D#2: Ipad in the workplace
While I have not used the Ipad personally for any lengthy period of time, out of curiousity, I have been to the Apple store just to explore it. The much that I know of the Ipad, it has a lot of tools and apps that would enhance and extend the way we work.
In our organisation, the senior management are always on the go providing legal and professional support to our clients; this usually involves a lot of travel, emailing and phone time and increasingly these days, web conferencing.
An Ipad would be a great value added tool to how they work regardless of their location or time of day, as long as they have internet access. Working with the Ipad, would result in a culmination of all the necessary tools required to do their jobs- installation of voip phone, web conferencing software, webmail and GPS capability means they have all the tools they need and it weighs very little! That`s a value add.
However, the disadvantage would be that since every other device in the organisation is Windows based, the Ipad users may have a bit of an issue ‘shifting gears’ from Mac to Windows platform, creating frustration in the initial stage.
Posted in: Uncategorized, Week 09: iPad Apps
Deb Giesbrecht 2:13 pm on November 2, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
You raise a really good point that we did not include in our wiki – initial user frustration. Although it is deemed very user friendly, switching applications from PC to MAC based products has its challenges. I used a friend’s MAC and found that the lack of a ‘back’ button very frustrating. It is organized very differently – on purpose – and therefore switching gears for some people may be frustrating.
I find that people have very strong feelings about Apple products – you either hate them or you love them, and once you have converted to a MAC you never go back!
ifeoma 8:08 pm on November 3, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Thanks deb for your comment.You are spot on. There definitely is an initiall frustration from switching platforms and the learning curve is different for everyone even though the Macs are user friendly. It is interesting that you would mention the back button issue as I had the same experience and many others but when i began to use it, the intuitiveness of the Mac became more apparent to me. Avid Mac users are die-hard fans.
Deb Giesbrecht 6:24 pm on November 5, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Yes – Apple users will never go back!
Deb Giesbrecht 6:31 pm on November 5, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
There was a 60 minute television program that featured Steve Jobs – just after he died. They said he purposefully designed the apple with no back button for a reason – I can’t quite remember what it was but it was something very philosophical about life – like you can never ‘go back’ in life.