Sybase Blogs : Ian Thain

iPad is NOT an iPhone, may be an obvious statement to us all, but a lot of applications and therefore application developers on the Apple App Store seems to have lost sight of that fact. I believe that over 90% of these applications have the potential to be awesome on the most popular tablet device around, but are sadly falling short of the mark.

I have been using the iPad since it was launched in the UK and there is nothing more frustrating to me than iPhone applications on the iPad. Let’s face it, the iPad is the first computer designed purely for hand-held mode. It’s not a tablet with a touchscreen. It’s not a Windows PC that happens to be mobile…It’s a custom designed purpose built device designed to view the web and operate applications purely by using the screen…Oh and what a device! and I am still saying that two versions in!!!

As you may know from my last article, I use my iPad whenever I travel as a replacement to my MacBook and a more useable extension of my iPhone, in the area of mobile computing. The iPad allows me to create such objects as presentations, document, spreadsheets, email’s etc. I can design Application Design with such apps as iMockups, though yet I can carry on development. It allows me to present and share my thoughts with an audience with the VGA connector and with AirPlay to a certain extent. It is such a delight now to travel light with such a powerful and mobile device.

So those bits of functionality (presentations/documents/spreadsheets/emails, that I have mentioned above translate to the iPad applications created by Apple… Keynote, Pages, Numbers, Mail etc and each a a great example of how an iPad application should be designed and implemented. Each of these applications have had so much thought and design in the area of UX (User eXperience) by the Apple Engineers, whilst designing them for use on the iPad. They are just a delight to use, even on a tablet device, which is smaller than a MacBook. I mention this because what became obvious within hours of getting my iPad, was the fact that iPhone Apps, unless they are so simplistic, just fall short of expectations on the iPad!!! And that was even before Apple released the iWork trio onto iPad.

Here is a set of must have features I believe an iPad application should have... and you can draw analogies for the other Phone and Tablet combinations around

Never loose the fact that an iPad application is Not an iPhone application – iPad Developers need to make good use of the greater screen area. iPad vs iPhone will usually mean more data that can displayed, or different ways of displaying and interacting with your data, both due to the increased application ‘real estate’. Just porting the application to the iPad or letting it run in compatibility mode sucks!!! in my opinion Universal Apps are the only way forward!!!.

Graphics can be a physically larger as well as a higher resolution and more expressive to the solution being developed.

Design for Orientation Changes - Support both landscape and portrait, as iPad users more than iPhone users love to use the device in different orientations, usually for a larger keyboard, but also to display & format data in a better form.

Make good use of iPad interface - Gestures such as pinch to zoom and swipe to move screen rather than the more traditional tap and click type behaviour. This makes user navigation etc more intuitive and also means that the application is consistent relative to the native apps on the device. In fact with the release of iOS 4.3 or beyond, the Apple Engineers have been taking gestures to a new height and that should be an area that developers should too.

Check out again the apps from SAP that exist for both iPhone and iPad and you will see the time and effort of the UX teams, paying back rewards in fantastic Enterprise Mobile Apps.

In closing I want to share a comment made by an Twitter friend Alan Cannistraro. He said “Build stuff you love and build stuff you would want to use yourself. I promise you success if you stick to those 2 rules“.

Please follow me on Twitter @ithain Follow @ithain

Lately there has been a lot of rumor on the web about the iPhone 5 and iPad 3. One thing that most people and technical loggers seem to agree on, along with more internal memory for running of programs and a faster processor is a thinner design and new innovative features such as the use of NFC (Near Field Communication). Yes still speculation until the time the next iPhone will be announced, which will probably be, at the latest, in June at Apple’s WWDC (World Wide Developer Conference), but worth talking about in advance.

As a quick example of NFC, think of something many thousands of us use daily, the London Undergrounds successful use of the Oyster card and beyond that card payments , such as Barclaycard’s Contactless Payment systems.

For many years in the Nordic Regions, carriers have worked with retailers to have some automatic vending machines work with the use of SMS (Simple Message Services). In this scenario the customer could text a defined message to a SMS short code, which would be specific to that vending machine and have something within the machine dispensed, and the payment taken from their phone bill. A basic form of electronic payment or an e-wallet, but still having quite a few distinct steps within the process and relying on older technology.

NFC could also be used to communicate with RFID tags, which some manufacturers use on high value goods, within warehouses and have also been used for interactive advertising. Obviously that could take us further down the route of ‘Minority Report’ and could easily become more intrusive within our “Mobile Lifestyle“, lets hope if that happens there will be a setting to turn off that feature.

Electronic keys could also be possible, with your car realising that now you are sitting within the vehicle with your iPhone, specifically set to that vehicle. The ignition could then be enabled to start. Thinking ahead it would be great for that iPhone to then place itself in a mode that can only be used in a hands-free basis… Touché to you guys that still iPhone whilst you drive! We have all seen you…Shame on you.

Lately the iPhone and iPad has become part of our daily routine. A meaningful and helpful part of our hectic lifestyle, bringing multiple feature together into one device. One device that is capable of voice communications, electronic communications, entertainment and possibly a true M-Wallet accessible by specific applications and outlets. In turn this feature makes security of the actual device itself more necessary.

We have PIN cods on our credit and debit cards, so should you already on your iPhone. A future iPhone with similar financial capabilities would also need the user to be responsible… Get used to setting your device passcode with something more secure! But I also think that with Apple’s track record on innovative services/features and the hardware features that the iPhone 4S already has, expect something special. I would like to speculate that sometime in the future the iPhone 5 or iPad 3 and beyond will also be able to use the user facing camera and facial recognition to give you another level of security. Apple have had facial recognition capability in products such as iPhoto for a while, but acquired Swedish company Polar Rose in September 2010, who’s expertise was facial recognition and it is expected by many that those guys could fill that gap.

Whatever happens, the next device is sure to take its ‘magic factor‘ to another level with new features and cement it deeper into our Daily Mobile Life.

Please follow me on Twitter @ithain Follow @ithain

The world is becoming a mobile place and even if you are not a mobile worker in your daily job, you will want to interact whilst on the move, in your personal life. That is why the Smartphone, iPad or Converged Mobile Device as I like to call it, is a great success… It gives you access to everything you want in the palm or your hand.

Some may say that Tablet Devices will become our day to day 3rd device along with the Laptop and the Mobile and I would partially agree with that statement providing one thing…The Laptop is the new Desktop and the Tablet is the new King of Mobile Computing. I use my iPad whenever I travel as a replacement to my MacBook Pro, for presentations, document creation, spreadsheets, email etc.

It is such a delight now to travel light with such a powerful and mobile device. Take it from someone that has 10 years of business travel under his belt, mostly with heavyweight Windows Laptops. So what I decided to do in this article was to list the reasons why I think the tablet devices are becoming hot stuff and making laptops less attractive to leave the confines of the home and office. In fact this article along with others was created totally ‘on the go’ with my mobile workhorse iPad.

They are compact and super easy to transport, the clue is in the word Mobility, but tablets also open up a wider range of applications that just do not make sense on small screens.

They are easier to maintain and by that I mean that devices like the iPad just run applications specifically written for individual tasks and do not allow much (compared to a desktop) ‘customisation‘.

They are touch screen and so the interaction paradigm is very native to us all. We are interacting with the device rather than peripherals. I always think of Minority Report with Tom Cruise.

On a number of separate occasions inn the last few years, I was on the road with the iPad. Once to attend Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco, another time to present to a CIO in Germany and present twice at the Nordic Roadshow in, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland for SAP 2010 and 2011. On all occasions my ‘weapon of choice‘ lived up to and constantly outperformed my expectations. So if you are planning traveling for business in 2012, then here are some handy hints I have for you from experience…

Plan ahead and travel light with technology, in fact iTravel… the only way to travel!

Firstly though, a point of caution, you always take care of your money and passport, so before you travel make sure your iOS Devices are Secure and Managed by your corporate IT. Remember that as soon as you place any corporate data or applications on these devices, their value increases immensely. Your data is at the heart or your organisation, and it could potentially be disastrous if it fell into the wrong hands, such as your competition.

For any iOS user, make sure you always use a PassCode for the device and maybe standardise on a custom Lock Screen that displays contact information of either a corporate email and or telephone number. Now that you have iOS 5 (in fact from iOS 4.x) across your iOS devices the passcode can be used in conjunction with the devices keychain, to encrypt data on the device. Set User Policies and make sure all corporate iOS assets are using them with the use of Apple’s MDM (Mobile Device Management).

In closing here are some essential equipment for the corporate iTraveller, outside of specific corporate applications… Keynote for iPad *, Pages for iPad *, Numbers for iPad * and a VGA Cable for use with screen or projectors.

* – Note that these Apple developed applications can open files from their equivalent Microsoft application (MS Powerpoint > Keynote, MS Word > Pages, MS Excel > Numbers) and send in the formats of .PDF, the Microsoft equivalent and their own Apple format. They can also share via iWork, iTunes, iDisk and WebDAV

Please follow me on Twitter @ithain Follow @ithain

Enterprise Mobility has a lot of benefits, such as improving the efficiency of a companies business processes and their Information Workers alike.

If the term Information Workers is new to you, then a brief explanation is that they are traditional employees using corporate data in their day to day tasks, historically they were chained to the desktop.

Now they are free and can become mobile. This mobile enablement gives a competitive edge to a company and a leading position, using such a forward thinking initiative.

I travel into the City of London every day and have noticed more and more over the last few years the iPhone becoming visibly the ‘weapon of choice‘ of the city worker, rather than having two devices, one the corporate Blackberry and the other the personal iPhone. A lot of companies are allowing their worker to bring their personally owned iPhones into a corporate plan, where the data and voice charges are taken care of by the company after the employee agrees to a usage policy (BYOD). Also I am seeing the chose your own device (CYOD) policy being lead by the Prosumers in the company choosing iOS. In the last half of 2010 I noticed a trend emerging of corporate iPad use, culminating one evening in my train carriage of 4 commuters within meters of each other, using email, games, Numbers and Pages on their iPads. Since then this has increased massively and become the majority in 2011 and its my opinion that it will continue in 2012!

At the start of 2010 I was walking around the city in my lunch hour and observed the ultimate example of workers that would be unleashed by the iPad. I paused outside of Lloyds of London, the world’s leading specialist insurance market, and observed hordes of worker leaving the building with reams and reams of folders and papers. Now not knowing the processes and legalities involved I could easily imagine the benefits of the iPad. So I was so pleased in September 2010 to see an article from Lloyds, that Lloyds internal IT had joined with three Brokers… Marsh, Cooper Gay and RK Harrison Group to trial the use of iPads in its underwriting room. I am now intrigued how the initial project has gone!

I have been using the iPad now since its launch and mostly in the last 18 months in a specific way. I am not a gamer, I am a part-time browser, but primarily I am a full-time Enterprise user. Here is a set of must have features I believe an Enterprise iPad application should have. Most of them are also part of what a normal or non Enterprise iPad application should have and I have placed them in order of importance…

Code using the Security API - Encrypt your users application data on the device and that is in addition to any other Device Management & Security that you should be using. Enterprise users should also be looking at Configuration Profiles and 3rd party tools that utilise Apple’s MDM (Mobile Device Management) that was introduced in iOS 4.

Support for Mobile Working, that will work in both off-line and on-line modes – As iPad’s are increasingly being used as an alternative to a laptop when out and about and even though connectivity is getting better and better, there will always be the chance of a ‘dead-zone’

Integrate with existing ‘legacy’ back office systems – Extend existing Enterprise Applications into the Mobile world. If you are planning to develop many Enterprise Mobile Applications and possibly support many devices, other than iOS devices, check out a Mobile Enterprise Application Platform. (See the Sybase Unwired Platform). Such a platform will also aid considerably with the secure bidirectional synchronisation of data, between mobile device and back office, which is not something standard that iOS offers.

Use core iOS features – These cool features can extend and innovate your application wherever appropriate. Especially look at Airprint as a sizeable percentage of Field Force Applications need the facility for the Mobile Worker to leave reports etc with the customer, for legal reasons. Though we desperately need a small portable Mobile BT printer, like the Brother MW-140BT of old.

Make sure you have the iPad VGA cable – This will make presentations a breeze, without the need of an overhead projector, such as an ELMO. Take it from me, I have first hand experience of the benefits it brings on long trips or short notice meetings.

Not an iPhone app – iPad Developers need to make good use of the greater screen area. iPad vs iPhone will usually mean more data that can displayed, or different ways of displaying and interacting with your data. That is another subject for another article.

NOTE – I can not mention Enterprise iOS usage without mentioning the importance of Securing and Managing of these devices. Once you place corporate access to apps and data on these devices the monetary value of the device pales into insignificance when compared to the value of your crown jewels (data). So check out Apple’s MDM (Mobile Device Management) and the vendors that support it with their infrastructure products (See Sybase Afaria).

Apple’s iPad & Business is making a Knock-out combination, just look at what SAP is doing now!. The hardware and the applications will lead to innovative and surprising uses.

Please follow me on Twitter @ithain Follow @ithain