Today during a lunch meeting I looked around at the table and I saw one Moleskine notebook, one regular “old school” notebook and 3 iPads among myself and 4 others. When we first sat down immediately the conversation started around how hard or easy it is to type on the iPad and what apps are we using for note taking. Backgrounds of some of other attendees included two designers/app developers, a web developer and a marketing/project manager.
As our lunch meeting continued we started working on our project and I started noticing what apps we were using and how the Moleskine and notebook guys were keeping up. Note that the Moleskine guy had an iPad too. I think he opened it twice, once to pull out another paper and the second time was to show a note he had perviously wrote. The other designer/developer guy was sketching web mockups that looked close to the goal of the project in his notebook. For the 3 iPads at the table we all used them in different ways during the meeting. I was taking notes using Evernote, along with creating a website layout using iMockups and used the CameraForiPad app as a scanner to send a paper schedule from my iPhone to the iPad. The other apps used by one of the other two iPads were Adobe Ideas for stretching and Stick It notes. Note that I didn’t see Stick It notes used during the meeting, it was one of the apps we discussed at the beginning of lunch.
Many have said the iPad is a media consumption device, claiming it will be used for entertainment purposes only. Others have asked what are the business uses for the iPad and how will be it be used to create content. If you just look at today’s lunch for example you’ll see the following uses for the iPad.
- Digital Note taking to make it easy to edit and share via email or in other collaborate format later.
- On demand website/interface mockups
- Document Scanner (yes, iPhone needed)
- Online demos
If you look at the above notes you can easily say, you can do all of that with a laptop. True, but one bonuses of the iPad is the form factor along with the apps being created to preform simple but productive task. Can you image 3 MacBooks on the table during lunch and trying to eat at the same time? No! The iPad doesn’t replace the laptop but it’s defiantly a perfect digital asset to travel with and today it made our lunch meeting a lot more productive and comfortable if we didn’t’ have it.
*Disclaimer: No iPads were eating during lunch and I don’t have any relationship with any of the apps linked in this blog post.
If you have an iPad what are some of your favorite apps and how are you using it?
