Now that you know our journey to our ‘iPad office’ it’s time to dig deeper. Let’s see if you can work 95% of the time on the iPad and do the job effectively. Who can really go #iPadOnly?
In general, most professionals use their current machines to communicate, to create something, to analyze data, to share something with someone and to browse the web. The iPad can do most of that, albeit a bit differently than a regular PC. The iPad can also easily exchange files and data with a regular computer or a smartphone.
Unless you use proprietary software, or power-hungry software, you will be able to be #iPadOnly at least half of your day, and maybe more. Actually, if you think about it, people are using their mobile phones already around 60% of their working day, even if they haven’t consciously noticed it yet. Simply add the iPad to that equation for the 40% of your work and you’re working #iPadOnly.
Michael is an entrepreneur running Nozbe so he wears many hats in his job. He writes a lot. As the ‘product guy’, he designs his product and is in an ongoing discussion with his developers and designers. As the CEO, he creates spreadsheets, presentations, email, IM, calls… and he blogs. He participates in social media and more; he also travels a bit. If the iPad fits his lifestyle, it’ll probably fit yours, too.
Augusto began his journey of #iPadOnly as a Sales Manager handling hardware sales from Canada to Argentina. In that job he relied heavily on email, video conferencing, Excel, Word, PowerPoint and an Internet browser for research. As early as 2010 the iPad could do almost all of that, with the exception of video conferencing.
Next, Augusto moved on to his current role as a writer, public speaker and business owner. He is in the business of discovering innovative ideas that can help people do their job better and have a better life. Most of his job is invisible. An important part of his job is to think and look for obscure connections. He spends a great deal of his day reading and writing on his iPad. The other thing he does on his iPad is number crunching within Excel. That’s how he tracks his relevant business data.
Again, who can do their job effectively on the iPad?
Here’s a list of job descriptions that, in our opinion, are a perfect fit for the #iPadOnly lifestyle. The list is not definitive, but it’s meant to give you an idea. By the way, we won’t mention any apps in this chapter as there is a dedicated chapter on apps later in this book. Let’s focus on which types of work can be done on the iPad:
1. CEO of a company / Small Business Owner
As a CEO and Small Business Owner one has to process lots of email. The iPad has a great email client. It can also work with spreadsheets, presentations and word processing - the iPad has great apps for those needs, too. Other than that, use a project and time management app to communicate through tasks with our team. The iPad has also great apps for social media, chatting and video conferencing. The iPad is a CEO / Small Business Owner powerhouse in a small form factor.
2. Writer
The iPad is perfect for writers as the screen can be used vertically (perfect for typing with an external keyboard). The one-app-open-at-a-time paradigm keeps the focus on writing thus minimizing distractions. Again, the form factor is crucial as you can carry the iPad in your purse or bag and write anywhere you want.
3. Blogger
Most of the blogging platforms have dedicated blogging apps for the iPad. And great web interfaces. To deal with blog post formatting, many people use the Markdown format to be able to write in plain text and publish richly formatted blog posts. Moreover, iPad has some of the best social media apps available. It is a great social-media-blogger type of machine.
4. Traveler
With ten hours of battery life, half a kg weight, sized to fit any purse (or man-purse, for that matter), the iPad is a fantastic device for traveling. Add dedicated travel apps for flight tracking, hotel booking, navigation and maps… and it’s hard not to make it the traveler’s best friend.
5. Programmer
This is a tricky part. Although Michael continues to do some of the programming for his company, it’s not as much as he used to. While researching for this book project he found full-time programmers who code mostly on their iPads so yes, it’s more than doable. The same benefits of writing on the iPad apply to coding. Great coding apps are available for the iPad and the work can be done with the iPad in a vertical orientation.
There is an additional benefit of coding on the iPad. When you do, you need to move the server-side (and Git) part of your code to an actual external server rather than installing everything on your local machine. You’ll notice it’s actually more efficient this way.
6. Product guy
Michael spends his days designing new features for Nozbe, testing what his programmers and designers have developed and responding with lots of feedback. Thanks to great apps for drawing, sketching and visual design he has fun doing it on the iPad. He bought a stylus that helps him draw and sketch. It’s efficient and a lot more fun to design the product and send feedback via the iPad.
7. Busy professional
Well, that’s all of us - Michael, Augusto and you - a mixture of the examples above. Our experiment with going #iPadOnly has been a success and we are not going back. We love the fact that we can take our iPads anywhere we want in a small man-purse or bag and nobody really knows we have a real working machine with us at all times. We don’t need to search for a power plug as we have more battery than we need for a full day’s work. Our iPads sync perfectly with our iPhones through many cloud apps allowing us to be on top of things at all times.
The iPad is the new office.
It’s our smallest office yet (if you don’t count the iPhone). With this chapter we wanted to prove that it can be your office, too. Apart from being more productive, you might be surprised how much fun it really is to work on the iPad.