The launch of the Apple iPad this spring sees the birth of a whole new breed of ‘must have’ gadgetology that will be enormously enticing to a broad range of customers. The most obvious appeal is to the beslippered home user who will wander around the house happily surfing the net, checking email, sharing photos with the family, or who will be found sitting in bed on a Sunday morning watching a film or even reading an e-book.
But what about our poor business folk? Surely they will not want to miss out on the fun, and so will need a good case for making an iPad an essential part of their kit. Whilst it’s certainly not ideally placed as a business machine – it can’t take advantage of Exchange email and doesn’t support business standards such as Virtual Private Networks, for example – there are still quite a few avenues worth exploring.
Most obviously, the sensational look and feel of the machine and its display point towards a fabulous sales tool. Sparkling dynamic presentations or sales videos can be launched with the minimum of fuss in any situation. The machine slips out of the slimmest briefcase, powers up almost instantly, has a purported 10 hr battery life, and can be passed around, even comfortably used standing in the pub.
Another plausible reason for having to buy one is as a research tool. Apart from being a fine web surfer – either wirelessly or over 3G if you stretch the budget – the iPad can be your mobile reference library, enabling easy access any time, anywhere, to shedloads of text books. And then of course there are newspapers and magazines, all downloadable for immediate use.
The iPad is going to hit the ground running in that it will run all the existing iPhone apps, but the fun will really begin when developers bring out purpose built iPad apps. A small survey of developers indicated that they see the iPad as a much more business and productivity oriented machine than the iPhone. Surprisingly, they see the potential in this field as greater than in social networking or even games. Finance, education and medicine were cited as having particularly rich potential. So whilst your business life may have been transformed by the Salesforce or Bloomberg information on the iPhone in your pocket, think of the possibilities to come on the iPad.
Whilst it’s certainly not a laptop replacement, on the side, of course, you will be able to do a little creative work with the revamped iWork suite which enable you to create business standard text documents, spreadsheets and presentations. There is support for MS Office documents. Possibly the biggest omission in the first incarnation of the iPad is a camera, as it seems such an obvious video conferencing machine – Apple will surely have to address this early on!
So whilst initially it could be a bit of a stretch making the business case for this new gizmo, the future for the iPad in business is looking bright. Once the App Store starts to fill up with purpose built iPad apps, and once Apple has added a camera and maybe Exchange compatibility, they may become as ubiquitous as the iPhone or the Blackberry. So get started on your business case and hopefully it won’t be too long before you join the envied ranks of the slippered surfers… strictly out of business hours of course.
Robin Daly
Director, Intune Computer Services, London
http://www.intunecomputer.com