Enterprise iPhone (a week with 2.0 Beta)

Most of the news that Apple is making the iPhone Enterprise ‘ready’ isn’t new.  It’s been well documented.  So I’ve spent the last two beta’s trying to use an iPhone as a BlackBerry replacement.

Granted the software is still beta, and I’ll try not to beat it up based upon that, but I will expose some of the issues that may or may not be a problem for switching from a CrackBerry to iPhone.

First some clear facts:

1. Edge simply blows.  It’s too slow for this.  Things are good when on Wifi, but edge…  Not good.  (3G should fix this right?)
2. The Microsoft Active Sync stuff leaves a little to be desired.  If your organization really leverages the security and lock down aspects of Black Berry Enterprise server you may have a hard time convincing them to let you do this.  (I’ve played with ActiveSync in the past with WinMobile phones and it’s been better than it currently is on the iPhone.  Again, it’s still Beta so we’ll see).
3. I have not tried to nuke the phone remotely from the Exchange console.  I will try that later this week.

First things first, it works, or will work at some level.  If you’ve totally been brainwashed into the BlackBerry messaging management then you probably aren’t going to like the way Apple, the iPhone, and ActiveSync work.  Simply provide your account details, and viola, your contacts, cal and mail are synchronized as it should be.

Email:

Blackberry sort of consolidates all your inbox messages if you so choose (and I do).  Meaning messages that are filtered and put into other folders by default are still in my messages application on the BlackBerry if I choose to sync those underlying folders.   With ActiveSync you only get notified of new items in the inbox.   This could be bad if you organize your inbox as I do.

If I wanted to know about new MGMT_Meeting emails which are filtered into that folder, I won’t know unless I look there.  That folder isn’t initially sync’d until you open it.

Mail works and is beautifully rendered as you’d expect.

It doesn’t appear to support landscape mode which kind of sucks for some emails.

Beta Warning: So far email notification has been spotty at best.  There are times I’ll open mail and the last updated time will be hours behind the actual time.  The mail app hangs a lot.  Generally 2-5x a day I’ll need to hard boot the phone.  It handles some attachments well; Excel, Word, even Cisco Voice mail messages are playable, others, not so much.  I have a couple attachments that will hang the phone in a really bad way, one is a pretty simple PDF.

Contacts:

Contacts work just as you’d expect them too.  Create contacts in Outlook and they magically appear on the iPhone with full details including the photo.

This is the most stable part of all of it at this time.  I have no complaints or issues to point out here.

Calendar:

This is where things get quite fugly.  First, you end up with a second Calendar.  One which can still by synchronized with iCal, and another that goes with ActiveSync.  While you can turn off the iCal synchronization within iTunes I haven’t found a way to delete it from the phone.  As a result you end up with two calendars without visual clue as to which one is which.  You can pick which one is the default, but again, it’s not immediately clear which one is which.

1. There is no week view.
2. Meeting invites work provided you’re the one invited.  Standard Exchange/Outlook responses are:  Accept, Decline, Tentative.   Apple however chose; Accept, Decline, Maybe…
   
3. There’s no facility to invite someone when creating a meeting or scheduled item (I hope this gets fixed).
   

Last but not least is the keyboard.  Nope, it’s not tactile, no you really can’t two-thumb type worth a damn (at least I can’t yet) and the predictive text will bite you when you least expect it but it’s pretty good otherwise.  I suspect that a good portion of Blackberry users primarily ‘read’ and don’t respond to anything in detail.  If you’re that type you will be just fine.  It takes some getting used too and touch is a big thing.   It took me quite a while to adjust to the Blackberry’s lack of touch screen when coming from a Palm even though it had a keyboard, I still used the touch screen a lot.  After using the iPhone I again found myself wanting to touch the icons on the Blackberry.  If there is an adaptation of Graffiti for the iPhone that would rock as well.

So all in all this looks very promising.   The data speed has to improve, reliability has to improve.   The email management will force me into a different email organization paradigm but I could probably work that out.   It is a straight forward shift from the Blackberry to iPhone?  No.  But I think this will make a lot of people happy in the long run.  As of now the Beta stuff is getting better,  Beta 3 was more like Alpha 1 to me.  It was completely unusable.  Beta 4 is much better but still not usable enough.  I still have to carry the Blackberry.

More later as things progress.

Written by datapoohbah on April 28th, 2008 with 4 comments.
Read more articles on Apple and Commentary and The Truth Hurts.

Making the switch part 3

Nearly a month has past since I last posted about the possibility of switching .

Since that time I’ve been lugging two laptops back and forth to work. I can’t make the switch and make it stick. There’s simply too much missing on the OS X front, at least for me from a network admin perspective.

Yes I use BOTH computers daily. Unfortunately, my job requires Windows. I simply use far too many things to not use Windows. After all the network I manage is primarily Windows based.

All that’s missing from making the complete switch for me is Applications and compatibility. This wonderful MacBook Pro is just an accessory, another tool in my arsenal.

Doing everything by Remote Desktop is fine in a pinch but when you need SQL admin tools they just don’t exist.

I’m still struggling to find good tools for simply tasks like updating this blog.

There are tools out there, don’t get me wrong, but they are all missing something or aren’t good enough for me to cough up the shareware fee.

I’m using Office 2004 (the 3 year old) Office platform because that’s the latest. Using the Windows equivalent is simply a better experience. Entourage is very nice, but I need better/full Exchange compatibility and interoperability. While mail and the Calendar functions certainly do work (using Exchange OWA as the connection method, Tasks don’t sync and there are some issues.

I’m not a graphic designer, and I’m plenty happy with Photoshop CS on Windows. People that bitch about the mouse not being as good just need to buy a better mouse.

If I were a ‘consultant’ again and could dictate what platform I used, I could use this Mac. But I’m not. The systems that are paramount to the organization that I work with dictate the platform that I have to use as my primary environment.

I simply don’t have access to the tools I use the most and haven’t found good OS X counterparts yet.

For as many screwed up thing as there are about Windows, and there are plenty, there are similar annoyances with the Mac. Give me another button on this track-pad, give me standard PC keyboard layout. These things just shouldn’t be different. We’ve progressed past the one button mouse, and so should the track-pad.

Can’t we all just get along? ☺

Written by datapoohbah on January 13th, 2007 with 2 comments.
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Making the switch part 2 of

Drinking the Kool-Aid?

As one person commented, Oh no, I’ve drunk the Kool-Aid. It’s not true I tell ya!

So far I have successfully, divided this 160gb hard drive into two partitions using Boot Camp. Why? Why not, I can’t do my job unless I can run Windows.

(I could if I wanted to live solely on a terminal server, but that requires a connection all the time and I don’t have that. As wonderful as terminal services is; it’s not conducive to real world productivity either. If you need quick and dirty access to stuff great, or if you only need limited access to certain applications and don’t want to deploy them to the desktop for better control, terminal services is your friend, but it’s not anything I’d wish on any one for their primary environment.)

Why did I choose Boot Camp? Well at first, because Parallels now has a beta that allows you to use your boot camp partition.

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Written by datapoohbah on December 14th, 2006 with 5 comments.
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Making the Switch, Living with a MacBookPro

Making the switch part 1 of ?

[Background]

First things first… I am a reformed Apple bigot. Yes once upon a time, there was a time when I’d rather die than be forced to use Windows. Think Different, think back oh, around the System 7 days.

I used a Mac whenever I could use a Mac and I was absolutely sure I was far more productive on the Mac than any Microsoft based operating system.

Back in the day I was lucky enough to work for a company that used Mac’s as much as Windows based boxes. We were a Premier Apple developer and did a number of high profile projects for Apple Enterprise. Back when Apple had a group dedicated to Enterprise. This was around the time they were desperately working on Copland, and before Steve’s 2nd stint as the man in charge.

Out of nowhere Apple killed the Enterprise team and decided it wouldn’t try to continue to play in that sandbox. (Remember this was pre OS X, pre X Serve’s and that the goodness that they would bring). As a company our hands were forced. At the time we got nearly 80% of or business from the Apple Enterprise group and we needed a backup plan since that was drying up.

Enter our immersion in the world of Bill.

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Written by datapoohbah on December 11th, 2006 with 3 comments.
Read more articles on Apple and Commentary and Gadgets and IT and The Truth Hurts.