One Week Later with iOS, only
After one week of fulfilling all my computer needs with just iOS, I must say that if I was in any different profession, I would most likely use my iPad a majority of the time. I was able to everything I needed to do besides “work” which for me is the business of running my photography business, and more often than not it was more pleasurable than doing it on a desktop counterpart. Besides sending emails, editing photos, posting a blog on to my website, writing contracts, bookkeeping, basically all the little things that I needed to do to stay in business, had to be on hold for a week.
Through out this week, I’ve really experienced how easy it is to consume information and media of all types on these post-PC devices. Reading and sharing articles/quotes/photos are so much more enjoyable on iOS than on the computer. Twitter was meant to be viewed in mobile, Instagram will never be on Mac OSX. If you are going to read anything that’s longer than 5 minutes, it should be done on a retina screen that you can hold in your hand. One of the few apps and experiences that is worse on iOS is Facebook. Compared to the ecosystem of apps out there for other social media channels, Facebook seems to be the most clunky and carelessly implemented. Maybe because it’s essentially a web app that’s wrapped into a native app and a true native app, but unless you have a WiFi or LTE connection, everything takes too long too load. My theory is that this is a side-effect of an overly bloated product wanting to do too much. But I will say, the iPad version of the app is a lot better than the iPhone version.
Every serious user of iOS should force themselves to use just an iPad for 2 or 3 days, as long as it doesn’t affect their business. It would help you appreciate this post-pc revolution as well as understand what it can do better than what the traditional computer can do. I now know how I maximize the time I spend at my desk by doing those things that I can only do through Mac OSX and do everything else on iOS and away from my desk (preferably on Broadway at a bench on a sunny day).
The simplest way I can summarize my experience is that the iPad is an amazing device for consuming and capturing content, and is almost as amazing to create content on it. Flipboard is amazing for the iPad. Blogsy, the app I’m using to write this post, is probably the closest to MarsEdit for iOS that I’ve used (but it doesn’t have support for Squarespace, which is what I post to my “work” blog, but I know it’ll be here soon enough). Paper is an amazing way to capture free hand notes, sketches, diagrams, etc. Snapseed is my go to app to edit photos from my iPhone or from my 5D Mark III. There’s text editors born every minute (my favorite is IA Writer), and iLife is available on iOS for anything else you would want to create.
Although I’m looking forward to getting my computer back tomorrow so that I can actually do work, it’s been great not having to be in the office but be able to stay connected, keep the tide at bay, and take in all that the my slice of the internet has to offer.
