First Thoughts: iPad at 35,000 feet?

I just got hit by an eye catching story on Mary Kirby’s Runway Girl Blog regarding the iPad as a platform for In-Flight Entertainment. London based Bluebox Avionix has announced that they will reveal their iPad-based “bluebox Ai” inflight entertainment device at next week’s Aircraft Interiors Expo in Hamburg, Germany.

The high bar in the realm of inflight entertainment was arguably set by Virgin America’s RED system. Virgin America probably invested a lot of time and money designing and developing custom hardware and software to make RED work. They had to – three years ago, when RED was released, there were no viable Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) devices for such use. Now, with the iPad, the much cheaper Android based Archos tablets, and upcoming tablet offerings from Google/Verizon, HP, JooJoo, and probably many others to arrive soon, there are plenty of choices.

The choice of the iPad for a custom application seems curious to me on a variety of levels. The purpose of the device is largely to provide flyers with in-flight movies, music, web browsing (if the plane is WiFi enabled) and perhaps other diversions. It sounds like a cool idea. But the iPad/iPhone isn’t exactly the most open platform.

Curious, I did a little e-mail chat with Rick Stuart, Managing Director at Bluebox to find out how this’ll work and how the decision was made to go with iPad – as opposed to a competing OS and hardware that might be cheaper (like Android, webOS, Maemo, etc.).

Q. Apple is notoriously fickle about application availability. Does Apple approve of the system?
A. Although we are working with Apple distributors this is not an ‘approved’ Apple system, we are merely using the device which we have ported our proprietary software onto which enables it to comply with airline media security requirements. … Pad is not Jailbroken, its at an Enterprise development level

Q. How will the flyer interact with the iPad? An iPad has a larger screen than the typical seat-back entertainment device. Will it be mounted in the seat back behind the tray table?
A. This is not a seat back device, it will join our suite of portable devices, although we are looking at incorporating some features into our integrated product Bluebox wIFE

Q. Will it operate on WiFi? Or via a hardwired network connector using the iPad’s 30-pin docking connector?
A. Yes it will be capable of operating in a wifi cabin network, enabling web browsing etc but this will be limited by the capabilities of the off board satcom.

Q. How will the experience compare to using one’s own iPad? Will the flier be able to connect to the App Store?
A. No the bluebox version will be very secure, so pre-installed media and browser access only

Q. And will it be connected to the Internet for flyers to surf the net, check GMail , etc?
A. The device is of course net capable but this will be dependent on the cabin network functionality rahter than the device.

Q. It makes sense that the App Store is off limits on the BlueBox iPad. But if that’s the case, why go with iPad? It would seem to me that you could get similar hardware for less money to run a free OS like Android, Maemo, etc.
A. It is true that custom devices could be more efficient but we have a COTS strategy at BBA plus we do get some advantages with Apple.

Q. On the topic of security, how will the flyer’s private data be cleaned off the iPad before the next user comes along?
A. On phase one there is no ability to save any data, as soon as it is switched off it defaults to a clean state. We will look at some data being d/loadable to SD card but I doubt if we will ever look at personal upload as this present security issues so its a later phase development.

My Thoughts
Bluebox’s web site notes iPad features such as a “full range of games from the iTunes App Store,” “eBooks as available in the App Store,” and “and a selection of over 200,000 commercial apps available for iPad”. As Rick explained above, that doesn’t mean flyers would have access to the App Store. So, it’s curious why the company put that information on their product page.

To me, that seems to nullify of the major selling features of the iPad – the apps, games, and other content choices of the App Store.

But, as I mentioned above in my questioning, it makes sense that the App Store should be off limits. Why? I doubt many flyers would want to buy apps to load onto a device that will be taken away from them when the flight lands. Plus, from my own experience, I found in-flight Internet access to be excruciatingly slow. It might be near impossible to download a movie or large games/apps from the store before the flight ends.

But if there is a large selection of pre-loaded videos, music, games, and apps it could be quite attractive as a way to stay entertained on a long flight. (Of course, you could always bring your own tablet onboard.)

It’ll be interesting to see how many airlines adopt this system. Bluebox already claims one international carrier will be announced shortly as their launch partner – and will start offering it to passengers in July.

Given the lack of App Store access, I’m still a little stumped by the choice of iPad – versus a much cheaper COTS product like the Archos. I’m pretty sure we’ll start to see other competing solutions come along based on Android and other OSs as the tablet computer floodgate  is set to spew out a bunch of mee-too competitors that will no doubt have to compete on price.