The long awaited Apple iPhone software development kit is coming, it appears, on March 6. This is only a few days late. It’s not completely clear yet whether or not the kit will actually be released or whether it is just in beta and will be announced for testing purposes.
EDIT: Apple promises “exciting” new enterprise features. COULD IT BE? Might we soon have long-awaited Microsoft ActiveSync support? Only time will tell….
A Democratic bill in the House of Representatives would force AT&T and Apple to abandon their successful business model, interfering with the markets in order to allow customers to activate the iPhone without a subsidized contract. Rep. Ed Markey, the very liberal Democrat congressman from Massachusetts, wants the FCC to regulate the contracts between AT&T and its customers and force Apple to make the iPhone available without a contract. Though this might be good for the few people who want to use T-Mobile instead of AT&T, the net result would be MUCH higher prices for everyone. This is another example of the Democrats over-regulating the economy and trying to get involved in the tech sector, something about which they know absolutely zilch.
Congress ought to spend more time passing the legislation necessary to protect the American people from terrorists instead of going after enterprising businesses.
For those of us who use OS X in an enterprise environment, it can be difficult to make our Exchange calendars sync with our iPhones. There is an excellent workaround, however. All of the updated versions of Office for Mac include a synchronization service that makes it easy as pie.
In Entourage, go to Entourage > Preferences > Sync Services.
There you have an option to sync your address book, calendar, or both with Apple’s built-in software. This works great for synching the iPhone.
CNet’s Matt Asay has a good blog from January about Apple’s dominance and market share growth. It’s a lesson to all those PC manufacturers who would rather enjoy the status quo than innovate.
For those of us lucky enough to own an iPhone, help is coming in the way of a delicious Apple SDK. The main fault of the iPhone has been, for quite some time, the lack of native third party applications. In the past, the only way to to run applications directly on the iPhone was to Jailbreak it, which could void your warranty. Most of us stayed away from this.
Here’s to hoping for some iPhone SDK goodness this week! Additionally, I sure hope Business Week was wrong in its prediction that the SDK could be several weeks to a month late.
For just $1.29, users can soon download DRM-free music titles from part of the iTunes music catalogue, according to Apple CEO Steve Jobs! This is a major victory for consumers’ rights and is a positive development in the evolution of online media sales. For those who seeks to keep us all in the dark ages, it is a loss of epic proportions - and I couldn’t be happier.
If this works well, I think we may see all of the major record labels following suit soon to offer DRM-free music.
Computerworld’s Scot Finnie (a recent Mac convert) writes on the danger to Microsoft presented by Apple’s current “buzz”.
Finnie seems to think the perception that Apple’s product is hot, new and superior will drive new growth. He perceives the threat to Microsoft as being not from a market share point-of-view, but rather in terms of “mind share”. He calls the Apple story one of the “Top Ten” tech stories of the year.
He’s right. He touches on something that a lot of us in the tech industry seem to miss sometimes. It isn’t always the traditional drivers in a market that push a product towards success or extinction, but rather this intangible and not yet measurable sense of buzz. When people begin making a computer the topic of conversation at sports pubs, it’s time for us to listen up. From a business point-of-view we need to find a way to measure this “buzz”. As an IT Professional, I’m listening closely to that buzz, and plan to capitalize on it and move IT forward on newer, better technologies.
The Apple iPhone will be released on June 11.
Good news, if you’ve been (im)patiently waiting.
Recent events have changed the field in which the iPhone is going to compete. Since it was introduced earlier this year, Microsoft introduced Windows Mobile 6. Far from innovative, WM6 is merely a .x upgrade to WM5 with a few added features (like HTML e-mail) that should have been around to begin with. TechBlog.TheVanguard.Org noticed something else, too: AT&T seems to be making its EDGE data service network faster. In some ways, EDGE data will always be inferior to 3G (HSDPA) technology at AT&T. EDGE cannot be used while in a GSM phone call. With HSDPA, users can have simultaneous data and voice calls. However, we’ve recently seen EDGE coverage not too far from our offices (we’re in a 3G area, so we have to do some traveling to see EDGE) begin to increase in speed from about 100kbps to 170kbps.
As some of you may recall, one of our biggest complaints about the iPhone was its lack of 3G. It’s clear why Apple decided to go with EDGE data, however. Windows Mobile devices that operate on AT&T’s 3G network suffer from terrible battery life. In a device with a screen as vibrant and large as the iPhone (and with as many capabilities) battery life is likely to become an issue.
We think the increased speeds (with more promised in the future) make EDGE viable for light browsing and heavy e-mail. We’re also a lot more excited about the potential for use by business people who are turned off by Windows Mobile’s battery life problems and lack of compatibility with the Mac.
NetworkWorld has an interesting article about Apple’s prospects in corporate America. Recent architecture changes, virtualization, clustering, storage networks, interoperability hooks and the price of upgrading hardware for Windows Vista all put Macs under the microscope for careful consideration as replacements to existing Windows and Linux machines.
As has been the case in the past, Apple is not defining a clear course for going after corporate business (the article points this out). Apple’s rebellious, anti-corporate attitude continues in 2007. However, innovative new technologies like Parallels, which allows users to run Microsoft Windows from within Mac OS X on a Macintosh computer are likely to make corporate moves to Mac OS X more likely.