Oh Lord, won’t you buy me an iPad 2, I already have my laptop but I need the iPad too.

Well, those of you who follow my blog entries here for CPA Australia (thanks Mum) will recall that I used my Kindle at the cricket to help write my first entry, and I complained then about the battery life of the iPhone. And of course since then we have had the release of the imaginatively named ‘iPad 2‘, complete with all of it’s Steve Jobs land of hype and glory approach. 

Now, given that I am of course a dual-degree qualified nerd, and thus obsessed with gadgets of every kind, I had to check out the iPad 2. I’d managed to resist the siren call of the iPad, but the sleek lines of the newer, bigger version of this oversized iPod Touch was too much to bear. And since I finally managed to get hold of one (these things are still difficult to get hold of), I have noticed something. People are attracted to these devices. Unreasonably so. People want them – they want to get their hands on them, and manufacture a reason to justify the purchase to their significant other. Or their manager. Or their accountant.

I was at my regular Rostrum Club meeting (we do public speaking – yes, kind of like Toastmasters) last night, and we have several accountants in the group. Of course, all of our technology was on display.  It was like that Mr Bean episode, except that where Mr Bean had lots of pencils we all tried to one-up each other with our gadgets.  There was the ubiquitous iPhone, the laptop, the Macbook Air, and of course my iPad, Kindle, iPhone and voice recorder.

Honestly, these things are like catnip. I’m not addicted, but I know someone who is…

So. Are these iPads any good? Are they useful? Well, the short answer is yes, they are useful – you can do more than just play Angry Birds on them. They are also easy to use. And that screen is really huge in relative terms, while remaining lightweight and not so huge. But the question of most interest for this blog entry, and the question I want to address, is whether your accounting firm should adopt them?

There are two aspects to this question. Firstly, what can they do to enhance the firm – beyond being a cool toy, what does this thing do? Secondly, does the iPad detract – are there good reasons not to get one?

Now, out of the box, the iPad is relatively useful. There’s email, calendars, web browsers, a small note-taking application and of course the map application.  Thank goodness for these things – as a man I now feel perfectly justified in never asking strangers for directions.  For this reason alone it is worth getting the 3G version (which has better roaming-around capability for getting lost in cars).

The iPad is mainly designed though as a media consumption device – it isn’t great for producing much beyond a few simple lines of text on its own. However, short emails are easily done with the on-board keyboard and entering calendar entries whilst on the go is of course a snap.

There are also Bluetooth enabled keyboards that can be used with the iPad, and of course with those keyboards the iPad becomes very usable to type on – immeasurably better than the iPhone. It’s not a laptop – heck it isn’t even a low-powered netbook – but as a result of these tradeoffs the iPad does have a solid ten-hour battery life, which should be enough for most people on the go.  So the form factor’s a good one and so long as you charge it overnight it should be there for you all day.  Something that cannot really be said for the iPhone.

The iPad can be made to really sing though, if you load up some of the inexpensive apps – yes, Virginia, there really is an ‘app for that’. The apps I  would add to start with are the ones Apple should have included in the first place.  A calculator is needed (PCalc Lite is free and does the job) and iAnnotate or GoodReader for reading and marking up PDF reports and reports (very, very useful!). Doodle Buddy is good for simple free-form note-taking (get a capacitative pen and you’ll even be able to pretend you have a $0.52 notepad).

DropBox also works well as a pseudo-file system to ‘sync’ files back to the internet for access from your desktop computer. This adds real functionality to the iPad – forget USB flash drives, the lack of a real file system is the iPad’s achilles heel. DropBox works well with some good applications too, like PlainText and iAnnotate and QuickOffice. QuickOffice allows you to edit and read Microsoft Office documents. Still, don’t expect to work with those truly huge spreadsheets us accountants like (I have a 50mb spreadsheet that tests my laptop, so the iPad’s just not going to cut it).

For the biggest increase in personal productivity though, use the ToodleDo application. ToodleDo manages your task list according to the GTD system well enough, whilst being simple and syncing across your phone and desktop computer (well, it’s a web client on the desktop but you know what I mean).  Apart from that silly name, ToodleDo is an application worth checking out.  If you want something more powerful then OmniFocus is a good option though I found it to be far too complicated for my needs (and it’s Mac-only).

Skype as well is a novelty that quickly becomes useful – and in that handy little form factor you can move around easily while skyping clients or wayward offspring traveling overseas.

Incidentally, I’m reminded of the money my firm spent putting in video conferencing in 1998. Ah well, hard come, easy go.

And that brings me to the final, absolute ‘killer app’ for the iPad as a professional.  That must-have application has got to be Evernote. Evernote stores photos, videos, PDFs, documents, and simple text notes, and then syncs it all back to the Evernote Server Mountain (well, I’m not sure, exactly, that their Fortress of Data is a mountain, but I’d not be surprised to find out that they’ve actually hollowed out a mountain range in Wyoming to look after all my data). Using Evernote means that this same data can be accessed from your iPhone (or Android/BlackBerry mobile device of course) or desktop computer (Windows or Mac). Just think – all of your data with you, wherever you are. And all of that data is searchable, encryptable and generally usable. I’ve been a big fan of Evernote for a long time now – I was an advocate even back in the early days when it was almost but not quite entirely different.

With Evernote you can have all of your ‘smart’ information with you.  A must for the paperless office.  You can even scan file notes and Evernote’s servers back in the Fortress of Data will attempt to recognize your handwriting (good luck with mine, Evernote).  Evernote can help answer that age-old question, ‘what did we talk about the last time we met?’. Or even, ‘who the heck are you, and are you a client?’ if you are really particular about maintaining your Evernote data.

Unfortunately however that leads to the elephant in the room that arrives when you open the rather small unassuming white box that the iPad is delivers in. For the iPad – in the corporate setting – security is the real issue. The iPad is luggable, lovable, and loseable. Used to its potential, the Evernote application can store all of an individual’s data over many years. And current emails and calendar entries and spreadsheets and photos of your significant other and your daughter’s 21st.  And all of that data can be lost. Left in the back of a taxi, dropped by the side of the road after leaving it on the boot, or left at a client’s with other client’s data on it. Well, I know I’ve done all these things with my phone (yes, I know), so it’s still easy enough to do with an iPad. Heck, I even left my phone in a bin at Sydney airport once.

Yes, I know.

The point is, a mobile device is mobile. And it has your data, on it – as already discussed, if it doesn’t have your data, it becomes something of a useless toy. You can ‘find your iPad’ (much as you can ‘find your iPhone) due to its GPS tracking solution, the ‘remote wipe’ feature also goes some way to ensuring control over the data. There are also passcode features that lock the device to the user, and wipe the data again if the passcode is incorrectly entered too many times. Still, that’s a further task for the IT manager to worry about – and if a fleet of iPads is maintained, there are now multiple points at which the data can be lost (DropBox, EverNote, ToodleDo) in addition to the ‘traditional’ laptop and lever arch folders of data. 

Nevertheless security remains a concern – the iOS is regularly compromised with security breaches (the Safari web browser seems to be the major culprit) and no-one should assume their iPad data is secure.  At all.  Mind, the same comment applies to smartphones of any persuasion and laptops generally.

Overall, the iPad is a useful tool, but your practice is going to have to consider the potential risks. This is a continuum as to how valuable your data is compared to the risk of loss. In reality the risk is not much different to an iPhone. (so if you already have iPhones the security concerns around an iPad should be less difficult to manage). As usual, pragmatism should prevail in this instance.

There are other tablets on the market but none of these yet offer the market share and future proofing of the iPad.  Most of those products that have come out as the ‘iPad killer’ have fallen by the wayside, usually more expensive, just as insecure, and less functional. And I’m sorry but that, pragmatically, includes all the Android devices (as an aside, isn’t it interesting how technology makes us go all gooey and tribal?) For business, a 3G iPad is most likely preferable – the 3G iPad is more likely to be easily managed remotely than the wifi-only version.

My key ‘useful apps’ are set out above. For some users, security issues will be such that you just can’t use an iPad, no matter how cool you think it would make you look.  I think though that the most benefit from the iPad though can only be gained if you change your personal workflow – how you do things.  I suppose my secret here is that to get the most use out of an iPad, you have to, you know, buy an iPad and use it in all of your everyday tasks.

In summary, if you’re a professional  that wants to replace their folio and notepad with an iPad, the iPad will mostly do what you want it to do. And if you’re looking for some uber-geek cool, the Portenzo case is understood to be well worth the wait –  if you like to look like you are not using the latest Apple fanboi device (but really are).

Yes, I know.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.