The iPad did it (updated)

August 1 2010

On Thursday last week, I took a short trip to New York City to meet an important customer.  Because of my older daughter's summer schedule, I try to stay home at least every other week during these months, but sometimes, duty calls.  I took the 6 AM flight out from Chicago to LaGuardia, booked a car to meet me there on limores.net (who use technology very, very well to manage your trip, for about the same cost as a taxi), and was at Ground Zero, near my client's office, well before the meeting.  Afterwards, I grabbed a banh mi sandwich from Baoguette, hailed a taxi, and was back at LaGuardia by 1:15 PM for a 2:45 PM return flight to Chicago.  In other words, the glamorous business traveler's typical day.

What made Thursday different from all my previous travel is that I only brought my iPad and Blackberry Bold along on the trip.  No laptop, no briefcase, no mound-o-unnecessary cables.  Going through airport security and moving about NYC was a breeze, since I only needed to carry one item -- the iPad in its professional-looking leather case.  Since business in New York usually means a suit or at least a blazer, I had turned my jacket into a utility belt.  In one pocket were my car keys, business cards, and Blackberry, while in another were earbuds, the video out cable for the iPad (in case I had needed to project a presentation), and my reading glasses.

During the day, I used the iPad constantly.  In flight, I read a book on Kindle, listened to music, and played Bejeweled Blitz and Words with Friends.  When we were delayed an hour departing out of LaGuardia (what else is new), I turned on the 3G (constantly useful during this trip) and read the New York Times.  Email?  Yep, coming in on my Blackberry too and easiest to read there, but a lot faster to pound out some key responses on the iPad (sorry, RIM friends).  If I had needed a presentation with the customer, I had it ready on Dropbox, and a program called Presenter would have allowed me to project out VGA.  I even used FourSquare to find out if the banh mi place was any good.

I can't tell you how liberating it was to breeze through the airport with one folio in hand, and how I laughed when the car service driver asked "got any luggage?"  Now, if I need to do product demos, I'll need the laptop; for a longer trip, I'll want Skype with video to be able to see my baby daugther; and picture uploading and editing are obviously the realm of the MacBook.  But the next day trip?  I'll be flying through with iPad.  Another #win for Apple.

Two updates: 1) Forgot the new American Airlines app for iPhone/iPad was also a huge help, using an electronic boarding pass and check-in in a single click from the device rather than all the blah blah blah with printed boarding passes.  2) At the end of the day when I arrived home, the iPad battery still had 40% left.

Ed Brill | Highland Park, IL USA Category:  Machead  Add/View Comments [25]

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  1. 1  Carl Tyler http://www.epilio.com | 8/1/2010 10:48:51 PM

    Do you think with the apple SD card adapter the iPad could fulfill the need of photo uploading and editing?

  1. 2  Werner Motzet  | 8/1/2010 10:49:31 PM

    thank you very much. This is very interesting, because our Salesmanager tell me/report the same experience. And it is very helpful for me to hear this from "external" person(s) too, so it is easier for me to classify this feedbacks.

    Thank you very much, have much more nice days with (and without)your iPad.

    Kind Regards

    Werner

  1. 3  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 8/1/2010 10:50:04 PM

    @1 upload, yes. Not sure about edit. There is no iPhoto app, but there are some other photo editing apps. It would take some work but maybe. I am going on vacation in a few weeks and the wife is making a strong play for me to bring the iPad only. I think she's right about the thought, but photo upload is one thing that worries me. Of course nobody really wants to see my vacation pictures anyway :0)

  1. 4  Randall Shimizu  | 8/1/2010 10:50:31 PM

    Ed:

    Do do a lot of typing with with the Ipad. If so do you use the Ipad attachable keyboard.

    I was at the Catalyst conference this weekend and I noticed that there was a number of people using Ipads.

  1. 5  VNC  | 8/1/2010 10:51:09 PM

    VNC would allow you to connect into your Mac at home and do your photo editing from the iPad as well.

    Which is a perfect segway into... How about a VNC client built into Domino. With just that addition, you could have the full Notes client available on everything virtually every platform that anyone would ever consider using as a computer, and a few that they wouldn't. Not only would your iPad be able to run the Notes client without extra software, but so would the iPhone and Android. Heck, you could dig out an old Amiga and run the full Notes 8.5 client, or even a Nintendo DS. (not that I would recommend either for that purpose)

    We see this used very well in VMWare Server, which doesn't even have a native interface.

  1. 6  Andy Steven http://www.uptime100.com.au | 8/1/2010 10:51:32 PM

    Now all we need is to get end users talking with passion about Notes, marketing job dne!

  1. 7  Andy Steven http://www.uptime100.com.au | 8/1/2010 10:51:50 PM

    Woops, meant to imply like Ed is passionate about ipad

  1. 8  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 8/1/2010 10:52:50 PM

    @4 I've been thinking about the external keyboard. Had dinner with a number of iPad users tonight and reaction to the external keyboard was very mixed.

  1. 9  Warren Elsmore http://Www.elsmore.net | 8/1/2010 11:13:27 PM

    Ed,

    We've just returned from 3 weeks vacation, with nothing but an iPad and our phones. It's a no-brained, trust me!

    Warren

  1. 10  Warren Elsmore http://Www.elsmore.net | 8/1/2010 11:14:39 PM

    'No-brainer' - the spell check still isn't perfect!

  1. 11  Randall Shimizu  | 8/1/2010 11:18:30 PM

    @8 Ed

    The Ipad keyboard does seem a bit small. I detest the idea the Apple is forcing one to use the Ipad keyboard. I could never understand why other portable folding keyboards did not have a way to lock them in the flat position. This would allow you to use them in your lap.

  1. 12  Jim Lundy http://jimlundy.blogspot.com | 8/1/2010 11:20:39 PM

    Ed, my team is using iPads and they are great for being on the road. We even made a video and featured iPads in them.

    The iPad is changing the PC industry. Check out my post: { Link }

    Anyhow, have a great summer.

    Jim

  1. 13  Comment removed  | 8/2/2010 2:02:00 AM

    Comment removed

  1. 14  EricE  | 8/2/2010 2:33:36 AM

    Wow, what a turn around for Ed - Welcome to the fold :)

    BTW - while the VNC clients can be functional, I suspect somewhere inside IBM you have a Citrix infrastructure:

    { Link }

    Works like a champ and is very seamless.

    lol @13 call it what you want, Apple will be laughing all the way to the bank long after the "trendy" meme runs out.

  1. 15  Stefan Lattermann  | 8/2/2010 2:35:07 AM

    "reading glasses" - nice to hear I'm not the only one. Welcome to the club 40+!

  1. 16  Catalin Acatrinei  | 8/2/2010 3:16:55 AM

    Instead of VNC which is not secure to my knowledge, I prefer Teamviewer. Works even from iPhone, with a lot of scrolling ;-)

  1. 17  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 8/2/2010 11:24:28 AM

    @15 and the need for them almost 100% coincided with turning 40. Especially needed with iPad/Blackberry.

  1. 18  Mike Robinson http://www.invcs.com | 8/2/2010 3:33:44 PM

    A dumb question. Do you compose your presentations in Powerpoint (or the Symphony equivlant) and there is an app for the ipad that can read it and display it?

  1. 19  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 8/2/2010 4:42:50 PM

    Lotus Symphony exports PDF. There are a variety of ways to view PDFs on the iPad; if it's a small group and you can look at it on the iPad on-screen; otherwise I bought a 99c app called Presenter that can use the VGA out cable to project on an external projector/monitor. Easy peasy.

  1. 20  Volker Weber http://vowe.net/about | 8/2/2010 4:52:48 PM

    Mike, Apple has an application called Keynote for Mac and for iPad. The iPad version can display (and edit) files created on the Mac as well as PPT files.

  1. 21  Mike Robinson http://www.invcs.com | 8/2/2010 6:56:02 PM

    @20 sweet. I've been avoiding the ipad, as I already have a touch and I swore I would not do another "toy"- but there seems to be some good business uses out there.

  1. 22  Rick MacGuigan  | 8/4/2010 11:23:36 AM

    Our whole iPad/phone - traveler initiative is on hold because current Traveler code does not allow remote control to force passcode on devices. Currently have 3 execs with iPads and some Droids with iPhone emulation. Can't rely on user to enable passcode and keep it enabled. Any idea when this will be available ? Also, how about passing the IE/firefox browser thru Traveler which seems to handle redirecting much better then iNotes Redirector. No proxy rules required with Traveler.

  1. 23  Kevin Hansen http://www.dominokeys.com | 8/17/2010 5:07:16 PM

    @19 - Can you post a link to that Presenter app? I don't see a match with exactly the same name for the price and would love to get one that someone else has confirmed "works" vs. trial and error.

  1. 24  Kees Blom http://www.ASICS.NL | 10/6/2010 4:28:32 AM

    Why use Dropbox were there is IBM QuickR?