dumb iPad Would Be A Great Device

As smartphones are ubiquitous and tablets are becoming more and more common, we frequently find ourselves configuring two different devices with nearly identical settings. It just seems to me as an awful waste of time and CPU.

I love my iPhone and my iPad but I hate to configure them and keep them up to date. I don't need an iPad with a slightly faster CPU than my iPhone and most importantly I don't notice the difference. What I want and has yet to be released is a totally dumb iPad which only purpose would be to mirror à la Airplay the content of my iPhone on a bigger and more comfortable screen.

As many apps are universal (i.e. contain the code for both the iPhone and iPad version), it wouldn't be complicated to scale them to take advantage of the iPad display.

What I want is simple :
- An easy way to pair my iPhone with my dumb iPad using either bluetooth or Wi-Fi (iBeacon ?).
- Once they are paired, I want the iPad to automatically mirror the content of my iPhone on its bigger screen scaling apps to take advantage of the iPad screen estate.
- An Easy way to unpair them (time-out after 5 minutes and/or a gesture).

This would be awesome and allow for sharing the same tablet amongst a household. It just doesn't make any sense to me to have a full-blown ultimate specs iPad with the same apps than on my iPhone. I don't want to download, install everything twice and I don't need twice the memory storage. I just need a device that has enough horsepower to mirror my iPhone content.

Please Apple, make a Dumb iPad!

Using AirPlay With A First Generation Apple TV

This might be old news for many of you but since I hadn't mentioned it earlier on my blog, I had to make sure this precious info reached all of you! So, yes finally it is possible to use AirPlay with a first generation Apple TV. For those of you who don't know what AirPlay is, it is an audio & video sharing feature that lets you send media from a computer or iDevice to an Apple TV. It was initially only available with the Apple TV Take 2 (first generation Apple TVs had the ability to receive audio only through AirTunes) but thanks to RemoteHD hack, you'll be able to enjoy it on your old Apple TV. Keep in mind you'll have to purchase RemoteHD in order to activate the hack and of course it will only work on a jailbroken first generation Apple TV!

Here's the complete tutorial:

RemoteHD brings AirPlay to your old AppleTV

Enjoy it!

Apple TV 2, Airplay, FaceTime & Videoconferencing

I've just received my Apple TV 2 and can't wait to hook it up to my TV. My only regret is that my friend Steve (whom I've never met) didn't think it would be a good idea to allow Apple TV 1 owners to rent TV shows or use the Airplay feature. Granted, that's what made me buy the Apple TV 2 so from a business point of view it might have been a good idea.

Anyway, I also checked out the Google TV offering and thought its videoconferencing feature looked awesome. So, I'm wondering why Apple didn't think about letting iPhone 4 FaceTime users use Airplay in order to display the video of the party they're calling on their TV and use the iPhone 4 front camera to send their video.

In an effort to make millions of dollars, I have filed a patent with the US office of absurd ideas and will claim royalties and settlements with anyone attempting to use this secret idea (it is secret in the sense that no one reads this blog, except you of course).