iPad for business?

[xraydoc]

I understand Apples extreme freak out of iTunes and sharing of anything.

But I don't feel comfy bringing a $3000 MBP out on the boat when an iPad now has Lake Navigation with tracking. Coolest thing ever.

I really want the manual for the boat on it as well.
Tried to load the 22MB-PDF, not a chance. It can be viewed, but not saved.
Plus the PDF is a pain to browse taking too long to load forward pages.

Spent 4 hrs reformatting the MasterCraft 130 page 22MB PDF in text edit on the MBP.
Probably the next step, import it to 'Pages' and add the images to go with it.

The other painful event is standing Safari web pages.
The thumbs are there, but no memory to hold and view it later.
There seems to be a time out setting of 20 minutes if not viewing web pages repeatedly.
It's then forced to reload the page.

Ending up in fringe area, you just lost those views.

I've looked, but find it odd there is no - Best of Apps - listed on the site here for the iPad1.

Cheers

If you're using an iPad 1, which the last line of your post suggests, I can see why you might have a problem with large PDF files and Safari tab reloading, but on my iPad 2 and now iPad 3, I fling around 100+MB PDF files without any problems at all. And the iPad 3 so far virtually never reloads a tab unless you were running another memory-intensive app before switching back to Safari.

iBooks and other apps like GoodReader will let you bookmark PDF pages for easy access.

I see no reason to go throug the massive hassle of reformatting/recreating a big PDF file in something like Pages.

 

[bajaracing]

Depends on what your needs are. I am a road salesman and the combination of my iPhone, iPad, and MobileMe is great. I have about 1200 customers and am able to service them and get my job done in the field so that when I get back to my office, all of the notes etc. are already waiting on me using MobileMe.

Same here. First thing I searched for we're apps which would suite my business needs. I found invoices2go, followup, box.com to be perfect for my sales needs.

My first time out in the field, it helped me generate a invoice/collect deposit/itemized description of sale all on the spot.

iPad is a awesome tool for my business needs!

 

[sphinx99]

It was something of a bust for us. Bottom line is that the support just wasn't there. There's no business support line to reach, create cases and expect a certain resolution time. If there's a hardware problem, we're expected to drive it to the Apple Store at the mall? At least in my area, factors such as these contributed to the iPad being a neat business gadget, not a serious business tool.

Furthermore, until Apple gives businesses easy ways to deploy applications to the tablet without having any involvement from Apple itself, I don't see it being used as a serious business tool. Until then it's mostly only useful for reading email and using simple web-based applications... which admittedly is a significant percentage of what many office workers use. The value starts to fall apart when you talk about non-admin staff.

Lastly, without any native way to deal with attachments (how do I save a file from the mail client, then attach it to another message later?) I'm hard-pressed to call it a serious tool. Dropbox is nice, but as a business that handles sensitive IP, Apple's cloud-storage-over-local-storage model has risks that I can't accept.

Not all is bad; the VPN support is excellent, and the remote manageability is good. Well, it's consistent; I can use something like Activesync to remote wipe the device and know it'll get wiped, whereas with Android devices it depends on which of ten versions of the OS you're dealing with. We use them for kiosk displays; they work great in this regard. They are excellent as display devices on manufacturing production lines. They are great for IT staff to do remote management of systems, and for managers to have an easy to use tool for reading/replying to email on the go. They are great for our sales team... well sort of; they impress with the kind of content they can present, right up until you have to pull out a bunch of adapters to connect it to a projector. But on the balance, there's value.

I think for small business, it's great. For "office workers" (e.g. the people who mostly attend meetings and send/receive email) it's great. For specialty workers who make up the backbone of many organizations (for mine, advanced engineering and R&D) it's mostly just a toy.

 

[glen e]

It was something of a bust for us. Bottom line is that the support just wasn't there. There's no business support line to reach, create cases and expect a certain resolution time. If there's a hardware problem, we're expected to drive it to the Apple Store at the mall? At least in my area, factors such as these contributed to the iPad being a neat business gadget, not a serious business tool.

Furthermore, until Apple gives businesses easy ways to deploy applications to the tablet without having any involvement from Apple itself, I don't see it being used as a serious business tool. Until then it's mostly only useful for reading email and using simple web-based applications... which admittedly is a significant percentage of what many office workers use. The value starts to fall apart when you talk about non-admin staff.

Lastly, without any native way to deal with attachments (how do I save a file from the mail client, then attach it to another message later?) I'm hard-pressed to call it a serious tool. Dropbox is nice, but as a business that handles sensitive IP, Apple's cloud-storage-over-local-storage model has risks that I can't accept.

Not all is bad; the VPN support is excellent, and the remote manageability is good. Well, it's consistent; I can use something like Activesync to remote wipe the device and know it'll get wiped, whereas with Android devices it depends on which of ten versions of the OS you're dealing with. We use them for kiosk displays; they work great in this regard. They are excellent as display devices on manufacturing production lines. They are great for IT staff to do remote management of systems, and for managers to have an easy to use tool for reading/replying to email on the go. They are great for our sales team... well sort of; they impress with the kind of content they can present, right up until you have to pull out a bunch of adapters to connect it to a projector. But on the balance, there's value.

I think for small business, it's great. For "office workers" (e.g. the people who mostly attend meetings and send/receive email) it's great. For specialty workers who make up the backbone of many organizations (for mine, advanced engineering and R&D) it's mostly just a toy.

excellent post.....

 

[thelookingglass]

It was something of a bust for us. Bottom line is that the support just wasn't there. There's no business support line to reach, create cases and expect a certain resolution time. If there's a hardware problem, we're expected to drive it to the Apple Store at the mall? At least in my area, factors such as these contributed to the iPad being a neat business gadget, not a serious business tool.

Furthermore, until Apple gives businesses easy ways to deploy applications to the tablet without having any involvement from Apple itself, I don't see it being used as a serious business tool. Until then it's mostly only useful for reading email and using simple web-based applications... which admittedly is a significant percentage of what many office workers use. The value starts to fall apart when you talk about non-admin staff.

Lastly, without any native way to deal with attachments (how do I save a file from the mail client, then attach it to another message later?) I'm hard-pressed to call it a serious tool. Dropbox is nice, but as a business that handles sensitive IP, Apple's cloud-storage-over-local-storage model has risks that I can't accept.

Not all is bad; the VPN support is excellent, and the remote manageability is good. Well, it's consistent; I can use something like Activesync to remote wipe the device and know it'll get wiped, whereas with Android devices it depends on which of ten versions of the OS you're dealing with. We use them for kiosk displays; they work great in this regard. They are excellent as display devices on manufacturing production lines. They are great for IT staff to do remote management of systems, and for managers to have an easy to use tool for reading/replying to email on the go. They are great for our sales team... well sort of; they impress with the kind of content they can present, right up until you have to pull out a bunch of adapters to connect it to a projector. But on the balance, there's value.

I think for small business, it's great. For "office workers" (e.g. the people who mostly attend meetings and send/receive email) it's great. For specialty workers who make up the backbone of many organizations (for mine, advanced engineering and R&D) it's mostly just a toy.

Can't speak to your point about corporate support lines, but the attachments issue can be resolved with Goodreader. You can both save and send attachments from the app. Works well. Not the most elegant solution, but it does the job.

Unless an organization is willing to spend the resources to create custom iOS apps, I agree that the iPad wouldn't be useful for "specialty workers." For those of us monkeys in 9 to 5 office jobs, there's quite a bit that can be done from an iPad.