My iPad and the Cloud

With the number of things I have to split my attention on every waking hour here at home, I decided to try a radical approach: no computer. No laptop, no desktop. Only an iPhone, and an iPad. So for my work as a web developer, I have transitioned to all cloud storage and servers, and only using iOS devices for all my work.

Yes, almost all my work is being done on my iPad. Not just consumption, but production and management of content, servers and content delivery... all through my little iPad.

From what I have found, the key advantages for doing all your day to day work on the iPad are: 

• In-Home Mobility: I can sit on my couch, then move to the front yard to let the baby hang out on a blanket under a tree, then go to the back yard so my girls can swim, then head into a quiet room for a conference call or Fuze meeting. Being able to get things done and make progress on my projects from anywhere, without dragging cables or worrying about a safe surface for a laptop, is liberating. 
• True Mobility: related to above, I be can anywhere and continue to do all my work via 3G. Going to take the kids somewhere no longer means being out of touch. On my iPhone I have apps to manage my servers (rebooting, DNS changes) and managing Drupal content. On my iPad I have access to all my files, including all the files my wife uses in her work, as everything goes into Dropbox. While sometimes I work too much, being able to go take the tribe and stay somewhere for a couple hours (or days) mid-week, without coordinating with my customers ahead of time, is really great. I should do that a lot more. 
• Reliability: iPads and iPhones rarely crash and have far less mysterious errors. I love Macs. I've been using Macs since 1984. Anyone who says Macs don't crash are simply not using them enough. They crash, stuff gets corrupted and lost, either by user error or the occasional bad file. While Carbonite and my Time Capsule are awesome, weird computer issues cost time. I've found my iOS devices work every time, at the same speed and in a consistent fashion almost all of the time.
• Less Distraction: Having multiple big monitors on a Mac is great. Gigantic amounts of RAM and disk space is fantastic. Running 18 programs at once, with stuff bouncing around in the dock and Growl notifications flashing in your face, is not so great for actually getting things done. I enjoy the single iOS screen for each app. The focus is great. I am looking forward to Lion on my wife's iMac to see that come to Mac OS X. Yes, I know it's kinda retro. Yes, I remember Switcher on my Mac 128k. Yes, it's ironic. Could I do this by turning off all the distractions on the Mac? Yes. Would I? Never. Why? Not really sure.
• Redundancy: With the cloud, everything I do is automatically replicated multiple places. Files in my Dropbox are also on my wife's Mac, on my Carbonite backup and on my Time Capsule. With MobileMe, all my contacts, Safari bookmarks and calendars are synced through the air. I will admit, it is strange and a little startling when a reminder goes off and devices throughout the house beep and buzz all at once. The fact is, if needed, I can sit at any Internet-connected computer and get to anything I need. Yes, I use MobileMe and I love it. I don't know why it gets bad-mouthed all the time on TWiT and other places.

As of now, I do about 97% of my work on my iPad. I've been able to write code, manage servers, communicate with my customers and even do my taxes on it. The three percent is done via VNC or RDP clients on my iPad controlling VirtualBox VMs running Windows for testing web sites in various browsers, and controlling my wife's Mac for testing the browsers on in Mac OS X. Also in that three percent is occasionally starting up a Gnome session on one of my cloud Linux server for file management. Sorry, but file management via CLI is not for humans (just kidding to the vi types out there). I have been eyeing a couple file management apps for the iPad to allow me to manage files on my servers with SSH using a key. 

It's been a fun learning experience. It's been fascinating to see apps come along that seem to perfectly fill a gap I had with trying to use the iPad exclusively.