Back in June, we reported on a study that showed that the average iPad user is extremely likely to make a purchase or research a product after seeing an ad on his or her device. A more recent study supports that research and notes that for one-third of iPad/tablet owners, shopping is their favorite tablet-based activity.
During our Mobile Management Month series, we noted that a number mobile management vendors have established strategic partnerships with consulting firms, telecom agents, and mobile carriers. According to a study, these kinds or partnerships are paying off for everyone involved – carriers, vendors, and business customers.
We’ve taken a couple of looks at ownCloud over the past few months. The company launched its signature cloud server software in April and issued a major update about a month ago. Today, ownCloud announced its iOS and Android apps, making the product a serious option for many businesses that need to develop a secure internal cloud strategy.
Apple continues to top PC sales thanks to the iPad. Meanwhile, according to research firm Canalys, Microsoft will likely need to heavily subsidize the price of touch-first PCs and tablets if it wants Windows 8 to be anything like a success.
Echoing Tim Cook’s about Microsoft’s Windows 8 strategy being like converging a toaster and a refrigerator, the research firm notes that Microsoft’s approach could jeopardize the Windows 8 launch. Canalys notes that the big issue is that most Windows 8 features are designed for touchscreen use. That means that existing PC owners won’t get the full value or experience that Windows 8 offers unless they upgrade their hardware to a tablet, touchscreen notebook, or a hybrid device that functions as both.
Traveling for business is a lot different from taking a vacation. While you may get to experience far off cities, meet new people, and have some genuine fun on a business trip, you’ll also need to work, worry about delays that could make you miss critical meetings, ensure you leave your hotel room looking your most presentable, and keep track of every expense related to the trip.
Of those stress factors, tracking expenses so that you can submit them for reimbursement or explain charges you make to a company credit card may not seem the most stressful. The majority of the time it isn’t (unless you lose some big-ticket receipts or have unusual charges to justify). It is, however, often tedious drudgery that is prone to human error and mistakes.
There are many iOS expense tracking apps out there and there are some very good reasons to invest in one of them.
Over the past few months, a number of different studies have shown the iPad (and to a lesser extent the iPhone) is a near-perfect advertising vehicle that enourages ad click-throughs, user engagement, and purchase decisions in ways that generally aren’t seen with other technologies.
A truly well-crafted marketing campaign aimed at iPad and iPhone users in, however, is more than just a series of ads. Instead it’s a series of interactions that build a relation with mobile customers. According to the marketing gurus at MarketingProfs, one key to building those relationships is using push notifications – and using them in the right ways.
Since the release of Snow Leopard Server three years ago, Apple has been steering its server platform away from large enterprise deployments. Instead Apple has redesigned OS X Server to meet the needs of the small to mid-size business market as well as the needs of Apple-centric departments or workgroups in larger organizations. That focus is very clear if you download and install Mountain Lion Server or look through the Mountain Lion Server documentation from Apple.
One of the transitions that Apple began in Lion and Lion Server, which were released last summer, was a move away from the traditional Mac management architecture that Apple has provided in OS X Server since it launched the platform more than a decade ago. In its place, Apple has built a management system for Macs that is very similar to the mobile management features available in iOS.
One common assumption about iPads in business is that employees and executives are insisting on using their personal iPads at work or are demanding that the company provide them while CIOs and IT departments are fighting tooth and nail against the iPad. While that assumption certainly makes for good headlines and soundbites, it isn’t actually true – at least according to a new report from cloud and content management firm Alfresco.
In fact, Alfresco’s new report indicates that IT staffers are heavily involved in tablet adoption and may even be the driving force behind it. The report also provided a range of insights as to how iPads and other tablets are being used in the workplace and notes that tablets are offering new opportunities more than they are replacing either smartphones or PCs.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve taken a look at a couple of studies that show how the iPhone, iPad, and other consumer technologies that are being embraced at the office are shifting the work/life balance for most professionals. The always connected and available capabilities that our mobile technologies engender are pushing us towards more work and less life.
The first study showed that professionals using an iPhone, iPad, or other mobile devices on the job and at home often put in enough extra time during “off hours” to equal an extra day’s worth of work each week. The second study showed that many of us tend to bring work with us on vacation in the form of an iPhone or iPad (both of which are great for travel), a laptop, or even just cloud-based access to work resources.
Health related iOS apps are proliferating quickly in the App Store. While the most popular health related apps tend to be focused on diet, exercise, and stress relief, there are some other fast growing trends that show how the iPhone and iPad transforming the healthcare experience for consumers.
According to MobiHealthNews, which provides an annual assessment of the market for mobile apps related to medicine, health, and fitness, three new trends are emerging that could significantly reshape our experience of healthcare.
Apple released a range of updates to the its Mac applications last week along with the release of Mountain Lion on Wednesday. Most of those updates were to integrate new Mountain Lion technologies and provide general compatibility with the new OS.
Among them were updates for Apple Remote Desktop, Apple’s extremely powerful and flexible remote management solution for Mac systems. In addition to offering support for Mountain Lion, the update also added a couple new features focused around some of Apple’s latest hardware, but no major changes. In fact, one has to wonder why this amazing Mac IT solution has gotten so few updates over the past few years.
In addition to launching Mountain Lion Server last week, Apple rather quietly released a Mountain Lion Server version of Workgroup Manager – the traditional Mac management tool included in previous releases of OS X Server. The move was unexpected after Apple released the Advanced Administration guide for Mountain Lion Server, which implied that administrators would need to begin an almost-immediate shift to Mountain Lion Server’s Profile Manager.
The move is good news for many organizations that have an existing investment in OS X Server and Mac clients. Although Mountain Lion Server’s Profile Manager is arguably a more modern and enterprise-friendly solution, it only supports Macs running Lion and Mountain Lion. Any schools or businesses with clients still on Leopard or Snow Leopard would be out of luck if Profile Manager were the only available option.
Mountain Lion includes over 200 new features. Some of them are dramatic and hard to miss while others are minor conveniences that don’t stand out immediately. Many of those big and small new features and improvements have a lot of appeal for business users.
Here’s a list of the many new features in Mountain Lion that can help professionals in almost any industry work smarter, more efficiently, and more effectively.
Many Mountain Lion apps will function normally under Mountain Lion, but many won’t. Of particuar concern are the various utilities that help keep Mac systems secure, scan for viruses and malware, integrate with enterprise systems in businesses and schools, and dianose and repair problems.
These tools often require much deeper integration with OS X than other apps. That means that developers need to ensure they function as intended and don’t damage any documents, files, OS X system components, or other apps. That can sometimes delay releases of key utilities.
Here’s a list of Mac utilities and enterprise tools that have confirmed Mountain Lion Compatibility
In addition to Mountain Lion, Apple today launched the latest generation of its OS X Server platform known as Mountain Lion Server. The release includes several new features that will appeal to small business and larger enterprises alike.
Like Mountain Lion, Mountain Lion Server is available from the Mac App Store. The $19.99 price tag is a huge bargain given Mountain Lion Server’s feature set.
The release functions as an add-on to Mountain Lion in the same way that Lion did last summer. That means that you will need have Mountain Lion installed before you can purchase and download Mountain Lion Server.
Beyond the numbers, there were some tantalizing tidbits about Apple and the company’s future plans during today’s quarterly financial call. While nothing quite lived up to Tim Cook comparing Windows 8 to someone trying to converge a toaster and a refrigerator into a single device during the last call, there were several choice comments.
Apple CEO Tim Cook and CFO Peter Oppenheimer presented the results of the company’s spring 2012 quarter. The quarter included extensive growth for the iPhone, iPad, and Mac product lines though iPod sales declined 10% from the same quarter a year ago.
Here are the financial numbers delivered during the call.
Among Mountain Lion’s more than 200 new features are many that have distinct appeal for business users. AirPlay Mirroring, the ability to share items with colleagues, secure and unified messaging across Macs and iOS devices, one-step encryption of hard drives and flash drives, Reminders, Notification Center, VIP prioritization in Mail, and dictation are just handful of the Mountain Lion features that are poised to become great business and education tools.
With so many great features, IT departments big and small are likely to hear requests for Mountain Lion from employees, managers, educators, and even students. While Mountain Lion may be an easy and painless upgrade for consumers, any major OS upgrade poses challenges and concerns for technology professionals and Mountain Lion is no different. In this guide, we’ll show you how to prepare for Mountain Lion, test it for compatibility issues, and plan a successful roll out.
Colligo Networks today announced a major revision of its award-winning line of iOS SharePoint clients. SharePoint has become an indispensible tool for many businesses. Having access to SharePoint resources on the iPad has become equally crucial to many mobile professionals.
Colligo Briefcase is designed to provide secure access to SharePoint sites, documents, and resources. The apps in the Colligo Briefcase lineup include core features like the ability capture, view, edit, and share files and list items. They also provide a range of ways to view SharePoint content, support for editing content in other iOS apps, and the ability to print to AirPrint-enabled printers.
Last week, we reported on the IT migration that Australian airline Qantas was undertaking. That migration and overall technology upgrade includes replacing the airline’s 1,300 BlackBerry handsets with iPhones, swapping hefty pilot flight bags for iPads, and adding an on-demand entertainment system to is fleet of Boeing 767 aircraft that’s accessed using iPads provided to each passenger.
It seems that the migration strategy is even bigger than just those three components. The airline is also looking to overhaul its desktop systems as part of an upgrade to Microsoft’s Office 365 cloud suite. The migration will be completed in partnership with Fujitsu and will include both on-premise and cloud data stores as well as virtual desktops courtesy of Citrix.
As AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon continue extending their LTE networks across the country, a new market analysis suggests that most users will eventually choose not to buy LTE iPads and other 3G/4G-enabled tablets. The report, which comes from research firm CCS Insight, says that demand for iPads and other tablets with built-in mobile broadband support will continue to drop over the next four years. Following that logic, the company says that it expects Apple and other manufacturers to reduce the number of iPads and other tablets with built-in cellular connectivity.
The TED organization, which sponsors a range of conferences and talks on cutting edge topics recently launched an ebook series known as TED Books. Like the non-profit’s other initiatives, TED Books are “designed to spread great ideas.” Sticking to that ideal, the organization is making the ebooks, which will be released every two weeks, available across a range of ebook platforms including the new TED Books app for iOS devices.
The move highlights one of the challenges about ebooks – the choice of merchant and platform. That’s a particular concern when it comes to Apple’s iBookstore because purchases can only be read on an iOS device.
Jumsoft has announced its first pack of Word for Mac templates. Named the Inspiration Set for Word, the pack contains 169 templates for almost any document or project from business stationary to canning jar labels – of them beautifully designed by Jumsoft’s team of professional graphic designers.
Jumsoft has made a name for itself with a range of template collections for iWork and other Apple apps including a collection of templates/themes for iBooks Author and two collections for spicing up emails composed using OS X’s Mail app. The company has also produced two packs of clipart that can be used in virtually application.
Earlier this week, we reported on the move by Australian airline Qantas to swap out the 1,300 BlackBerries used by its staff (and the related infrastructure) in favor of iPhones. It looks like Qantas is doubling down on Apple and iOS. The airline also announced this week that it will begin offering streaming entertainment on iPads across all the planes in its fleet of Boeing 767 aircraft.
Qantas is launching the new service, which it has dubbed QStreaming, following a successful trial of the service earlier this year.
Do bring your own device (BYOD) programs that allow or encourage users to bring their personal iPhones, iPads, and other devices into the workplace reduce costs or do they drive costs up because of the need for mobile management, training, and technical support?
That fundamental question has been the source of a lot of debate, numerous studies, and a lot of sleepless nights for CIOs and IT managers.
The truth is that this is a question that’s difficult, if not impossible, to answer definitively. There are many variables involved in developing and implementing a BYOD policy or program.