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Microsoft Says iPhone Is Irrelevant To Business
An anonymous reader writes "A Microsoft exec has turned attack dog, lashing out at Apple's iPhone by saying the device isn't good for business. Why? Because the iPhone is 'a closed device that you cannot install applications on.' Specifically, he's talking about Microsoft Office. 'While the entry of the iPhone (with its cut-down version of Mac OS X) into this market offers new options for consumers, Sorenson believes user familiarity with the Windows Mobile interface — and the ease with which companies can buy and develop applications for the platform — will sustain its increasing popularity and help keep the iPhone out of the lucrative corporate market.'"
Yeah, because I always use my telephone to write Word documents. You can bet that if Microsoft is trying to cut this down, it means a threat to Microsoft. And this early too -- the product does not even ship until June. How does Microsoft know what the iPhone can and cannot do?
Microsoft complaining about a company locking competitors out? that's rich...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
So?
Apple doesn't target large business/enterprise markets. They never have. Their products are always marketed as tools for empowering individuals. If you didn't know better and could only guess from reviewing their advertising, you might think that businesses don't use personal computers. Often in these cases they behave more like a consumer electronics company rather than a PC maker.
Apple has never shipped HP or Dell level volumes and they've never seemed interested in trying. They get waiting lists for some of their products as it is.
Adding enterprise app accessibility would only introduce bugs, increase complexity, and reduce the overall user-friendlyness of the device, none of which would be Apple's fault (and I'm not even a fanboi). Besides, can anyone imagine Jobs up on stage at some show, introducing the latest email or ERP integration piece? No one drools over that kind of stuff.
It's clear that part of Apple's rep for simplicity is due to the avoidance of the products and systems that can't be made simple. Enterprise apps are necessary and useful, but their deployment and use are a clusterfuck and probably always will be. Apple can't change that, so why take the downside?
Apple says Vista is irrelevant for business...
Go take a look at the ads for the iphone on Apple's site. Here's what you WON'T hear:
::touches picture of guy wearing a blue tie:: ::clicks picture of guy wearing red tie:: Hi Mike, I've got that spreadsheet you were waiting on.
MIKE: I need to call Chet ask him about that spreadsheet
CHET: My phone is ringing!
MIKE:Great, let's call Sue and look at the powerpoint!
CHET: As long as it has plenty of bar graphs!
See for yourself. Apple doesn't give a flying flip about the suit, at least not while they are at work. Their ads are filled with attractive youngsters talking about meeting up for bike riding and whitewater rafting! They don't CARE about the business market.
Thank you, and goodnight.
I like to place meaningful quotes in my sig, so people will know that I know what meaningful quotes are.
Apparently, Microsoft isn't aware of the full-featured web browser that will allow the use of online office applications. You know the stuff Microsoft has been talking up lately. It's odd that they've apparently forgotten the web revolution, given that they've been talking about how into it they are now. Guess it was more bullshit from Redmond.
"Sufferin' succotash."
*raises hand reluctantly*
I've used it. It's one of the few things on WM 5.0 that actually works more or less as you'd expect it to. That said, it's really not terribly useful. I can't see any situation where it would be more useful than, say, an automatic Word-to-txt converter on the phone.
begin sort-of on-topic rant:
WM 5.0 has one of the worst interfaces I've ever seen on any computing device. Inconsistent from things like the "dismiss" button which swaps sides depending on the app you're dismissing, to the utterly abitrary selection of which functions have buttons on the bottom bar and which have nice big buttons in the main screen, to the random way you quit various applications - do I click the "OK" button, or the "X" in the top right, or the "close" text on the bottom bar - the answer is different with nearly every app. Or the fact it takes 7 clicks on tiny little menu items and icons with the stylus to find the task manager to switch between running applications. Some of our more impatient and less technical users were just rebooting their phones when they ran out of memory rather than navigating that maze each time.
Then there's the flat out bugs and glitches (some of which I'm told will be fixed in some subsequent release... on a thousand dollar phone... which is a crucial business tool in my job... great, thanks, let me just bend over a bit more for you) like the way the hard buttons just stop working every so often (sometimes all of them, sometimes just one or two, like the "answer call" button). Or the screen which sometimes randomly fades to white. i.e., when you're on a call to a client and want to hang up, but the buttons don't work and the screen has gone white so you can't see where to click, the only way to hang up is to take the battery out. Prior to this I'd never seen a telephone handset that crashes and has to be rebooted.
These are the barest tip of the iceburg of the problems with these phones. They're totally unsuitable for business use or any other use where the phone needs to be relied upon. The idea of the makers of this toy dissing the as yet unreleased iPhone as irrelevant for business is hilarious.
If you need a phone to impress your friends at the bar or to play solitare on the train home from work, a WM 5.0 device is perfect for you. If you actually need to rely on it as a phone, mobile data connection, and PDA, i.e., as a business tool... I'm not sure what your other options are, but loads of phones do PDA stuff now, and plenty can do email, and although admittedly Exchange calendering integration is well-implemented and handy in WM 5, if you can give that one feature up it is well worth doing so.
These bloody things were pushed on us geeks by management and have been an unmitigated disaster from day 1. My immediate manager, not a particularly technical guy, implied I was some kind of Luddite when I expressed some doubts (fairly mild ones, as it turned out) prior to the rollout. We previously all had Nokia 8210i handsets and iBurst PCMCIA cards for our laptops, which worked reliably and quickly about 95% of the time.
I am *not* a blind MS hater. I use and deploy their products at work, and they're much better than they once were. But WM is simply crap in the very worst traditions of half-assed marketing-department-driven Microsoft dross.
Apple would have to try pretty hard with the iPhone to make it any less relevant than Windows Mobile.
*sigh* end rant. Sorry about that, WM 5.0 has made me quite bitter.
You know they call 'em fingers but I've never seen 'em fing. Oh, there they go.