There's an App for that

I have an iPhone, and an iPad, and I like them very much. I just got back from the first business trip I've ever been on without a laptop; I used the iPad and iPhone instead. There was only one thing I couldn't do during the trip, and I might have been able to, but I didn't know how. Anyway, my point is: the new wave of iOS devices are making an impact in how I do business, surf the web, read books, watch Netflix, etc.

One of the apps I downloaded on my phone was the Fly Delta app, which lets you check in to your flight, check status, including gate changes, on the fly. You can even use the screen of your phone as the scannable boarding pass. One thing it doesn't have is maps of airports, so if you wanted to see how close Gate A4 and Gate T61 are, you're out of luck. But no problem, I can get those on the web for the most part. And of course it only works for Delta flights.

There seems to be apps for just about everything, and I'm beginning to wonder if that's a dangerous trend. The one thing I didn't do, for example, because I didn't have an app for it: that doesn't make sense. You shouldn't need apps for every little thing. Apps are small and focussed, but that focus may be too insulating. It makes the entire experience more of a 'black box' than it should be.

You probably won't see too many 'big' apps. I think Bento might be the leading edge of apps where you control how you work. It's a database app from Filemaker that allows you to define the fields of your database, and how those fields collect data, from the iOS device. I use it to track expenses and time for projects. Every other app doesn't give you that flexibility - you can't modify the workflow that they present.

I'm not a big expert on apps, I own maybe three dozen or so. But they consistently feel like very closed environments, compared to a desktop, and until more start opening up like Bento, I'm not sure how well they will ever replace laptops.