Multi-Touch Squared

By Joe Puckett, director of recruiting and training at PC Helps

The Rave:
The convenience and intuitiveness of the multi-touch gestures that helped fuel the skyrocket of iOS device sales just got a lot better with iOS 5. Four-finger up/down swipes to show/hide the multitasking bar and four finger left/right swipes to move among open apps make multitasking much faster and easier. A five-finger pinch sends the current application to the multitasking bar so you can get to the current home screen.

The Rant:
Still no widgets or a way to have the same app in multiple places? How will I know where I am without the weather widget on the home screen of my phone listing my location without me having to open anything? Most people’s digital life is not so neat that having mail in only one place is convenient. I’ve seen many Android phones with the mail application in four or more places. Being able to put the same app in multiple places enables people to group things by business function rather than computer function.

The Conclusion:
The convenience of having everything in one place is one of the primary forces driving the use of personal devices in business. The new multitasking gestures in iOS 5 make it much easier to move among all the things on an iOS device. Widgets and duplicate app icons would still be nice, but being able to leave a lot of things open and move between them so quickly is a good way to accomplish the same purpose.

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Read Part 1: iOS 5 Rants & Raves for End-Users: Part 1

About the author: Joe Puckett is PC Helps’ director of recruiting and training. He grooms the talent here, and creates our internal and client-facing corporate training courses. A 15-year PC Helps veteran, Puckett is the one to ask if you ever have a software question.

This week, PC Helps Blog is featuring Puckett’s series of “iOS 5 Rants & Raves” geared to end-users. Last week’s posts were geared to  IT leaders and professionals. He has been researching and testing the new operating system as part of his ongoing efforts to build new iPad training modules for PC Helps productivity consultants.

Joe Puckett iOS 5 Rants & Raves, iPad, iPhone app icons, Apple, gestures, iOS, iPad, iPhone, Mac, MacIntosh, multi-touch, multitasking, widgets

Make iPhone and Apple support a reality (and remain cost effective). According to Apple’s first quarter earnings report, 8.7 million iPhones were sold, that’s a 100% increase over the same period the prior year. Apple sold 300,000 iPads the day they were released and analysts predict 7 million will be sold within one year. As a result, IT leaders might soon be forced to embrace the idea of Apple products in the workplace. The theory or what many human capital consulting firms continue to prove, a happier workplace that provides end-users with applications and technology they feel more comfortable with and want to learn will result in amplified productivity and increased efficiency levels.

See how PC Helps is supporting business end-users today: Remain cost effective by outsourcing iPhone and Apple support on a pilot basis

Jenny Sweeney Uncategorized Apple, iPads, iPhones, MacIntosh, Office 2008