I am intrigued how people from different industries, in different positions are using the Apple iPad. Often I get the comment “what would I use an iPad for”. I decided to start asking how people were enjoying their iPads. Here is one iPad story:
John Biehler describes himself as an e-business analyst, working for a large corporation. He is a technologist, a consultant, a conference speaker and attendee, a trainer, a photographer and a gamer!
John and I met at the Vancouver #F5Expo last year. My brother who normally resides in Vancouver was in Calgary (my hometown) and noticed that I tweeted from a Tweetup I organized in Vancouver the night before the #F5Expo conference. He then noticed that John had also tweeted from the Tweetup. My brother then did a quick intro via Twitter all the way from Calgary, and next thing you know John and I had met and were chatting in Vancouver.
John’s iPad story:
1. What do you use your iPad for?
A little bit of everything…I take it with me everywhere for taking notes, surfing the web, email, photos, dabbling with one of the many music creation apps and the occasional game.
2. How often do you use it?
Everyday.
3. What kind of iPad did you purchase?
I originally purchased a 32gb Wifi only model when they were first available in the US (I drove down to Seattle launch weekend to get one) but have since upgraded (after selling the original one) to a 64gb 3G model for more flexibility.
4. What accessories do you have?
I have the Apple brand flipcase, the VGA out cable and the camera connection kit.
5. Would you recommend an iPad? If so what type of a person would you recommend buy one?
It’s a pretty personal device, like a laptop. I’d recommend people at least consider the iPad if they are looking at a netbook at a minimum or even for a light duty laptop user. The battery life and portability are huge with the iPad over other devices and the available apps cover most users needs.
6. Do you also use a laptop, if so how do you use the laptop vs the iPad?
I also have a laptop and haven’t quite been able to give it up yet as there are a few things that I still can’t do with the iPad such as access my work VPN, code hacking and more advanced photo editing. Aside from live app demos, I’ve also used it to create and present Keynote presentations at a number of conferences. It was great to be able to leave the laptop at home and be confident that the presentation was completely created and presented on something so small.
7. What do you dislike about the iPad?
I wish it either came in larger capacities or was capable of connecting to an external drive for storage. This was one of the factors that made me upsize to the larger model as I wanted to be able to download photos while traveling onto it for immediate uploading/basic post processing. I’d love to be able to connect a small portable (passport) drive to it to pull photos down off it after editing to free up space.
8. How do you see your use of the iPad evolving in the future?
The apps that are being created for it continue to impress me from a creative perspective…there are frequent apps that I see that blow me away from a “I can’t believe it can do that” angle and it’s only going to get better as the platform matures.
9. What are some apps you would recommend?
Some of my favorite apps are Flipboard (Facebook/Twitter magazine using your content), AirVideo (stream any media from your home computer to the iPad), CameraBag (photo post processing app), GoodReader (ebook/PDF reader with lots of bells & whistles) and Words with Friends HD (a Scrabble clone that is played turn based with others).
10. What apps would you not recommend?
There is a lot of apps to avoid…I can’t think of a specific one but I regularly use http://www.facebook.com/l/e5ddf3jhJuyW1jyFeVtNKFjCqYQ;Appshopper.com (also an app for the iPad) that gives you more options for viewing the apps on offer from the App Store as well as keep track of apps that drop in price (which is sometimes an indication of it being unpopular or overpriced).
John has written some blog posts around his iPad experiences: http://www.facebook.com/l/e5ddfXYsrcVs67LRcUwdoKEDtXA;johnbiehler.com
He can also be found on: http://johnbiehler.com/about/
Thanks John! More iPad stories to come. Share yours in the comments below.