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.
For those of you who use Windows Mobile, you’re likely no stranger to battery life issues that sometimes come up, especially if you are a power user, spend a lot of time on the telephone during the day or connect to your Exchange email via ActiveSync for “push” email. A Microsoft employee who runs a blog on the subject has a great write-up to get you started on preserving your battery life and getting through the day on your Blackjack, Treo 750, Motorola Q, etc.
According to Gizmodo’s Jesus Diaz, Windows Vista sales aren’t helping PC manufacturers a bit. In fact, it’s business-as-usual as a result of Vista’s release, in spite of promise after promise from Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. Business users are likely concerned with Vista’s incompatibility with existing applications; home users are just happy with the XP beast (set of problems) they know. It appears that virtually no one is running out to buy a Vista PC.
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.
Another Windows vulnerability has been found and this time, it’s scary.
Important points on this:
(1) This is an ACTIVE exploit
(2) The solution is to avoid browsing “untrusted sites”, i.e. the INTERNET
(3) It affects Vista on down–virtually every Windows OS
(4) It exploits the animated cursor functionality and can result in arbitrary code execution on the victim’s machine
This is a serious problem. Let’s hope Microsoft has out a fix soon.
Firefox has been David if Microsoft was Goliath for two years. Despite Microsoft’s money, developers, marketing and market share (both OS and browser) Firefox was making huge gains - eroding 12% of the market from Microsoft. After the release of IE 7, things seem to be changing.
Though the data is disputed, or rather the interpretation of that data is, some say Microsoft is once again slowing down Firefox’s growth. Eventually, it could slow to a trickle of users or nothing at all. Only time will tell. Whatever the case, less competition in the market would be bad for consumers.
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.
Windows Vista’s “unbeatable” activation encryption has already been cracked. We knew it was only a matter of time. This is further proof that if you use complex, invasive digital rights management you only inconvenience the honest customers. The bad guys will always find a way to get past it. We reported not too long ago that the same thing happened with media DRM built-in to Vista.
Preserving digital rights means changing business models. Microsoft still doesn’t get it.
Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, has some interesting comments on DRM and its usefulness (or lack thereof).
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.
Google today announced a new suite of professional office applications that are entirely web-based and hosted by Google. The search giant already had an advertising-based service for non-enterprise users. The office suite competes directly with Microsoft Office. Here’s a rundown of the features included with the “Premier Edition” of Google Apps:
Google isn’t likely to start stealing away users from Microsoft left and right. What they are likely to do is peel off users who wouldn’t ordinarily be able to afford Microsoft products or are simply served by far fewer features than MS Office provides. University students are bound to jump right on this bandwagon. With the proliferation of bandwidth, we’re likely to finally see the thin-client model really start to take hold, at least for applications (NOT the OS) for the first time.