Bit of History

I purchased an iPad 1 in late 2010 as my organization tried to understand how it could help collaboration.   We had to make sure our core intranet portal worked well on it for our Senior Leadership and Board who were all getting these devices due to the ease of use and instant on functionality.

That was fine and our intranet design needed little tweaking to work on the iPad.

Its all about the experience

Over the next couple of years we tried to expand use of the iPad for leadership and management and look for other uses such as in the manufacturing and sales space.

It really took off in the sales space with our sales-force preferring the light and unobtrusive product when looking to show vendors/potential customers material about our products.  The instant on means no ‘dead-time’ waiting with the customer for the machine to boot up for you to show designs or videos of the product.   Additionally its lower cost over laptops means damage in the field is not so much an issue.

Inside the enterprise we saw teams trying to make their apps work in the browser on the iPad but many enterprise solutions use flash or silverlight and that will never work on an iPad.  So in those cases Citrix was the answer.  But it isn’t.  It just presents a Windows desktop on an iPad, small buttons that do not work well with fingers and touch just make it horrible.  Lagging also kills the experience dead.

New Shiny iPad

Anyway in 4Q13 I got my new iPad, I had been waiting for the retina Mini and got it as soon as it was released.  Specifically I have the iPad Mini Retina with Cellular.

So a few things.  This new form factor works even better for me.  It is the perfect place between my laptop and my phone.  The screen quality is great and of course cellular means I am always connected so thats excellent, yes I can tether a laptop but its a pain.  I am using it more and more and leaving my laptop docked more and more.

I did grab a Zagg keyboard for it so that I can do long posts like this and author content properly.  The majority of my time though is spent reviewing and providing short feedback/comments on content/design, approving expenses and reviewing budget !  So I often use it without the keyboard.

Many enterprise software solutions have been updated over the last few years and the experience has got a lot better.  New versions of Concur (travel and expenses) are great – I actually prefer using Concur on my iPad over my laptop; WebEx has got a lot, lot better for Video Conferencing and Lync from Microsoft is also massively improved; DropBox/Box.Net/OneDrive allow me to sync my content beautifully across devices and QuickOffice or Office4iPad allows me to author.

I still miss a good version of OneNote for the iPad and in its absence over the last few years (a cut down version is now available on iPad) I changed to using EverNote for both my personal and professional content.

One thing though with all this is still security, not of content on the device as Mobile Device Management software has evolved massively so devices can be remotely wiped and Apple has improved its encryption massively.  But those cloud based storage options still worry organizations and legal departments.   Once that gets resolved and tied in to on premise solutions for Search, etc. it will be truly powerful.

SharePoint and the iPad

So I am a big user of SharePoint for better or worse.  Actually I drive the strategy for collaboration so I am to blame (for now) for SharePoint being in my organisation.

How does it work on the iPad.  Well its mixed.  SP2007 was horrible, SP2010 is better, the UI through the browser generally works, SP2013 through the browser is great, especially with the Service Pack.

File access though, well you are just opening from the browser and no access to local storage so its a little complex and getting stuff uploaded to SP is best done using email enabled libraries.

OneDrive is a good glue for those on O365 but for on premise installations its not a pleasant experience.

To be honest I use the browser UI to review websites, perform searches, read our intranet, etc.  We have enhanced our search tool so I can tag content I find for editing on a main device, etc.

For file access I use Acronis Access (was MobileEcho) this lets me sync content bidirectionaly (or not) for offline usage.  It also lets me access the entire doc libraries within any sharepoint site for browse use (ie. I dont have to sync for offline use).

I would also recommend looking at SharePlus, Mobile Entree and Filamente.

In conclusion…

So for now I love my iPad, don’t like Citrx, love Concur, I continue to use it more and more, just need the apps and the content to catch up.