“Switch” for iPad – There Shouldn’t Be An App For That

My wife and I came across this article at SMH which skims over the prospect offered by yet another web browser for the Apple iPad. In a nutshell, Switch offers the ability for multiple users to maintain separate web browser profiles including bookmarks, passwords and history as well as a guest account for irregular users to utilise if you are feeling generous with lending out your iPad.

That all sounds very nice but it doesn’t address the greater issue of how the iPad is used in a family household that shares a communal device. Everything on the device would be wide open to everyone else and, depending how trusting the household members were of each other, would become littered with numerous e-mail accounts, calendars and applications. Perhaps this arrangement might work for the more social and sharing household but I would be terrified of such an arrangement.

Whilst Switch does break new ground on the iPad this sort of functionality should be built into the operating system by default. I believe that the iPad is a slightly different beast compared to the iPhone and iPod Touch. Phones and portable media players are inherently personal devices given that they are often the gateway to social interactivity whilst also storing  media specific to the taste of the individual (including music, photos and videos). The iPad presents that proposition should one want to take it but can be more easily shared amongst a group given its physical size.

The iPad was very much sold as a middle ground device between the iPhone (and iPod Touch) and the Mac so in my mind there should be an overlap in functionality with the iPhone and the Mac. Maybe the iPad in its current incarnation is underpowered to support user profiles put perhaps the second generation iPad with a dual core A9 CPU might be able to cope coupled with operating system level user profile management in iOS 5.0 next year.

So while Switch does achieve what it sets out to do its functionality should not be implemented at the application level but back down another layer in the operating system. In the meantime, if you believe this is a killer app, you can grab it from the App Store for AU$5.99.

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