With the iPad in stores today many business owners will be hearing demands to put the iPad on the supported devices list for their employees. While Online Design Bureau eventually came around and supported the (3rd generation) iPhone as a valuable device that should be supported by your organization, we cannot make the same recommendation for the iPad. Here are 10 of the reasons while we feel that the iPad simply feels short when it comes to delivering for businesses small and large:
The Apple iPad certainly looks cool, but can it do the job for business?
1) The iPad does not run common office productivity tools. Meaning it is not compatible with the software most enterprises already have. You won’t be presenting a PowerPoint with it very easily, unless you are a computer wiz. While it is true you can buy Apple’s iWorks application for $9.99, it would create duplication of work, since the presentation would have to be built both in office and in iWorks.
2) iPad does not run windows, further complicating compatibility.
3) The iPad doesn’t support USB out of the box. File transfer becomes extremely difficult under those circumstances, and again, if if you transfer business documents, there is no office suite to run them.
4) The iPad cannot multi-task. That makes it nothing more than an entertainment device. Users who put together a presentation or sales report will need to be able to go back and forth between your collateral, web pages, etc.
5) The iPad does not have a camera, so video conferencing is dead.
6) To aggravate these problems, a decent enough netbook will cost about half the price and be able to do more. Not only does a netbook not have issues 1-5 to contend with, netbooks, just like PC’s are able to run open software ecosystems increasing choice and facilitating custom development of software that the iPad would not allow.
7) The iPad may look cool, but this wow-factor during a presentation doesn’t justify the cost and ultimately, it is not about how cool the presentation was, but how well it explained the product and / or service. There is no justifiable ROI.
8) The iPad is essentially nothing more than a big iPod touch. You’ll be buying nothing new, just bigger
9) The iPad doesn’t play flash, greatly compounding the problem of viewing websites that run flash applications
10) The iPad is bad for innovation for the very reason that it does not run flash. Buying an iPad is voting with your wallet for the death of flash. If the iPad takes off in a big way, all websites running flash will have to switch to HTML5, a yet not fully actualized platform (many standards are not decided upon, some flash functionality is not yet provided in HTML 5). When Steve Jobs visited the Wall Street Journal promoting his iPad, they concluded:
even assuming the Journal could duplicate its Flash slideshows, infographics and other news apps using iPad-friendly technologies like Javascript, it would take a decidedly nontrivial amount of time and effort to create or acquire such a system, hire staff who understand it as well as Flash, train staff on how to use it, and integrate it into the Journal’s editorial workflow. It might be a great way to advance web standards like HTML5, and a great way to get the Journal on more devices, but it would hardly be ‘trivial’.
Source: The Guardian
Over to you
Don’t agree? Found more reasons? Leave us a comment. We’d love to hear from you.
They are lazys. They have all this potential to do interesting things but they just refuse to do it. They don’t do anything with the approaches that Apple is taking, like Carbon. Apple does not support Flash because it is so buggy. Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not it’s because of Flash. No one will be using Flash. The world is moving to HTML5.
If I had to guess, it is that Flash allows applications to run in web browsers. This is a serious challenge to Apple’s App-based business model that it developed for the iPhone and iPad. If you could play games for free online, including in your iPhone and iPad webbrowsers, would you really be buying as many Apple Apps? Viewing Steve Jobs’ stance on Flash from that angle, his comments seem more than disingenuous.
Apple also stifles innovation emerging from companies other than Apple.
It is starting to sound like Apple believes both Google and Flash fall short in Jobs’ eyes because they present heavy competition for Apple’s money cows. Exactly what is wrong with Google trying to enter the phone market? Google is an internet based enterprise, consumption of web based media is increasingly going mobile, and Google enters that market space by creating its own phone. As far as I can tell, that increases competition, puts pressure on pricing models, creates consumer choice and spurs innovation. An all-round win for the consumer.
