I love my iPad. It’s fantastic as a content consumption device. I walk around the house with my iPad watching videos, web surfing, and playing games. And for those who say, yeah, but I can do that with my laptop. No you can’t. Not with one hand. Not without that stupid hinged screen flip-flopping around. Not really.
I’m also grateful for the iPad legitimizing the tablet form factor. I’ve been a long-time tablet owner (I’ve owned several ranging from Motion to Samsung to OQO) but I always felt disappointed by the hardware–overheating, poor battery life, and heavy weight. Application developers also failed to innovate on the tablet. Say what you will, but the iPad has been the singular device able to push the market interest back to this form factor by delivering a beautiful device, with truly usable touchscreen apps, and at a price closer to what the mainstream can bear. This year alone over a dozen tablet devices from different makers will make its way into the market.
As a consumer device, the iPad rules.
As a business user it sucks. That’s because Apple hates business users. Worse off, it’s a malicious and deliberate effort by Apple to make it so. We wouldn’t want to cannibalize Macbook Pros and Macbook Airs, would we? Pssst, Apple…I don’t use those for my work either. They might be cute for the musicians, photographers, and graphic designers out there, but as a casual developer and full-time business manager, Mac gets no play at work. Not to mention the fact that most Corporate IT teams will not officially support Macs on their network. I know, it surprises me too.
I found it funny as I stood in line to pickup my iPad that they had business development managers visiting people in line asking how they planned on using the device for their business. I told them I’m not. Nor do I see most business owners planning on it. That’s because Apple has intentionally crippled anything in the device that would actually make it useful for a business user.
OUTPUT TO SCREEN/PROJECTOR: FAIL!
Great, Apple will happily sell you a VGA adapter for $29. Guess what? You can only output a handful of apps to the screen/projector. WTF? Why? Clearly, the device can do it because Steve used that very same capability to show off his shiny new gift to the world. So why disable it in the production device? ‘Cause Apple hates business users. Any thought of using the device to easily display docs or display websites to an audience is out the window. Don’t get me started on the limited options I have to show docs via iWork. And all those great apps on the iPad? Yeah, can’t show those to an audience at work either. Incidentally, this pisses off app developers too because recording help and promotional videos for your app with the sorry emulator is just weak sauce.
WIRELESS SYNC: FAIL!
Zune has it. Kindle has it. No iPod, iPhone, or iPad has it. Damn, even my old Pocket PC could do that. Good luck, WiFi Sync, I truly hope you get approved in the app store.
SEAMLESSLY WORK WITH DOCS ACROSS DEVICES: FAIL!
Why can’t I take files from my Mac, iMac, PC, network drive, and easily put it on my iPad? And vice versa? Why can’t I easily pass docs between my iPhone and my iPad? No, I shouldn’t have to pay for a third party app to do that. And I shouldn’t have to launch that app in order to access it, either. Apple once prided itself on “it just works” and the fact that its products so seamlessly integrated with each other. Hey, Apple, when I plug in my iPad (and iPhone) it should just show up as a USB storage device. Even my cheapest Blackberry can do that. Guess it doesn’t matter, ’cause I can’t do jack with the doc once it’s on my iPad anyway.
PRODUCTIVITY APPS: FAIL!
We totally re-worked Calendar and Mail so it’s so great to use! Yeah, right. Maybe for people who get 5 emails a day. But for a business user, my Blackberry will pimp slap the iPad (and iPhone) up and down the block. Two times. Where is “go to next unread message?” Copy-paste that isn’t a joke to use? Auto-fill that actually assumes I know what the hell I mean to type and not some asinine suggestion it keeps forcing me to explicitly cancel? What do you mean I can’t forward a meeting invite? Are you serious? I can’t even create a meeting invite and connect to my corporate exchange server to add a meeting room to the invite. I can’t add attendees unless they’re already in my address book or I have their corp email memorized. Wait a sec, I have to get a third party app in order to print? My camera can print directly to a printer, but neither my iPhone nor iPad can do that natively? Huh?
3RD PARTY APPS: FAIL!
Let it go, Steve. Let us install the apps on our device that we want. Any great app that business users have come to love has poor prospects to ever make its way onto the iPhone OS platform. That’s because enterprise-level app developers, the guys who have talents beyond a simple to-do task list, beyond another sad notepad app, the guys who actually make useful things like OneNote, PersonalBrain, Firefox, Team Box, Pivotal Tracker, and Skype don’t want to gamble on developing an app that’ll just get rejected.
So while I love my iPad as a consumer, it is destined to be a hand me down to my little nephew because Notion Ink Adam, WePad, and ExoPC will all surpass the iPad for my business use. Or perhaps I’ll celebrate the beautiful work from Spirit, Dev-Team, and Saurik’s Cydia. Microsoft, HP, and others, are you taking notes?
The really sad part is that there really is nothing technically that prevents any of this functionality on the iPad or iPhone. It would be a simple matter of a firmware/OS upgrade. Apple just hates business users. Is it really all that much to ask? Output full UI to screen. Transfer files and docs. Wireless sync. Productivity apps that are actually productive. Opening up to more apps. That’s Business 101. Tell that to your business development managers.
