File Sharing with an iPad: Ugh

macobserver.com

25 points·tshtf··8 comments

Hopefully a version of Dropbox designed for the iPad will solve this problem, and they're already working on it: http://forums.dropbox.com/topic.php?id=18663

try printing, too. i opened an email on my ipad and looked around for a print button before having a "duh" moment and realizing that there is no print support.

there are some clunky 3rd party apps to print, but most require a utility installed on your mac or pc to proxy the print requests, and since no other app can access your email database, they all have to reimplement an email app inside of them, in which you have to duplicate all of your email settings. ugh indeed.

With Apple things are either easy or nearly impossible.

These are both features that will come in due time, just like copy/paste on the iPhone. There are thousands of other little features that needed to be implemented before this was considered a 1.0 device. It would have never shipped had they tried to do it all from the start.

To be fair, although my phone has SSH, Samba, and Transmission for torrents, it can't print until I install a third-party program (and it's still cumbersome).

There may be significant changes to this is OS4.0

Or there may not. Apple likes control. iTunes gives them this and I don't think that will change soon.

The way it ought to work is the devices should be sharable via Bonjour, just like any laptop or other smartphone, and you should be able to drag things between them.

Note that due to multiple uses of the 'should' word the above is about as likely to happen as me getting hit in the head by a lemon peel wrapped around a gold brick.

The reliance on the ever increasing bloat that is Itunes is one of the single biggest drawbacks.

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