Four Months with the Apple iPad: Where Do We Stand?

August 18, 2010 By: Eric Gakstatter

It’s been four months since Apple began shipping the iPad. Last spring, I wrote that it was imperative that the consumer market accept the iPad for it to have a chance to have an impact in the geospatial industry. Four months later, do you think it’s been considered a success in the consumer market?

By the end of this year, it’s being projected that Apple will have sold 12 million iPads in 2010. I’d say, and most others would, too, that 12 million units sold in its first year is pretty successful. Not only that, the iPhone, although stumbling a bit lately, will continue its torrid adoption pace with Apple projected to sell at least 35 million of the phones in 2010. That's a lot of mobile devices.

iPad iPhone 4

Adding fuel to the red-hot fire are the number of iPhone/iPad product accessory announcements related to the geospatial industry.

Magellan Introduces Roadmate App for iPhone

Loopt Introduces Free iPad App

Intermap Launches Latest Accuterra App for iPhone

Google Earth Now Available for iPad

Avenza Introduces Geospatial PDF App for iOS

Esri Introduces Free ArcGIS Viewer for iPhone/iPad

With the tremendous number of units being shipped, I think we can start the conversation about the iPad/iPhone making its impact in the geospatial industry.

I’ve still yet to personally see many geospatial iPhone/iPad apps being deployed (as opposed to announced) on a broad scale. I’d like to hear about it if you are using either the iPhone or iPad for geospatial applications. Please send me a short e-mail. I'd enjoy hearing from you.

Now that the consumer acceptance question seems to be a foregone conclusion, let's look at a particular technical detail.

Both the iPhone and the iPad have internal GPS receivers. Both utilize assisted GPS receiver technology; the iPhone 4 reportedly utilizes an Infineon Hammerhead II chip and the iPad sports a Broadcomm BCM4750UBG chip. Both of the A-GPS receivers are suitable for navigating because precision expectations aren’t very demanding, but the precision they deliver falls far short of what many geospatial applications require.

No problem.

The iPhone and iPad both have Bluetooth transceivers built in, and there is plenty of high-performance Bluetooth GPS receivers available, right?

Wrong.

Both the iPhone and iPad have very limited implementations of Bluetooth. Basically, they are built for pairing with hands-free ear buds and that’s about it.

Try it yourself if you own one. Turn on a Bluetooth GPS receiver next to your iPhone and see if the iPhone Bluetooth receiver will discover the Bluetooth GPS. Nada.

The Bluetooth limitation really reduces the value of the iPhone and iPad as powerful GIS mobile devices. I really thought that the iPhone/iPad might take over as a default mobile device for GIS data collection, but I think this will prevent such a shift from occurring. The GIS data collector manufacturers such as Tripod Data Systems, Juniper Systems, Getac, and Handheld must be breathing a bit easier…for now.

Actually, there is a way (although I can’t say I’ve tried it) to link an external Bluetooth receiver to the iPhone/iPad, although it will probably void the manufacturer's warranty.

Check out this article, “Jailbreaking your iPad: How You Can and Why You Should”

Here’s an article on adding a external Bluetooth GPS functionality to a jailbroken iPad: “Add GPS to your jailbroken WiFi iPad with BTstack GPS”

Thanks, and see you next week.

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