I’m of two minds about the Java-on-iPhone/iPad (or lack thereof) issue. In the first instance, getting a Java interpreter on the iPhone would allow for “easy” porting of a lot of the management applications, but easy isn’t always the right thing. Java on portable devices has always struggled in terms of performance and memory – and for right or wrong, Apple do not want interpreters running on their system. Java more generally has been easier to manage on the desktop because you often end up with different versions for different Java applets or apps that you need to run.

There’s two ways that vendors could come up with management apps for iPhoneX devices – they could do them in Objective-C, making them available only as installable apps on those platforms, or they could actually take a more “open standards” approach anyway and implement in HTML with a rich web-server back-end relying at most on Javascript at the front end. Sure this isn’t going to be always perfect, but it would give the added advantage of allowing the development of such portable management applications for any platform. Further, such management apps would then be connection-independent – or at least have a better chance of being anyway. Portable management apps will need to handle disconnects/reconnects well, depending on where someone is, etc. This isn’t something that is often handled gracefully by traditional desktop/laptop/Java management apps. Saving state for connected users and being able to reconnect is relatively straight forward. (The most recent example that springs to mind is Zmanda’s ZRM console, which preserves state across logins (and can be optionally disabled).)

Either solution would be good. The first would give the richest experience, the second though is perfectly acceptable and would provide the most cross-platform capable portable apps with minimum redevelopment time/etc.

Cheers,

Preston.

I was taken by the idea of being able to access NMC via an iPad, so much so, I suggested raising an RFE. The answer I got back from EMC was that until the iPhone / iPod / iPad actually support Java, then this wasn’t going to happen and maybe I should raise an RFE with Apple.

Not being an Apple user, I wasn’t aware that the iPxxx’s did not support Java. Surely with many web-based management interfaces using Java, Apple has missed the mark with this?

The output I don’t believe should be a problem – while there’s no native HDMI there, it does support video out via the 30 pin dock connector. Apple did, during the presentation, explicitly state that you’d be able to hook it up to a projector if you wanted to, so I have to imagine there’ll be a connector to allow it to plug into at least, say, DVI.

As for capacity, GPS (or the lack thereof), battery life and lack of an optical device, I’d say that these are features of full laptop systems, not the portable computing platform that Apple has envisaged here. (On the battery life front, I suspect it’ll be quite good for standard usage scenarios.)

I don’t by any means think the iPad will be perfect, but having slept on it, I think it’s going to be a game changer nonetheless.

great writeup, really. I just imagined myself jogging through the building with in iPad tugged under my arm, occasionally checking the Nagios Webinterface, the Networker Console or a SSH session on my firewall.
But what bothers me, and please correct me if I’m wrong, the iPad doesn’t seem to support multitasking. If that’s the case, I’m afraid it’s pretty much useless, or at least highly limited in usability. This worked out on the iPhone, but for me it would be a must on such a device.

Secondly, the output seems kind of limited, given that there is no HDMI port or anything. Imagine yourself at a meeting with more than just two participants, you would might want to hook up your iPad to a beamer. Well, maybe wifi would work…

As for private usage… Hmm I’m kind of struggling to see where this would come in handy, what with the limited size of 64GB, relatively short battery usage and no possobility to replace, no GPS, no optical drive, no HDMI. Heck, it’s going to sell anyways ;-)