Month: July 2013

Mi friend and co-author of the book #iPadOnly, Michael Sliwinski always said that with the iPad the keyboard is optional.
Most people get their iPad and immediately get a Keyboard. I did it when I got mine on 2010 and have use it for every time I need to write for two hours or more. The reality is that for anything else I don’t need the keyboard for anything else and I am even able to work without the keyboard for writing, it is just that there is something nice when I am spending a long time siting writing to be able to use the full screen.
People it is obsessed with trying to make their iPad a laptop and get frustrated when they discover it is not. Those things that many called weakness of the iPad are in many cases exactly the strengths they have. The lack of keyboard it is one of those.
When I am going to write or respond email, analyzing data, working on spreadsheets, making presentations, mind maps and much more things, I really don’t need the keyboard for anything, and because of that I can work on many places that a laptop will be the wrong tool for the job.
The reality is that we use the keyboard and the mouse constantly because those where the best tools available on a PC. Most likely you have seen that famous keynote where Steve Jobs announce the iPhone. At that time most SmartPhones had a small keyboard, when he announced that his iPhone was not going to have any, people was sure he was going to fail. Well I think time has shown us that he was not necessarily wrong.
The iPad has exactly the same power to change the keyboard and mouse paradigm and we are seeing how more and more people it is using tablets and more specifically iPads to do their job.
In 2011 when I mention that my iPad was my main machine and that I was #iPadOnly people tough it was impossible. Two years later, many people is trying to accomplish the same, but they are not yet ready to abandon their old believes and because of that, they simply find frustration and try to do a familiar set up.
I have joke that if Apple release a mouse to the iPad, many people will get it as a compliment to their iPad keyboard. The reality is that the keyboard is optional, for most part you don’t need it, and if you spend enough time practicing and paying attention you most likely will use it on exceptional occasions, unless you write for two or more hours straight almost everyday.

Everything is about perspectives. I can work #iPadOnly because I took the time to check my own workflows and give me some perspective on what and where I am trying to accomplish and doing. My daughter eats vegetables because for her it is a normal food (and from the perspective of the parents she has consequences if she doesn’t.) In the past I was a frequent flyer (more than 200,000 miles on a year) and except when I got bumped to First Class I always found the space really small. I stop flying for a living in 2010 and begin working full time at my home office. To be honest, we haven’t travel that much on a plane since. Regardless I notice how this week my perspective changed. I use to weight more than 350lbs. That fact defined my perspective regarding the size of the rows on airplanes, and based on that perspective, they were really small, the little table is way to close (even impossible to use if the person in front of you decide to recline) the seats are tight and the person next to you (asumming you didn’t got the lucky middle, in which case is the people around you) is way to close. I did it for more than 200,000 miles every year but was never something comfortable (unless you got sent to first, that happen often when you travel that much)
As I was saying this trip came with some change in perspectives, I set my iPad mini to work on the table and decide to pull it closer because it was more comfortable to type. It was in that moment that a little something in my brain fire a smile and for a moment I was really proud. I was more than 150lbs lighter than 2008, 100lbs lighter than my last work flight in 2010 and 20lbs since my last plane trip and for the first time in my adult life I was comfortable in that space.
I am aware that airlines rows have less and less space, so I am sure it’s not that. Also I didn’t got bumped to first class in this trip. The thing is the change of perspective, this seat are not as small as I remember them, the table is not as close as it used to be, and actually this may have been the best working session I have ever had on a plane, while sitting on coach. The perspective changed and seems totally different than 150lbs ago (even 20lbs ago) from an uncomfortable space to a one that it fits perfectly.
It was this exactly the fact of how I was able to change everything that made me think about other perspectives that may also need to create an adjustment, that may need a readjustment or even a radical change.
We tend to come to the conclusion that certain things are the way they are, I did for many years , airplanes were small spaces, I never considered that: I was too big.
This is a topic that I want to continue covering, and I want to leave you thinking for a moment on what may need an adjustment on your own perspective… I can think on a couple of things…