iPad 2 Practical Cloud Management
This post is all about my frustrations and solutions with accessing cloud storage on the iPad 2. It is large but I believe that it reads quickly and is worth your time. I will also discuss how my business-centric apps work with those cloud options. It’s important to remember a few things before we get started.
- The list of cloud storage options is not exhaustive. There are several others which are not listed but are likely to be of importance to larger enterprises, like RackSpace’s and Amazon’s offerings.
- The list of apps is not exhaustive. These are just the ones that, after researching each category, I chose to acquire.
- All of Apple’s cloud offerings are consolidated in the iCloud column. Apple’s offerings are in a state of transition. They all seem to be consolidating into iCloud.
- The iPad 2012, 3, New, or whatever designation you want to use is not being considered. First I don’t have one and, second, it won’t matter to business apps for a long time anyway. The iPad 2 has 512 MB of RAM while the new iPad has 1 GB. Business apps that grow to need that extra RAM will drive the business move to the new iPad.
- I have signed up for the free accounts for several cloud storage options to evaluate which one(s) I like best. I’m not recommending that as a strategy for you.
- Evernote does not pitch their offering as a cloud storage option. Their cloud storage is just used as a way to share information between several devices. They make their money on the movement of data, not its storage. However, other apps do focus on their cloud storage.
- SA FTP stands for StrAIT Advisors FTP service. It is hosted by Go Daddy as is part of the service for hosting our websites. It is shown here to represent FTP servers in general. Where there is FTP support there is usually WebDav support for those of you that care about such things.
- My iPad 2 is a 16 GB model so cloud storage is important. If you have a 32 GB or 64 GB model you may rely more heavily on internal storage, as I would if I had one of those models.
- To date, I have acquired over 85 apps (a paltry sum to most iPad owners). Most don’t apply to the focus of this post. Many are no longer installed on my iPad but still available via iTunes if I change my mind and want to reinstall them. Some of those listed below are off my device for now.
- Most of the cloud storage options listed have their own iPad app. Those apps are not shown.
- The topic of cloud storage is a very fluid subject. This snapshot is valid as of this date but expect rapid changes.
Let’s look at the apps by category:
Office apps
- QuickOffice: QuickOffice Pro HD is my go-to office app on both my iOS and Android devices. That’s mainly because of its storage options and support of various Office formats. It’s also an excellent file manager and PDF reader. Listing it in both categories would be confusing.
- Pages: This is Apple’s word processor. It does a beautiful job and can produce visually stunning documents. It can export to Word.
- Numbers: This is Apple’s spreadsheet. It too does a beautiful job and can produce visually stunning documents. It can export to Excel.
- Keynote: This is Apple’s presentation package. Like the other two Apple products it works well and produces visually stunning results. It can export to PowerPoint. If you are going to make presentations to clients on your iPad, this is the tool to use.
- As a PC and Microsoft Office guy, QuickOffice is the most intuitive and easy to use office app. If you’re a Mac guy, the reverse is true. Regardless, the Apple apps are vastly larger and cost much more (combined) than QuickOffice. To be fair, the first serious computer I ever bought was the original Mac. I loved that machine but the business world went the PC route and so did I.
File managers / PDF readers
- This category is combined because all file managers on this list are also file viewers. I needed to try several file managers because file management is the worst feature of iOS 5, period! It’s very limited and non-intuitive. It’s only easy to use for very basic users. Jobs blew it on this one. I was desperate to find a decent file manager.
- ReaddleDocs: This is a decent file manager and PDF reader. However, it was a close second to GoodReader and was retired to iTunes.
- GoodReader: This is my go-to file manager and PDF reader. It is the best PDF annotator of the group, even better than ezPDF and just short of Acrobat X Pro on the PC.
- FileMan: A very useful tool, primarily because it does a good job of accessing SkyDrive. SkyDrive is important because it gives me 25 GB of free storage. That’s by far the most of any cloud vendor.
- iFiles: This is a very good file manager and beats QuickOffice with its FTP access.
- iUnarchive: This is a worthy file manager. It’s here because of its focus on file compression.
- TouchDocs: This is focused on a better UI for Google Docs than the one Google provides. Based on user reviews, the Google Docs app itself crashes when spreadsheets are edited or loaded. I’m sure that will be fixed soon.
- ezPDF: This has been my go-to PDF reader on all my other non-PC devices. However, on the iPad it isn’t a great file manager and doesn’t annotate quite as well as GoodReader. I reluctantly retired it to iTunes.
Note taking apps
- Evernote: This is the center of my business universe. It’s how I keep my most used reference information at my fingertips on all my devices. It’s how I collect research. Its only downside is that the UI on the iPad doesn’t use a folder hierarchy and display as well as on Android and Windows. However, that’s my Apple file management complaint surfacing again. It’s not Evernote’s fault.
- PP Notes: This is a useful note taking app. I like almost everything about it. It takes dictation better than anything else I have, so it’s a keeper.
- Penultimate: This app is for people who just want to handwrite their notes. Because of that it’s very simple and for some people that’s enough. Not for me, so it’s been retired to iTunes.
- OneNote: This is the iPad version of Microsoft’s OneNote application on the PC. I have been a big OneNote user for a long time and still like the tool. However, this version is very limited and doesn’t compare well to Evernote for most things. However there are some key things that OneNote does on the PC that I continue to use so I need the ability to view a “.one” file on my iPad.
- Awesome Notes: This is my favorite note taker. That’s primarily because it will sync directly with Evernote. Other note taking apps will export their notes as PDFs which, in turn, can be imported into Evernote. However, this approach is cleaner. I also prefer the way it imbeds drawings into notes.
Project Management apps
- Project: SG Project is my go-to iPad project schedule tool. It can export to and import from Microsoft Project, which I use on the PC. It doesn’t do the portfolio management piece that it’s big brother does so it may get upgraded soon.
- SCRUM: Agile PM is my go-to iPad agile project management tool.
Drawing apps
- Sketchbook: A handy tool for quick sketches on the iPad. It can produce more “art like” work than a purely vector based package.
- TouchDraw: A great Visio alternative for the iPad. I love this tool. It is a major part of my business.
Others
- iThoughts HD: A great tool for mind mapping. I won’t go off on a tangent here on mind mapping but I have made other posts on that topic. It will import and export to Mindjet MindManager on the PC.
- Mindjet (not shown): Another mind mapping tool. It is an extension of Mindjet Mindmanager Pro, which I use extensively on my PC. It’s good but not quite as good as iThoughts HD.
- HanDBase: This is a small database manager for the iPad. I use it on other devices to make small, relational databases. There are more robust tools available but none and simple as this one. I really don’t want to be building complex relational databases on a portable device anyway.
Well, that’s the list. I think I’ve set personal records for longest blog post and most links in a single blog post. Sorry about that. I hope it does provide you with a useful reference location for the future. I’ll try to make it shorter next time. Thanks for stopping by…
iPad 2 – Field Report
As fate would have it, I have added yet another mobile device to the stable. Last week I was at a CIO conference and won an iPad 2. I usually don’t bother with registering for those kinds of drawings at conferences. However, as I was walking away from a vendor’s display they asked me to drop my card into a fish bowl. I didn’t want to be rude because this was an important vendor to me.
Now, I have yet another mobile device at my disposal. Since I have been posting on mobility issues for some time now, I can’t leave out the new device. You can see previous related posts here, here and here. I even had to replace my desktop replacement laptop (old age caught up with it) with an HP Envy 15 (i7 processor and 7200 RPM drive). The new laptop is very cool but that’s not what we’re talking about today. I also added a Targus Versavu keypad case to the iPad but we’re not here to review that either, although I like it a lot.
There is no question that the iPad 2 has vastly more apps than the Nook Tablet. But since I just wanted an office suite, a good PDF reader and a copy of Evernote I thought my demands were minimal. Now, with more experience and an iPad to compare it to, I now believe that the application ecosystem is a major factor. Since my primary focus for the Nook Tablet is not children’s books, I’ve been very frustrated with the Barnes & Noble app store and the inability to side load apps from other sources.
My most important goal is to identify what each device is assigned to do. Comparing an iPad 2 to a Nook Tablet may seem silly and obvious to most folks. The iPad has defined the tablet market, both for professional and personal uses. The Nook Tablet comes from an ebook reader background but has evolved into a very capable device that can do much more than what Barnes and Noble allows it to do. Essentially, the iPad is a high quality 10″ class device sold for a premium price to all tablet markets. As I mentioned above, the Nook Tablet is a high quality 7″ class device sold to families primarily for personal use at a competitive price. The most concise way to present the comparison is with the ranking table shown below. Each device has business type applications available (that can share files) and a copy of Evernote. Remember that “content creation” means to create business documents, audio, images, etc. “Content consumption” means to make use of that same material.
|
Description |
Business Content Creation |
Business Content Consumption |
Personal Use |
My application |
Comments |
|
iPad 2 |
Medium-High |
Medium-High (screen size advantage) |
High |
Primary companion |
Bulk of tablet with keyboard almost make it a small laptop |
|
Nook Tablet |
Medium |
Medium-High (portability advantage) |
High |
Alternate companion |
May repurpose to family content consumption device and backup tablet |
|
HP Envy |
Very High |
Very High |
High (portability disadvantage) |
Primary content creation device; minimum travel |
|
|
Dell Duo |
Medium-High (adequate but underpowered processor) |
Medium-High (adequate but underpowered processor) |
Medium |
Secondary content creation device; travel companion; backup PC |
Ultrabook predecessor; portability for content creation is its edge. |
|
Samsung Nexus S smartphone |
Medium |
Low |
Medium |
Phone; Constant companion |
There are also some key points to remember. First, tablets are not PCs and are not PC replacements, at least not yet. I anticipate a day when tablets and laptops merge. We can see that with the Asus Transformer Prime, the iPad 2 with a Bluetooth keyboard and the upcoming Windows 8 tablets. That day is not far off. Next, portability is a big deal and there is a difference between toting around a 10″ tablet and a 7″ tablet. The smaller screen is an acceptable trade-off for the significant improvement in portability. An external keyboard for a tablet is huge for business use. It’s worth the investment.
Hopefully, this perspective has been useful. If you want a technical review of any of these devices there are many available. My goal is to give you the perspective of a real-world business user without the marketing hype that colors may technical product reviews. Stay tuned for more…
Nook Tablet – Warning and Hope
This post is driven by my experiences with my new Nook Tablet and today’s related article on Marketwatch (Wall Street Journal’s online presence). The graph on the left is a snapshot of the Barnes and Noble stock price this morning so far. The steep drop is due to at least two factors. First, the article sites the B&N CEO as saying that they want to spin off the Nook business. Second, the market is reacting negatively to the latest news about European banks. Take the chart with a grain of salt since it is just a snapshot early in the day. However, it does reflect how many investors feel about such a spin-off.
I have already posted two articles discussing the Tablet here and here. Today, I want to comment from the perspective of a business user with the needs detailed in the field report post. There are two ways to look at such a spin-off of the tablet/reader business. First, it could be a way to harvest value from a profitable part of a struggling business, as some of the comments to the referenced article say. Second, it could be an admission by the B&N management that growing that business is more complex than they are prepared to sign up for. Based on my personal experience with the Nook Tablet I use and the Nook Color I gave my daughter along with my background in the technology business, I am voting for the second scenario.
Remember that this is fundamentally a good 7″ Android tablet, capable of doing everything the other Android tablets on the market can do. It’s held back by a very poor software ecosystem (other than ebooks). They recently updated the operating system with ver. 1.4.1. That update shut down the “side-loading” of apps that don’t come from the B&N app store. To me that was a huge but understandable mistake. Both the B&N and Amazon tablets are priced right at cost. The business model assumes that they will make their return on their tablets off of purchases made through their ecosystems (books, apps, music, etc.). That is likely going to work for Amazon. B&N, on the other hand, will be harder pressed to make this approach work because their ecosystem is vastly more limited than Amazon’s. The operating system update was primarily intended to force their customers to use only the B&N ecosystem. An understandable but flawed approach. You never prosper by bullying your customers.
For B&N to make their approach work they must do a few things fairly quickly:
- Upgrade the customer’s experience with their ecosystem.
- Open up the tablet and e-reader like other tablets.
- Upgrade the operating system of the tablet to Android 4.
Option 1 can be accomplished by making a sizable expenditure in their own infrastructure or cutting a deal with Google to make the Android app store accessible. Option 2 can be accomplished by simply rolling back the lock out features of the last update while retaining the other upgraded features. Option 3 is straight forward but a non-trivial amount of work. All of these changes are better accomplished by technology people leading the charge than by booksellers at the helm. If you’re B&N management and you accept these arguments then spinning off that business to people more suited to running it is a smart decision.
Only time will tell if my assessment is right.
Managing Personal Mobility
This is a follow up to my last post on the Nook Tablet. I now have a Nook Tablet (7″ screen), Dell Insprion Duo (10″ screen) and Samsung/Google Nexus S 4G (4″ screen) smartphone in my possession. I also have an HP 17″ laptop in my office which stays there except for rare occasions. However, given the title of this post, it is not relevant here and won’t be discussed. Essentially it’s a desktop.
Now that I have all of these devices available to me the question becomes how to manage them in a useful way. What should be each device’s primary uses? Of course I had some idea why I wanted each item before I bought it. Typically, though, buying technology and living with it are different things and require some post-purchase adaptation. These devices are no exception.
It is first necessary to set some definitions. “Content creation” will refer to the act of creating something, like a word processing document, spreadsheet, image, etc. “Content consumption” will refer to the act of reading, viewing an image or listening to something. Each device can do 
both to varying degrees depending on which applications are installed. However, the tablet and the phone are primarily about content consumption while, for me, the laptop is primarily about content creation.
My overall objective is to have the most flexible, adaptable and portable working environment that I can. That’s a tradeoff between computing power, power consumption, battery life and weight. I also spend more time consuming content than creating it so I want to be able to consume content wherever I am, make notes about what I consume wherever I am and have those notes available for content creation most places I am.
I quickly realized that the smartphone and tablet should be considered a unit. The tablet is Wi-Fi only but the phone can be a Wi-Fi hotspot. By keeping the two together I don’t have to be a slave to meeting where Wi-Fi connectivity is provided. I usually pay a 3G speed penalty for wider coverage, but here in Houston 4G is fairly available when I’m out and about. Since my primary concern is email, the penalty is manageable.
One criticism of the Dell that it is powered by a dual-core Intel Atom processor and only two gigs of RAM, so it’s a little underpowered. However, I am able to run the complete Microsoft Office 2010 Professional Plus suite with acceptable performance. I also have assorted other serious business apps that run at acceptable levels of performance. As long as the Dell is plugged in and working at full power, it streams video quite well over an 802.11N connection.
That brings us to the center of my non-Office application universe, Evernote. I have been a big Microsoft OneNote user for some time but it only works (at least for now) in a Microsoft environment. Evernote works with almost every operating system and almost every device. I have Evernote on every device I own and subscribe to the $45/year premium package. For more information on Evernote and their subscriptions check out their website. A comparison of OneNote and Evernote is beyond the scope of this post. I like and use both products. However, Evernote’s dramatically better operating system support makes it my go to personal knowledge 
management system.
Another discovery was that reading documents on a 7″ screen is dramatically better than a 4″ screen. Interestingly, the difference in reading the same document on a 10″ screen is somewhat better than a 7″ screen but not dramatically better. Like most people, I believe that the more screen real estate I have the happier I will be. I have screens ranging from 4″ to 22″. However, for most business applications, while a 10″ tablet screen is better, it’s not differentiated enough over the 7″ screen to justify the difference in cost.
The Android productivity apps that I have installed on both my smartphone and tablet are useful but still very lightweight. I use QuickOffice Pro as my primary Office-like app on both my Android devices. While it’s useful and I like that I can use several types of cloud storage options it isn’t an Office replacement and I have to resist the urge to try to force it to do more than it can do. I would recommend that you get ezPDF Reader rather than use the other available PDF readers. To me, it’s that much better and worth the price.
I’m happy with my selection of devices. I can carry all of them with me comfortably in a modest size briefcase and address my needs. When I want to leave the briefcase behind, the phone (on my hip) and tablet (in a small case) are even more portable. While your choices may differ, I believe that all of our goals are similar. We all need to be very portable, be able to consume content and do lightweight content creation everywhere. We need to be able to do serious content creation many places but not necessarily everywhere.
That’s all for now. Let me know if you have any questions and I’ll see you next time.
Nook Tablet Field Report
I bought a new Nook Tablet last week. A link to its product page is here. The bottom line is that it’s a good device despite some limitations. My perspective for this post is not to provide yet another product review. You can find those from CNET, Engadget, PC Magazine, and MSNBC.
This post will be focused on its practical use by a business guy. Its entertainment value is not a primary concern of mine but it’s nice to have. My main business needs are:
- A very portable, expandable device for business research
- Capable of storing large amounts of content (documents, images, etc.) of all types
- Capable of capturing and sharing notes and ideas
- A larger screen that my cell phone
- Capable typing at moderate speed
- Longer battery life than my laptop
- Less expensive than the current crop of ($500+) 10” tablets
- Compliments my other portable devices (Sprint/Google Nexus S cell phone and Dell Inspiron Duo Windows 7 laptop). A link to the Dell post is here.
Some time ago I bought my daughter a Nook Color. She wanted it for the children’s book selection at Barnes and Noble. When it comes to something for my granddaughter, grandpa is all over it. As I was setting it up I was struck that while it was a little sluggish, it was a decent, inexpensive little tablet. When the Nook Tablet was announced I got interested in what it could do for me. There is a dual boot micro SD card available for the Nook Color that turns it into a regular Android tablet. A link to its site is here. When I contacted them to confirm that their software would also allow dual booting of the Tablet, they said they couldn’t confirm that until they got a Tablet for testing. Some product reviews I found said that the Tablet ROMs were locked down and would probably prevent dual booting. Not being able to dual boot was a disappointment but wasn’t a deal killer. I was able to find an alternative strategy on the XDA Developers forum. That link is here.
So I picked up my new Tablet last week and started setting it up. It is definitely not focused on business use. While it’s built on Android 2.3.x Gingerbread, it uses an early release because versions above 2.3.4 support Exchange email servers. I know because my phone came with 2.3.4 and it did. The version that comes with the tablet does not. You have to buy a slimmed down Touchdown client to get it. The browser is adequate but does a miserable job managing bookmarks. It doesn’t support folders which is a big deal for me. I have collected several thousand bookmarks over the years and wanted to get most of them over to the tablet.
The procedure I found on the XDA site got me a Go Launcher that I can boot up after using the native tablet Search tool (search for “launcher” and it comes up as one of the hits). Just touch the name and it loads that launcher. I was also able to get an Amazon Market app installed which allows me to get other apps. Their widgets can only be loaded on the Go Launcher and not the Nook launcher. That’s a little inconvenient but gives me access to dramatically more apps than I could get on the Nook app store (link is here). Remember that apps that you download from Amazon have not been validated for the Nook Tablet. While I’m not having many issues, I am having some. None of them are deal killers so I’m happy with them.
My next post will cover day to day use and how I’m managing all my mobility choices. In closing, I want to emphasize that I am very happy with my Nook Tablet. I know I am not their target market so having to do some unusual things is not a major problem for me. The tablet is solid and expandable (my 32 gig card is in transit to me now). I now have a device that meets all the needs I listed above. I hope this post has been useful. Stay tuned for the follow up post on this topic.