Today’s pre-event rumors say that there may be a version of iPhoto announced for the iPad 3, and it certainly makes sense. Daring Fireball’s John Gruber and Panic’s Neven Mrgan both argue that iPhoto is an obvious candidate for an iPad with a beautiful Retina display, and Gabe Glick, writing at MacStories, makes the case for Aperture. I think at least some of them may be right.
The iPhoto arguments go like this: Neven Mrgan thinks the iPad 3 will be all about photography, and that the built-in Photos app isn’t up to the task. An iPhoto for iPad would add in better editing tools, better organization and proper EXIF data.
Why would Apple do this instead of leaving it to the many great third-party photo tools? Because, unlike them, Apple can cheat. While processing a photo in, say, Photogene, you end up keeping a copy in that app, and save back a copy to your roll, which is awkward and wastes space. Apple could do some lossless jiggery-pokery and save your edits in-place without taking up more space. At the very least Apple has direct read/write access to the photo roll.
Gruber’s argument is more succinct, and three-fold:
We’ve already got iMovie and GarageBand for iPad. iPhoto seems like a glaring omission.
A good way to predict what’s coming next for the iPad is to ask yourself what sort of things are keeping regular people from using an iPad as their main computer. Photo management is the biggest one I can think of.
A retina display iPad should make photos look amazing.
All of which make perfect sense. So what about Aperture? Glick’s piece comes across more as a wish list than a convincing pro-Aperture argument, but you never know. On the one hand, iPhoto fits into the lineup alongside the other iLife apps, as Gruber points out. On the other hand, maybe Apple would use the powerful A6 processor and HD display to launch its first pro app for iOS.
Think about that for a second. We know that Apple is happiest when cannibalizing its own products, and we know that photographers love the iPad. It makes a lot of sense.
My opinion is colored by wishful thinking. I’d sure like to see iPhoto on the iPad — if only so I could ditch the awful desktop version of iPhoto, which gets worse year by year. I guess we won’t have to wait very long to find out.
