An Apple A Day – Day 3
Today is the day! We get to see how this baby performs in a real work environment. This marks my first official day using my iPad at work. Now I had my trusty laptops on standby but rarely needed them and when I did it was mostly for time-sensitive things I’m not familiar yet with on my iPad.
First Things First
I started by setting up my corporate email through Secure Hub for my clients’ email account. It was a fairly painless process but not like the simple and fast process I was used to so far. This was really an app hindrance, not Apple.
Another thing that was impressive was as I was opening up applications it was almost as if Apple already knew what accounts I was using or had seen them before. My office suites were already logged into my work subscription and connected to all my common drives like OneDrive and DropBox. Talk about the red carpet roll out! Again Apple excels in user experience. But, then again that is what they are all about.
Secondly
While I gush over some things, others are still a work in progress. I had my first attempt at using Visual Studio on the iPad for development. This was easier than expected but the lack of a mouse and only a Bluetooth keyboard feels like a disadvantage and things take a little longer to stop and touch vs. a mouse at the ready. This will take some getting used to.
I also took a little time out to think about the future stuff I would need and have taken the approach of native iPad first then laptop back up if critical and that has panned out great so far.
Is There A Third?
Skype! Yes, I used it for my first skype meeting for a case study meeting with peers. Tried with AirPods and the results were nothing short of amazing, crystal clear audio and video. This was a nice experience, to be free of the distractions that can come with a laptop. I didn’t feel inclined to open up 50 other browser windows and try to do other things, it helped keep me focused, and a couple of times I popped out to check an email, it was nice to have everything just a swipe away. The reduced screen real estate was actually a boon, contrary to what I’ve been taught and have felt all these years.
Last but Definitely not Least
Finally, I wanted to see if I couldn’t hook this thing up to my 49-inch widescreen monitor, again nothing less than the best but needed a $50 adapter, but luckily I already had one I bought for my Kenwood Radio a while back and it worked amazingly. The sad news is that it doesn’t expand your iPad “desktop” it only replicates the screen, there are only a few scenarios where this would make any sense and this wasn’t one of them so I chose to pursue an alternate route at a later time.
That’s all the time I have for today, so leave your questions in the comments and I’ll make sure I get back to you! Thanks for joining me on this journey, see you tomorrow!
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