I recently read this thoughtful essay by Peter Kirn, wherein he criticizes the iPad for being “closed”. Kirn focuses on the Mac’s success being partly based on its being “open” — being equipped with fairly standard ports and expansion slots, which nearly any third party could use to expand the capabilities of the Mac, allowing it to evolve into many roles which it might not otherwise have been able to fill, such as video and audio production. He laments the iPad’s lack of similar capabilities, noting that its only port is Apple’s proprietary dock connector, for the use of which Apple charges hefty fees to third parties.
Kirn has good points, and I don’t necessarily disagree with any of them. But as for ports, I think he might be missing something: wireless. The primary use of cables and ports is to connect two devices together so they can transfer data. (Control signals count as data too.) I wouldn’t be surprised if Steve Jobs has decided that most people don’t need USB anymore and that wireless is ready to replace it in most cases.
This could be a recurrence of what occurred in 1998 when Steve Jobs unleashed a storm of controversy by introducing the iMac without a floppy disk drive. He started the shift from using floppy disks for data transfer to using USB, optical disks, and networking. Today he may be finishing what he started; catalyzing the final shift from physical media to using radio waves for all data transfer.
Wi-Fi (802.11) and Bluetooth are at this point nearly ubiquitous, and the chips and controllers which implement them are now very inexpensive. Wi-fi is capable of transfer speeds similar to USB 2.0, which might allow it to suffice for transferring large volumes of data and connecting devices via Bluetooth is pretty simple these days.
Both standards also have recently added new features which can make connecting faster, simpler, and more secure; Apple could implement these features to make these technologies even more workable as replacements for USB.
This shift, from cables to wireless connections, is by no means a fait accompli, but it’s well under way, and will probably turn out to be a net win for most people.
