Robert Not Bob

A long, long time ago
I can still remember how that music used to make me smile
And, I knew if I had my chance that I could make those people dance, and…
Maybe they’d be happy for a while
But, February made me shiver with every paper I’d deliver
Bad news on the doorstep – I couldn’t take one more step
I can’t remember if I cried when I read about his widowed bride
Something touched me deep inside the day the music died

For those under the age of 40, these are the opening lyrics to Don McLean’s 1971 song about the death of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper in 1959 – also known as “The day the music died.” Years ago, I had the opportunity to go to the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa and see the last place those rock-n-roll legends performed. If you love rock-n-roll and find yourself in Iowa, stop by and see it.

Today’s thoughts are not about the death of music. They are about, at least for me, the passing of a device that much like Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens had an extremely bright but short flame.

I became an “i” guy out of necessity soon after the first generation iPhone hit the market. Our CEO at the time called me up and told me that he wanted an iPhone to use with his work email. I attempted to explain that the iPhone would not work well with our older version of Lotus Notes and that the experience would not be one he would like. As CEOs are apt to do, he did not want to hear that and insisted that I go get him an iPhone and make it work.

So off I went to the Apple store to buy one and set up an ATT wireless plan. With a few days of tweaking and testing, we were able to get mail flowing, but no calendar synching, no access to our corporate directory, no synching of his contacts, and no access to any of our internal systems. It was a far cry from what could be done at the time with Blackberry devices. I delivered the device to our CEO along with the long list of things it could not do within our corporate environment.

Three days later, the CEO called me and told me the iPhone was not what he expected – for all the same reasons I had tried to tell him before ever purchasing one. He told me he was sending it back. So there I was, with a $500+ device and a 2-yr service commitment on a personally-liable account. So for the next two years, I carried that iPhone as my main device and dealt with the pains of Lotus Notes in an ‘I” world. As technology progressed and we moved to a new email platform, the iPhone became a more powerful and useful device. While I flirted with other devices – various Andriods and even a WinMobile – I stuck with the “i” world.

Towards the end of 2011, I told people that the work laptop I was currently using would be the last laptop I ever used. As I became further immersed in the ‘i” environment, I set my sights on the iPad. I had a vision of the iPad being the end of the Windows-based laptop. I tried for over a year to make the iPad be THE work device for me. I bought “Office-like” apps for spreadsheets and word processing. I leveraged cloud storage to have access to needed files. I downloaded apps to enhance my Sharepoint experience. I forced myself to not take my laptop on trips so that I was solely reliant on the iPad.

While I was able to survive with the iPad, I never felt completely comfortable. The “Office-like” apps were not full featured and clunky to use. I yearned for my Excel and my Word. I was also apt to forget to send files to the cloud, so I was always looking for that one file that I really needed. Yes, I felt cool carrying the iPad, but I never could pull the plug on my trusty laptop.

That all changed in mid-January. As part of the CIO track at DellWorld, I was offered a free Dell Latitude 10 Windows 8 Professional tablet. My first thought when I was told I would be receiving the tablet: “here’s another toy to play with for a week or two.” I did not have any expectations that this device would be a game changer.

When my Dell account executive delivered the Latitude 10 to me, we opened up the boxes and I causally glanced at the tablet, but did not jump right in to firing it up. Hours later, I finally turned it on and the revolution was on. I had in my hands a one and a half pound 10” laptop in tablet form. I had the familiar Windows operation system (once I got past the tiles), my trusty Office apps, all my files that I shamefully keep on my local drive, and a long lasting battery in the palm of my hands. The next day I had our desktop team join the device to our domain. Soon thereafter, our desktop management tool was pushing down apps just like it does with any other Windows based computer. Finally, there was a tablet that could be managed with our existing tools. It also came with a handy docking station for easy connection to a full screen monitor, mouse and keyboard.

After three days of using the tablet, I shut down my workhorse Thinkpad laptop for the final time.

A week later, I had to ask myself where I left my cool iPad. It was right where I left it the day I got my hands on that Dell tablet. I had gone 7 days without using the iPad – a device that previously felt like I used every 7 seconds.

For me it was “The day the iPad died.”