It's Only a Matter of Time

The rumor mill has been abuzz about the expected iPhone 6 supposedly coming out sometime this later year. Personally I don't care about these rumors one way or another because I learned long ago that the majority of them are complete bullshit—as exciting and inspiring as they may be. I only need to look back a couple years before the introduction of the iPhone 5 to see images of "radical" redesign. My favorite was a wedge-shaped phone similar in design to the MacBook Air:

 I was sorely disappointed when that did not come to pass. So I have no faith in any of the admittedly beautifully rendered speculations on what the next phone will look like. It is what it is, and we'll all see it when the time comes.

One thing I am hoping for is a 128GB capacity option—and that's for one reason only: music.

My iTunes library is currently hovering around 100GB and I would love to have any of it available on a whim, instead of having to manually shuffle songs in and out of my current phone. Apple hasn't updated the iPod classic (160GB) in years, so a device of any kind with this capacity is overdue.

Of course with their current focus on the cloud, I'm sure they're simply hoping that those of us with huge music collections will just subscribe to iTunes Match and have all our music stream.

All well and good, except I (and I suppose many others) have hundreds of songs that aren't available in iTunes; songs lovingly ripped and edited from the original vinyl. Plus, why should I have to pay again for access to things I already own?

Anyhow, that's not really the thrust of this post. "It's only a matter of time" refers to the eventual day that Apple puts out a much-rumored "iPad Pro," a device that will finally be able to replace the average person's laptop in its entirety. 256GB flash storage? Why stop there? Let's go for 512GB or 1TB. I know it's not economically (or physically practical) to create this kind of device today that will be as thin and light as the current iPad, but a few years out? We'll all be laughing at the ancient relics with "only" 128GB of internal flash storage.

It's said that the majority of people—even those of us who own an iPad in addition to a laptop—have not given up on our laptops completely is that while consuming content from a tablet is its primary attraction, it's still much easier to create content on a laptop (or full-blown desktop) than it is on an iPad…although, again, I'm sure it's just going to be a matter of time until the available software tools and hassle-free connections to multiple external monitors also make that a moot point.

Obviously, this won't happen overnight. Nor do I expect laptops to be abandoned in 2, 3, or even 5 years down the road. But a decade from now? I fully expect the dominant platform will be tablets in one form or another.