iPad's golden opportunity to be different

There was a missing device at Apple's 2013 WWDC keynote, and it's one of the company's most popular product lines.
iPad, where were you?
iOS 7, a product of Jony Ive, Apple's design mastermind, took the stage at WWDC -- but the iPhone 5 was the featured runway model.

Apple's Web site shows app after app on the iPhone 5's 4-inch screen. iOS 7 beta is available, but just for iPhone and iPod Touch. the iPad was mentioned for all of a few seconds. Macs and iPhones ruled the day.

The iPad beta is coming soon, in the next few weeks. Will it be different from what we've seen on the iPhone? I really hope so. Not because I do or don't like the new visual aesthetic, but because iPhones and iPads are very different devices, and it's high time iOS treated them both differently.

AirDrop had some interest to her. But for the rest, nothing really stood out. In fact, she told me the whole video reminded her of an airline commercial. The music, the tone, the pace. Like those videos that play before takeoff. Relax, get ready to fly.

Maybe this is the mission of Apple and iOS 7: comforting those about to fly with a new operating system. Relaxing the apprehensive. Comfort comes at odds with the new; change means uprooting, discovering, disrupting. But the iOS 7 video, and the whole mission statement, seems to go so much toward leaning into comfort that I wonder if the subtlety ends up lost on the average person.

But beyond that, I can't see how aesthetics make a huge difference. Redesigning the look of iOS isn't about the color scheme of the coat of paint put on it. It's what's underneath that counts.