About Paul’s iPad

When I watched Steve Jobs launch the iPad, I knew it was something truly “different.” Although I knew I wouldn’t be able to even touch one until launch day, there was something in my gut that told me / moved me to do something with this moment in tech history. At the very least I new this thing was going to be something more than “just a big iPod touch.” That turned out to be one of the more silly arguments, didn’t it?

Because I work for myself, I get to make all my own tech choices. There is no IT department that tells what to do or not do. There is no one with vendor relationships that forces anything on me as a “favor.” Although I am in every way a self-professed Apple “fan boy,” I do believe in the right tool for the right job.

Then it hit me … why don’t I run my business on nothing but the iPad for the first 30 days after release? This would both force me to do as much as I could with the device while giving me something to blog about that was (hopefully) of more substance than the typical new shiny object approach that so many others would take.

PaulsiPad.com came from this plan. It only made sense.

And, to make things more fun, I’d be making a week long trip to China during those 30 days so we wouldn’t be testing the iPad in the lab, we be testing it, truly, in the “field.”

Funny thing was, there was a lot to blog about. The device worked as promised and the apps that I used in business I was able to use on the iPad with little to no problems. The biggest surprise was the obvious (when you think about it) realization that spreadsheet beg for a mouse – and aren’t so fun on the touchscreen. The old posts are there, you can read them if you want.

Oregon has no sales tax and I live very close to an Apple Store. We also have no ridiculous recycling fees or some of the other nonsense some states put on people. I had every plan of showing up on opening morning and paying $499 for my $499 iPad but got a call from my Australian friend Ed Dale that changed those plans. I kid you not Ed was going to, for his 40th birthday, fly to America to pick up a bunch of iPads and bring them home.

He was to be in the country for less than 12 hours and asked me to join him in Los Angeles for a little something he called “Operation iPad.” How could I refuse? A video of our adventures is still available at YouTube and well worth a look (I think, at least).

I paid tax and recycling fees and, yes, an airplane ticket to be part of this. It was worth every dime.

I have another telling story of getting my iPad to work at a hotel in China. The place required that to use wireless you first had to plug in to register your computer with the network before you could get Internet access. From what I understand this is a common practice in dealing with the “Great Firewall of China.” Back then (and currently at the time of writing), there was no way to connect your iPad to a wired network. I called tech support for the hotel and they got me up in less than 30 minutes. Funny thing is, not only did their tech support have a workaround, but he knew his way around my iPad better than I did. When asked “you don’t have these yet, do you?” I was told “Not officially.” Nuff said.

As the iPad economy progressed (after the 30 days), things only got better. The 3g iPad with $30 a month unlimited access was a dream come true and the combo of killer releases from app vendors and accessory makers (I type this on my sixth iPad keyboard/case combo) made it a pleasure to do work on the iPad.

My work life was quickly made up of the iPad away from the desk and my iMac when at the desk. My Macbook Pro was collecting dust.

I end up going back to my laptop – but here’s why. I took a large consulting gig with a company in San Diego and found one major kink in iPad land: When working with others and sharing documents between team mates, the simple workflow of attaching a document that you saved to your desktop (or network file server) simply wasn’t there. Yes, you could “do it” but the process that I am used to simply wasn’t happening. Working with a team a shared document store on the iPad simply wasn’t worth the effort. I ended up purchasing a Macbook Air for those times but still, to this day, prefer my iPad as my portable device.

I do want to stress that this can be done, it just wasn’t feasible with the group I was working with. Being that “right tool for the job” kinda guy, I went back to the notebook – I’m not saying you have to.

I write this on an iPad to an outline I developed on the incredible app iThoughtsHD (we will touch on that app later). The content will certainly be posted to PaulsiPad.com and I’d be lying if I didn’t admit there are some thoughts of a Kindle (yes, I’ll do iBooks to but Kindle is still a better platform in my opinion (see I’m not 100% Apple Fanboy)) option. Right now I type this on a flight without wifi access so I type this in Pages – for those playing along.

We’re going to explore the iPad as a business tool more in the 20,000 foot stuff than in the detailed walkthrough of my favorite apps take on things. If you’re looking for that, I can’t recommend enough the excellent book Mac At Work by David Sparks – Mac Sparky. David both turned me on to iThoughtsHD and how it could be used to write a book so I blame him for this journey.

Shall we begin to, at the risk of sounding corny, to “think different” in the world of the iPad and business?

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Read the original post that started it all..

Have iPad product or software news you’d like to submit to Paul’s iPad, please email us at PaulsiPadBlog@gmail.com.

Have a sample product you would like us to review, feel free to send it to

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