What iOS 4 Does (and Doesn't Do) For Business

snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Galen Gruman investigates what businesses can expect from Apple's new iOS 4. Multitasking, the biggest new capability, is for now simply a promise, as apps will need to be retrofitted to make use of the capability. The other big new capability for IT, a set of APIs that allow BlackBerry-like management of the iPhone, such as auditing of policies and apps, over-the-air provisioning of apps without iTunes, and over-the-air configuration and policy management, also remains in the realm of promise, as the various mobile management tools that have been reworked to take advantage of the new iOS 4 capabilities won't be available until July or later. And despite the fact that email works more as it does on the desktop, iOS 4 still fails to deliver several email capabilities key to business users, including zipped attachment management, junk mail filtering, message rules, and message flagging."

Comments

Re:So what

[Culture20]

None of this matters to the owners of 1st generation iPhones either.

Email capabilities

[Anonymous Coward]

iOS 4 still fails to deliver several email capabilities key to business users, including zipped attachment management, junk mail filtering, message rules, and message flagging.

What F'd up sadistic moron would push the junk mail filtering, message rules, and flagging down to the client? Wouldn't that mean that each client would be configured separately? I always set up that stuff so the user can configure it at the server level so that their laptop, desktop, phone, etc all are seeing the same exact mailstore. These are probably the same people that considering having "Sent Items" only stored on the actual device that did the sending be the way to go.

Re:Email capabilities

[Anonymous Coward]

Please don't try to make sensible posts on Slashdot, it might explode the fanboys heads in the basement.

Also, why is Slashdot always so effin' slow? You'd think you people being such hot-shit IT professionals that you could, maybe, make it run a little faster than a legless turtle?

Re:Email capabilities

[Monkeedude1212]

I'm not sure thats how it is set up. I can't imagine connecting an iPhone to my gmail account and having my junkmail filters not apply.

I think the reason why the iOS4 might "fail to deliver" those email capabilities is BECAUSE they are handled by the email server. Perhaps the issue is that the iPhone cannot change those settings from the device, but thats not to say the settings aren't still there. After all, any phone I've ever heard of phone just requests the headers of your inbox, and then when you choose it downloads that message. So any rules or filtering you have will still work even for your mobile devices.

If I'm wrong, for any reason, then that is SERIOUSLY f'd.

Re:Email capabilities

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about you, but I don't want every email that makes it past my spam filter sent to my phone, only the really important ones.

And yet, my sent emails end up in the same remote mailstore. Odd.

Re:Email capabilities

[nine-times]

If you're the user and your server isn't doing a good enough job filtering junk mail, then you'll want junk filtering in the client. And regardless of that, you may want support for configuring your junk mail options in the client, such as marking messages as junk for bayesian analysis. Same basic idea for the rest of this stuff.

Part of the problem is that email itself isn't very well designed for how most of us currently use email. It's simple, which is nice, but it's not built to address complex filtering/tagging workflows.

Re:Email capabilities

[Anonymous Coward]

I bring in far more money to the company than you ever will.

Ahh, the salesman attitude of "I'm better than you cause I don't spend money, I make it!"

Who do you come crying to when your phone breaks?

Re:Email capabilities

[h4rr4r]

You are a moron, use 4 accounts and 1 phone. Thankfully the company I work in IT is what makes the bucks.

Re:Email capabilities

[xploraiswakco]

actually it's still better to have the server do the work than your 4 phones, there is no reason the server can't be set up to provide the 4 different views for each phone, question is, why have all 4 phones process all your email to create the view that phone needs, when your mail server could do it faster and better.

Re:Email capabilities

[WCguru42]

I have four smartphones.

Really? Why? Please tell me you don't have four hip holsters.

Yes, I did read the rest of your post. No, it still doesn't make sense.

Re:Email capabilities

[Anonymous Coward]

How about something simple, like a different sound per email account? Would that really be so hard? So you know when I got an email about my site being down it would alert me differently than if my grandmother sent me an email. Currently I use a combination of tagging in gmail (+911), which then forwards to my sms email address from my provider so I get a text.

Re:Email capabilities

[binford2k]

You are indeed an F'd up sadistic moron. Really. Do you carry four pair of pants with you at all times? One for general use and the other three for your major customers. Holy fuckin' shit.

Re:Email capabilities

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a hardware salesman

When all you have is a hammer...

I have four smartphones.

...everything looks like a nail.

I bring in far more money to the company than you ever will.

Considering that I don't work for your company, I'd say "$0" is a pretty low bar for you to overcome.

Furthermore, even if we did work at the same company, by definition, my job is not to "bring money" into the company and everything I do would probably go right towards "expenses". On the other hand, I'd be willing to bet that my work would reduce annual costs at least on par with your generated revenue.

First thing on my list: Restrict all employees to a single company phone.

Re:Email capabilities

[jimicus]

You know, we have all these fancy filtering and tagging things but outside of IT, I don't think I've ever seen a single one used.

The only thing I have seen used is folders, but then the end-user almost invariably moves email into folders by hand.

Re:Email capabilities

[Anonymous Coward]

The iPhone does not have client filters, client spam management, or client-based flagging. Of those three, the only one that actually makes sense on the client is flagging.

Filtering at the client level only makes sense if you only have one client, are using POP3, and are storing the messages on the client. That's really not a good idea with a phone - you'll have synchronization collisions, you'll find that some mail is missing on your phone that was present on your laptop/desktop, etc. If you're using a phone and a desktop/laptop as mail clients, you want to use IMAP (on *all* your clients) and do all the rules and filtering and spam management on the server, use the iPhone client as a window into your mail account's various folders, and use a desktop or laptop for archiving.

Flagging, on the other hand, makes sense - if it's manual flagging (I'm referring to what in IMAP is called IMAP keywords or labels; the term 'flag' in IMAP actually refers to the message state - read, draft, etc.). The workaround for an iPhone is to create a "flagged" folder (in IMAP) and move emails to that folder to represent flagged emails (if you are using a rule to flag things, do that on the server; if you are flagging manually, use the iPhone to move the email). However, I'd love to see flagging and tagging (i.e., IMAP keywords) that can be pushed back to the IMAP server on an iPhone.

Re:Email capabilities

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to see him with 4 BTs in 2 ears. :D

Re:Email capabilities

[icebraining]

If you're the user and your server isn't doing a good enough job filtering junk mail, then you'll want junk filtering in the client.

If you're the user and your server isn't doing a good enough job filtering junk mail, then you'll want a better configured server. In alternative, I'd set up a relay server to fetch the messages from the main server, filter them and then serve them to the client(s).

Re:Email capabilities

[nine-times]

I've seen plenty of people use Outlook's "Rules", even some relatively non-technical people. One of the problems there is that mail servers (excepting Exchange) don't usually have good server-side filtering along with client-side configuration of that filtering.

I don't bother setting up client-side filtering on my personal email account because it only works if that client, and I don't always check my email from the same client.

I don't bother tagging my email because it's not something that's handled consistently and most of the time it's client-side only. So if I spend lots of time tagging my email and using those tags, and then I move to another client, those tags are all missing. Worse: if I delete my client's settings without backing up the tagging information, all that information simply goes away. Exchange allows categories (basically tags) to be stored on the server-side, but they're inaccessible by mail clients other than Outlook.

Also, I can't send tags. Like if I'm sending an email to my boss and I tag it as "budget", he doesn't get that tag when he receives that email. When he replies, the reply isn't tagged either. It's just not a very well thought out system.

Re:Email capabilities

[mini me]

I bring in far more money to the company than you ever will.

If four different email views are critical to your operation, it sounds to me like your IT staff are the ones bringing in the money.

Re:Email capabilities

[Em Ellel]

I'm a hardware salesman.....

I have four smartphones........

.... Call me a "F'd up sadistic moron" all you want. That doesn't change the fact that you're short-sighted and ignorant about how your users use their email and other communication methods.

Actually I believe he called your IT stuff "F'd up sadistic morons" - they are the ones inflicting this onto you. You are a salesman, nobody here expects you to understand these things...

-Em

Re:Email capabilities

[Em Ellel]

You are indeed an F'd up sadistic moron. Really. Do you carry four pair of pants with you at all times? One for general use and the other three for your major customers. Holy fuckin' shit.

That would be silly, there is no need for separate pants for each major customer.

But you do need a separate belt for each belt-clip on each phone... so each belt would need a separate pants.... oh, crap, I guess he does need separate pants ;-)

-Em

Re:Email capabilities

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually the phrase I had in mind was "pompous asshole".

Re:Email capabilities

[Altus]

The junkmail filters on the server continue to apply. The complaint is that you cant set up filters on the phone. Kind of silly though since you want the messages filtered out before they are shipped down to the device. Why pay for wireless bandwidth for spam?

Re:Email capabilities

[Em Ellel]

Please don't try to make sensible posts on Slashdot, it might explode the fanboys heads in the basement.

"haha, Its funny cuz its true"

Re:Email capabilities

[dave562]

I see the exact opposite. I rarely use any filters or tags on my emails. I sort them the old fashioned way with folders for each category and a whole slew of rules to filter them on arrival. On the other hand whenever I visit various executive assistants workstations, they seem to have everything filtered and categorized and tagged up the wazoo. It seems to functionality that is appreciated.

Re:Email capabilities

[Altus]

I bring in far more money to the company than you ever will.

Way to loose all credibility right there. Your IT staff is what keeps your entire sales force moving. They keep your production on line so you have things to sell, they make sure that you can communicate quickly and efficiently with your suppliers.

IT is central to most every business in this day and age and people who ignore that fact are fools. You like having those 4 phones? You like having email and calls routed to them? Thats IT. You cant have it both ways.

Re:Email capabilities

[nine-times]

Nice if you're the IT guy and not just the user. Savvy users might still do something like have Gmail fetch their mail from another service, but not everyone is going to be eager to do that.

Re:Email capabilities

[EdelFactor19]

And meanwhile the rest of us think you are insane for carrying four seperate phones to do the job of one. Do you have four seperate computers to connect to each of the different servers too?

It's not a matter of money its a matter of efficiency and stupidy. Just because you don't know HOW to accomplish your goal of having four separate views in an intelligent manner and found a truly shoddy workaround doesn't mean you know what you are doing.

You are a hardware salesman, unless your specialty is communication management hardware, and happen to be his manager, I'd say you are generally in the wrong here. The sysadmin's job is to afford with means to manage your communication within the companies acceptable standards (performance, reliability, security, etc, etc). Whether or not you like the company policies isn't his issue; take it up with someone who sets the policies, not enforces them.

Sounds more like you hate when an admin says you can't have something you want but don't need and he doesn't see a financial reason to maintain the cost for you compared to actually using techonology.

Honestly If you are carrying around 4 phones, each tracking the same email address it really seems like you are doing something wrong. Is the email separation really the only reason you have separate phones? I'm curious as to why you couldn't just set up three folders in your IMAP server one for each company and have emails go to the appropriate place.

And since someone said you need to talk to more than one person at once... I call slight bs on that. Unless you are literally holding one phone to your ear and mouth and the other two you rear and holding two unrelated conversations you just don't know how to work with technology.
They have these things called conference calls, three-way calling, and call-waiting if you are bouncing from conversation to conversation. And if you are truly having THAT many different lines going at once, maybe it makes more sense to call from a LANDLINE (shock) on a business phone setup with several different lines and the features you need.

I'm not a salesperson, but I know well enough to not conduct important business on a cellphone if a landline is available.. Nothing like dropping an important call right?

I don't have 4 phones, but having a smartphone and a laptop I feel like its already close enough... Any pop-mail I delete on my phone because I don't want it there in my inbox has to be deleted again on my laptop.. Otherwise I can't remove it from my inbox until my laptop had a chance to read the message and grab a copy. Another reason I hate POP? when you create a new account you have to download EVERY MESSAGE EVER that's still on the server, and they are all unread... lame.

server side mail is the way of the future, and its the only viable mechanism to deal with the bulk of synchronization of devices, there's this phenomenal pattern in software called model-view-controller. You might have heard of it.. The important bit is that you don't have to physically create multiple copies of a MODEL to see different VIEWS of the same data or filtration of the same date. amazing.

I will still stand by my statement, 4 phones is asinine.

I'm not a sysadmin, but its people like you who make me feel sorry for mine.

Re:Email capabilities

[Anonymous Coward]

There are other holes where he could plug those BTs.

Re:Email capabilities

[Lumpy]

What moron wants to open a zipped file attachment on his PHONE. I want to see the email is there, then I open my laptop and grab the full email and do what I want.

I keep hearing this red-herring about attachments and zipped attachments on email on phones, and can not find one person that actually truely needs or would use this. What complete fool is gonna open a zip, open the spreadsheet and then edit it on his fricking phone? None. you see it's there, drop into the nearest coffee shop, whip open that laptop, vpn in to work and grab the file.

Re:Email capabilities

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm going to take a wild guess in that you still work with an email provider using the ancient deprecated concept of folder management for email messages. So you want "views?" Then use server-side rules and message-based tagging. An infinite number of email clients can't do anything that a single server cannot.

Re:Email capabilities

[afidel]

Not everyone is running off a corporate email system with such functionality performed server side, in fact I was listening to NPR last night and they were talking about something like 19% of latino homes the phone is the only point of internet access.

Re:Email capabilities

[afidel]

Hahaha, sounds like someone who hasn't grasped the concept of a smartphone. I can literally do everything I can do on a laptop on my phone just slightly slower. That's why despite bringing my laptop on my last trip out of town it was only used to watch movies because everything else was taken care of from my phone. I wouldn't have even brought the laptop except I was on call last week and needed to be able to respond at 100% efficiency if there had been an outage. My CEO and chairman of the board both have laptops that are almost never with them, they do all their work away from the office on their Blackberry. It's why email and BES are our highest SLA'd items in the entire infrastructure, email downtime gets more notice than an outage in our ERP system (not that either are common).

Re:Email capabilities

[DavidD_CA]

I agree with 66% of your message.

It's actually very handy being able to flag a message in my inbox from my mobile device (as well as complete the flag or clear it), assuming of course that it is sync'd back to the server (which is what happens with Exchange 2010).

So when I see an email come in (on my mobile or my workstation) that is very important, I can flag it.

Then whenever I'm looking at my inbox on my mobile it will stand out, and likely remind me to take care of it. And after I have, I can flag it complete.

I understand that few people would find this useful, but for the small group that use it, we love it.

Re:Email capabilities

[Tarlus]

I can literally do everything I can do on a laptop on my phone just slightly slower.

But can you open zipped attachments?
=)

Re:Email capabilities

[DrgnDancer]

So what you're saying is "I have a fucked up work flow based around inaccurate assumptions about the capability of my technology and because I am a moderately capably bullshit artist you should bow down to worship me." You don't need four phones to get 4 different "views" of your e-mail, and even if insist that having four phone will somehow help you keep track of e-mail better, there's no reason not to do your filtering at the server level. Your inability to properly use your equipment is hardly a major IT concern.

I also doubt you bring in more money than I do. I do IT for the government as a contractor. I am my company's product, and people with my skill sets sell quite well.

Re:Email capabilities

[salesgeek]

What moron wants to open a zipped file attachment on his PHONE

Some guy who was sent a zipped attachment and would like to do something useful, like say, read the pdf in the zipfile ...

Re:Email capabilities

[Anonymous Coward]

Flagging, in the sense that you describe, belongs on the server as well. The client needs to be able to *tell* the server to flag a message, but the state needs to be maintained on the server.

Re:Email capabilities

[afidel]

Yes, and edit the contents if they are office documents or half a dozen other formats.

Re:Email capabilities

[ceoyoyo]

Not to mention it means you need to send ALL the spam out over the air, then have that poor little CPU sort it.

Re:Email capabilities

[Macrat]

What F'd up sadistic moron would push the junk mail filtering, message rules, and flagging down to the client?

You haven't met many IT people I guess. While there are many good ones, there are quite more completely clueless ones.

Re:Email capabilities

[c64k]

What company do you work for? I would like to add it to our 'do not buy from' list.

Junk Mail - not an issue

[rsborg]

Shouldn't (mass) junk be filtered at the server level (especially in an enterprise setting)? Even in personal email, I rely on my provider to do most of the heavy lifting of SPAM removal for me.

Re:Junk Mail - not an issue

[Ephemeriis]

Shouldn't (mass) junk be filtered at the server level (especially in an enterprise setting)?
Even in personal email, I rely on my provider to do most of the heavy lifting of SPAM removal for me.

Agreed.

Sure, some of it is going to get through... But it shouldn't be enough that managing junk mail should be a major feature on a smartphone.

If you've got that much junk mail coming through to your phone, you need to look at how it is (or isn't) being filtered at the server.

Re:Junk Mail - not an issue

[Anonymous Coward]

SPAM

should be lower case

spam

Re:Junk Mail - not an issue

[Anonymous Coward]

No, its an acronym for Shove Penis At Me

As a former Blackberry user...

[unsmashed]

One thing I miss is the ability to do different notifications based on filters / profiles set up. The Blackberry can do this by flagging certain messages as a "Level 1 Notification" and then you can set normal messages to come in quietly, but Level 1 messages can vibrate, ring, whatever you configure it to do. It's great to get notified when your boss or superior email you, but let the other 200 emails a day just collect quietly.

The other feature I wish existed is when I reply to a message on my iPhone, that it shows up in Outlook as replied to (via the Exchange ActiveSync). Without it, there's sometimes confusion whether I've replied to this or not when reviewing the emails on my desktop.

Re:As a former Blackberry user...

[bemymonkey]

Not sure if this works on the iPhone, as I'm not sure what level of GMail Integration is present there, but if you happen to be using GMail, try the following:

Have the messages you don't want to bother you set to be moved to a label and immediately archived, via a filter... Gmail will then no longer notify for these messages, because it only notifies for things that actually land in the inbox. Since this works for Gtalk and Gmail notifier on the PC as well as on the Android GMail app, I'm presuming it'd work on the iPhone too.

If you don't use Gmail and/or are looking for this feature for something other than Gmail, you're probably SOL. :p

Bit surprising that there isn't a decent IMAP (it even sounds like an Apple product... iMap!) client for the iPhone that will do this by folder...

Re:As a former Blackberry user...

[Polo]

I agree.

And Calendar appointments too. The default alarm is short, doesn't repeat and completely ineffective.

Some appointments are life-threatening if you miss them: Pick up the kids, tax audit, anniversary...

Re:As a former Blackberry user...

[Anonymous Coward]

Some appointments are life-threatening if you miss them: Pick up the kids, tax audit, anniversary...

Luckily 2 of those things aren't anything a Slashdotter ever has to worry about.

Re:As a former Blackberry user...

[pwagland]

The other feature I wish existed is when I reply to a message on my iPhone, that it shows up in Outlook as replied to (via the Exchange ActiveSync). Without it, there's sometimes confusion whether I've replied to this or not when reviewing the emails on my desktop.

Here, here! I totally agree with this feature request. Sadly, even the vaunted blackberry can't get this right... my colleagues with balckberries also complain about this.

The mac

[Itninja]

Reminds me of a Mac commercial parody from years ago:
'You know all the games for the Mac are great because you played them a PC three years ago'

The iPhone, with its quality touch screen and beautiful, lickable looks, continues to announce 'amazing new features' that have been available in Blackberrys (Blackberries?) for nearly a decade.

Re:The mac

[archmcd]

The politically correct term is actually "berries of color."

Re:The mac

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, all those touch-screen blackberries with the blackberry app store a decade ago were great. You must have installed the first talk-out-of-your ass app.

Re:The mac

[MadCow42]

>> The iPhone, with its quality touch screen and beautiful, lickable looks, continues to announce 'amazing new features' that have been available in Blackberrys (Blackberries?) for nearly a decade.

There's a difference in philosophy here... Apple may be slow with some things like that, but when they do release it, they do it DAMN well (in most cases... at least). Quality and user experience rank much higher for them than simple feature list comparisons - and that's the single reason they have a highly profitable, niche business.

MadCow.

Re:The mac

[Itninja]

Oh please...those are fluff. Soft keyboards are silly for enterprise business users who are not concerned with 'looking cool'. You can't shove a touchscreen phone in your back pocket and start working; you need a 'screen protector' to keep it pristine or it stops working. And an app store selling 80 fart apps and other junk? RIM is for big-boy workers who have no time for such frivolity. Blackberry had many, many auxiliary applications for many years. They could be pushed (and managed) from the BES.

Re:The mac

[UnknowingFool]

A Blackberry started as a business smartphone and has slowly added features to be more consumer friendly. Apple is coming from the other direction. It is a consumer smartphone first with some business features added later. Both phones continue to be strong in their initial markets but is somewhat lacking in other markets.

Re:The mac

[Anonymous Coward]

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7778857744431149858

Re:The mac

[h4rr4r]

My droid needs no lame protector, get a phone with a gorilla glass screen and STFU!
I also have both keyboard and touch screen. RIM man in the middles all your mail, plus whenever BES has an issue your mail stop working.

Re:The mac

[drinkypoo]

Blackberrys (Blackberries?)

Crackberries. "Marion" for short.

Re:The mac

[delinear]

Congratulations on missing the point that Apple bring lashings of user experience (shiny looks, one of the first workable mobile touch-screen interfaces, an easy to use app store) but that's often at the cost of basic functionality which other devices have offered as standard for years. We can all agree that improvements to the UI are important, but for some people the underlying functionality is more important and that's where Apple are slow to deliver, and often come across as disingenuous when they do (for instance, you'd be forgiven, having read the mainstream media the last few days, for thinking they invented multi-tasking, when not long ago they were busy explaining why it was such a bad idea for mobile devices - they'd get far more good will by just saying, "we were wrong, we've listened to your requests and here's your multi-tasking").

Re:The mac

[nine-times]

Yeah, I got kind of sold on the "it's even better than the iPhone" Android hype and got myself an HTC Incredible. Now obviously this is a matter of personal needs and personal preference, but I now consider that purchase to be a mistake.

For one thing, and this is only the most blatant problem, the damned thing crashes all the time. It's not too bad, but I feel it vibrate in my pocket, and when I check the phone, it's rebooting. But all in all, it's a pretty minor problem.

The bigger problem, though more subtle, is that the UI design is kind of a mess. I don't mean "the GUI is not pretty", but that the user interaction is unclear. For example, calendar events pop up in the notification area, but if you clear that notification, you have not dismissed it; it will pop up again in a couple minutes. Or there's a "favorites" widget for your favorite contacts that notifies you when those contacts' Facebook status has been updated, but if you press on that notification, it immediately calls that contact.

More generally, a lot of the user interaction is hidden in context menus and under the menu button. It's sometimes unclear what hitting a given button will actually do. I feel like I'm constantly jumping through hoops to get the damned thing to do what I want.

To my mind, it doesn't matter "who did it first". The question is, right now, what's the best phone you can buy. As far as I'm concerned, the iPhone is it.

Re:The mac

[intheshelter]

False. You don't need a screen protector. And assuming your are even right in your fart apps count, 80 our of 200.000 is a pretty small percentage. If you prefer RIM then use it, but to say Apple's UI is frivolity is utter stupidity. Let's hope you're not in a management position because you don't understand a damned thing about the world around you.

Re:The mac

[Mononoke]

The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.

Re:The mac

[s73v3r]

Who gives a fuck who did it first. The iPhone does it now, that's all that matters. You can say, "But... but my phone did it FIRST!" all you want, and nobody else is going to care.

Re:The mac

[bigstrat2003]

Not to diminish your experiences, but I've never felt the UI on my Droid was lacking. Whatever I need to do is in a place I'd expect to find it, I just go by intuition and it works.

I believe you when you say it doesn't work for you, of course. I just wanted to underscore your point, that it is a matter of personal preference.

Re:The mac

[IndustrialComplex]

Blackberrys (Blackberries?)

Corporate/Product words fall outside of normal English rules. You will often have words created which include letters from other alphabets, intentional misspellings, even numbers. An easy way to break it down is to treat trademarked names as adjectives attached to common nouns.

Pontiac Cars instead of Pontiacs.
Blackberry Phones instead of blackberries.

In a way, it provides a very crude metric for determining when these words fall into the vernacular. When people begin to treat the words as common nouns on their own (by not treating them as adjectives), it's a good sign that the brand is losing it's protection.

Q-tips
Bandaids
iPods

All pluralized and thus become a category, rather than an individual product description.

Re:The mac

[Anonymous Coward]

You're not allowed to talk sense in an article about smartphones, only hysterical advocacy is allowed.

Re:The mac

[nine-times]

I won't argue with you.

Re:The mac

[Itninja]

Um, true? have you ever sat on your iPhone? Stepped on it? You crack that screen and you're done. In my experience the only groups that use iPhone in the enterprise are managers (and the hipster youngsters). The people that actually have to get their hands dirty (i.e. the network engineer who will spend 90 minutes at a time crawling around stringing cable), use Blackberrys because they can take the abuse. They sell that iPhone insurance for a reason.

Re:The mac

[brentrad]

As an Oregonian, I always found the name of the former DC mayor pretty amusing - we have a delicious blackberry variety named the marionberry. Named after Marion County, Oregon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marionberry

Re:The mac

[Ryvar]

Honestly what Apple have done isn't so much listening to developer's requests as it is fulfilling those requests to the greatest extent possible *without compromising user experience*.

Not compromising user experience, even potentially, appears to be their guiding principle and it's served them well. Slashdot will never love Apple because they aren't the target market. I, like a lot of people who swear by the iPhone - actively want appliance computing when it comes to a smart phone. I actively want the walled gardens of the XBox 360, PS3, Appstore, Wii, and even Steam, because these things substantially reduce malware and/or cheaters. I understand that it is fundamental to the basic principals of a Turing machine that they can never eliminate these things (ie virtual machines, etc.), merely reduce to a level unlikely to affect me. But in practice that's all I need, much like how in practice I only *need* 256-bit TLS for securing online purchases.

The antagonism seen towards Apple on Slashdot is due to the fact that it's an explosively growing market segment that isn't targeted for the core Slashdot demographic. It implies that the world is moving on from them, and nobody likes to hear that.

--Ryv

Re:The mac

[drinkypoo]

As a Californian, I have always found those berries imported from your state to be delicious.

If I can de-leak my Ford (heh heh) then I will be driving it up into the boonies of those environs to visit some people. I drove through it in a U-Haul once, but that's another story.

Re:The mac

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the Steve Jobs has repeatedly said that until they can get it right, they won't implement it (in reference to multitasking). They didn't say it was a bad idea, but they did say it would be a bad idea if they let apps do whatever they want in the background while draining the battery.

What I don't understand is why Apple is so soundly criticized for not delivering certain features. This is the way the marketplace is supposed to work. Product A doesn't give you all the features you want, and neither does Product B. You're willing to live with Product B's shortcomings though, and thus you buy it.

Personally, I'm a sheep. It's the same reason I don't like pirated software. I want to buy something, and just know that it will work. I'm not looking to debug anything when I'm not at my office. That's the most important feature for me, and that is why I chose the iPhone. Now, if Adobe Flash was a big deal for me, I'd choose Android. What is so horrible about that?

Re:The mac

[neoform]

The only reason they didn't do multi-tasking was because the iPhones 1 and 3G weren't powerful enough to deliver a smooth experience. I don't recall anyone at apple claiming multi-tasking is bad.

Re:The mac

[mr_matticus]

for instance, you'd be forgiven, having read the mainstream media the last few days, for thinking they invented multi-tasking, when not long ago they were busy explaining why it was such a bad idea for mobile devices

No, you wouldn't be forgiven. Apple did not invent multitasking, and nobody with a brain or a clue says that they did. They also never claimed that it was a bad idea for mobile devices. They said the current implementations were bad for mobile devices in their opinion, and historically there has been support for those claims.

As is evident from copy/paste, multitasking, and several other features, Apple takes the time to get the implementation right and make the features more accessible to a wider audience, and what they trumpet as new isn't the feature, but their take on it. Jobs has said about several such developments, "we're not the first, but we're the first to get it right" or something to that effect. There is room to disagree with that development approach or whether Apple's method really is better for any given personal preference, but the only thing disingenuous about it are people who fail to identify context for the sake of making a snide remark.

Re:The mac

[Anonymous Coward]

they'd get far more good will by just saying, "we were wrong, we've listened to your requests and here's your multi-tasking").

Or how about if they spent a great deal of time devising a new compromise that provides most of the benefits of multi-tasking while mitigating its drawbacks? You know, like what actually happened?

Re:The mac

[brentrad]

We definitely do berries right. :) If you're headed up here for the berries, hold off a month or so - the berries get ripe in late July or early August.

Burgerville (a Northwest fast food chain that specializes in fresh locally produced food) has an absolutely amazing blackberry lemonade late in the summer (with an inch of blackberry chunks in the bottom.) Best place to get your berries is at one of the many farmer's markets in the Portland area, directly from the growers. Don't get your fresh fruits and veggies at the grocery store, they're never ripe. Fruits and veggies from the farmer's markets are always ripe and generally organically grown, you just have to make sure to eat them quick or freeze them.

Re:The mac

[Dog-Cow]

Just about every smartphone is useless if you break the screen.

Re:The mac

[Trolan]

I've known many people with busted iPhone screens, but guess what? The touchscreen element still works just peachy for them. Can't see a damn thing on the display from shattered glass, but it still works.

Re:The mac

[skgrey]

Not true at all. The last company I worked for (Fortune 200) all the engineers had iPhones. My current company we all use iPhones. I consult on the side, and I see about a 60/40 split (Blackberry to iPhone) at this point. Sorry to burst your bubble; that statement may have been true in the past, but it's not true anymore.

I'm a senior engineer and wouldn't go back to a Pearl or other Blackberry from my iPhone if you paid me; the only way I would is if a company I worked for forced using a Blackberry, and that's happening a lot less from what I've seen. And with the Cisco Anyconnect client about to be released, my iPhone will be even more useful. Hell, I may even get an iPad to keep with me on the road and use that for terminal services and ssh access.

Re:The mac

[off-worlder]

Yeah. I went to Adobe Max recently and nearly everyone had iPhones and macbooks, and they worked hard to make sure everyone could see them. Then I went to the (far less sexy) WCECS conference and virtually no one had them; they had Bb's or Windows Mobile's (mostly the former).

Re:The mac

[amRadioHed]

For the record, comparing a Droid to an Incredible is not an apples to apples comparison. The Droid is a standard Android phone while the Incredible runs HTC Sense UI. Your complains about the calendar notification and the Favorites widget, for example, do not apply to Android phones in general.

Re:The mac

[DrgnDancer]

I just snagged an Otter Box case for my iPhone. I don't care to test it, but I think I could probably run this thing over without issue. (Yes, yes, I exaggerate, please do not kill me with your scornful pedantry.)

Re:The mac

[nine-times]

I wasn't "comparing a Droid to an Incredible". I was comparing a Droid Incredible to an iPhone.

Re:The mac

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, you're out of date. It's "African-American Berry".

Gotta love when editors get a bit choppy on that sort of thing. Like the add copy I saw for an "African-American Corvette" in the paper a few years back. (It was a car. It happened to be painted *black*. That makes it a black Corvette, not an African-American one.)

Or the article about a local flower show where the references to "pansies" (a flower) was replaced with "homosexuals" to avoid being deemed insensitive.

Re:The mac

[torrentami]

The issue I have with this is that enterprise features are fairly well defined. It's not rocket science. In fact, many of these features already exist in their Mac OS applications (mail, ical, etc...) and just need to be implemented in the iPhone. Whereas, features that appeal to consumers are hardly defined and always in flux. It seems like Apple has a real advantage over RIM in this arena. So all they need to do is implement common enterprise features. I'd love to be able to flag my messages and have multiple signatures based on which account I'm using in my iPhone.

Re:The mac

[amRadioHed]

You are talking about the Incredible, bigstrat2003 in his reply to you is talking about the Droid. I'm just saying that a large part of your two differing experiences with Android could be due to HTC Sense.

Re:The mac

[nine-times]

Yes, I see what you mean now. Thanks.

Unfortunately I can't just install the stock Froyo on my Incredible for comparison. All the talk about Android being open, but you still can't install whatever you want.

Re:The mac

[imthesponge]

That Apple logo costs a lot of money. That's why it matters.

Re:The mac

[imthesponge]

The iPhone is a neat toy, not for getting actual work done. Maybe that's why Slashdotters don't like it that much. It's a phone whose primary market is spoiled teenagers.

Re:The mac

[indiechild]

Who is trying to say Apple invented multitasking? Nice strawman. Apple planned to implement copy & paste and multitasking all along, it just wasn't ready to release it until they got it exactly right. Read "ReWork" by 37signals, it describes the business strategies of companies like Apple. You ship what you have, you don't delay the product just because you haven't perfected something. You can always refine and add things later, and that's exactly what Apple does. If they're going to add a feature, they make sure it works really well first.

But no, to the haters Apple "changed its mind" or "caved in" and "copied Android".

Re:The mac

[Anonymous Coward]

Its that we find it unethical, more then that we are being left behind.

China's massive economic growth exploiting child labour and limiting freedoms of its citizens while its people thank them for it does not change the fact /. find it unethical.

No matter how Successful Apple gets or how powerful China gets, no matter how many citizens of either group love there overlords, I will always find them and there approach unethical.

Re:The mac

[teh kurisu]

It doesn't matter what kind of phone you have, if you're careless with it, it will eventually break. They sell insurance on most phones for a reason.

I had to install a GPS-based app on a Nokia E71 for the MD of the company next door. After a few minutes spent wondering why the app wasn't working, I realised that none of the GPS apps were working on the phone. There was a large dent in one of the speaker grilles, which had damaged the GPS antenna. When I took it back to him and explained the situation, he didn't bat an eyelid. This was a man used to having to replace broken phones.

As for my own two-year-old iPhone, it has two small scratches on the screen that are invisible when the backlight is on. It's never been in a case, just my pocket.

Re:The mac

[stewbacca]

I think you are overlooking a key fact that maybe the "basic functions" you want aren't wanted or needed by people who find the "basic functions" they want in an iPhone better than the blackberry. There's a reason the iPhone is more of a consumer device and a Blackberry is more of an enterprise device...neither can do both well...something about engineering and tradeoffs. For me, I like to have a device that kind of works for work (my iPhone) but works very well for my personal stuff. My managers, on the other hand, prefer a device that works well for work (their blackberries) and is a giant POS for personal use. Then again, they are workaholics and self-important people who can't NOT answer their email or phone call in the middle of a meeting, so I guess they really don't have time for personal use.

Re:The mac

[s73v3r]

Not compared to any other smartphone out there. Unsubsidized, most of them cost around $500. Hell, the N900 cost close to $800 when it was launched.

Re:The mac

[Anonymous Coward]

blackberry??? :D

Many from my friend have one, but all what I can say to them is always "oh, your blackberry still have such a joystick?" ;)

If I compare the BB functionality with my iPhone, I don't have to say many words, the differenceis to big! For me is the iPhone the best mobile on the market since years now.

Re:The mac

[Lars T.]

Oh please...those are fluff. Soft keyboards are silly for enterprise business users who are not concerned with 'looking cool'.

As opposed to tiny calculator button keyboards?

Re:The mac

[Lars T.]

The iPhone is a neat toy, not for getting actual work done. Maybe that's why Slashdotters don't like it that much. It's a phone whose primary market is spoiled teenagers.

If Slashdotters were interested in getting actual work done, they wouldn't waste time here - let alone posting to every Apple story.

A few related stories

[guanxi]

Much to my surprise, there has been a lot of press coverage about the iOS 4 in the enterprise:

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9177830/iPhone_4_iOS_4_offer_deeper_enterprise_support

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/062110-five-ways-apples-ios-4.html

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/062110-iphone-ios4-apis-management.html

http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2010/06/07/iphone-os-4-0-now-ios-is-here/

Re:A few related stories

[Anonymous Coward]

You insensitive clod! I didn't RTFAs and now you expect me to read FOUR more articles????

Re:A few related stories

[huangellen]

An excellent description:http://www.watchescase.com/

And no dialing location fields of meetings...

[MojoRilla]

And a huge fail, at least for many business folks, is the lack of being able to dial phone numbers that are sent in the location field of meetings. According to Apple support, the world is supposed to all start sending conference bridge numbers in the body of meetings. Good luck with that, Apple.

Re:And no dialing location fields of meetings...

[momerath2003]

Perhaps you mean a huge failure?

Re:And no dialing location fields of meetings...

[Skuld-Chan]

You could also blame MS for making the bridge field really really really hard to find. I don't see why Apple can't just dial whatever is in the location field though.

Re:And no dialing location fields of meetings...

[Anonymous Coward]

Fail is a verb, not a noun.

Re:And no dialing location fields of meetings...

[Anonymous Coward]

And a huge fail, at least for many business folks

Well, Apple isn't really pursuing the business folks. They're a secondary market to Apple -- they sell tons of stuff without worrying about what Corporate America needs.

It's not all about meetings and spreadsheets. Heck, even their advertising makes that fairly clear.

Re:And no dialing location fields of meetings...

[aaarrrgggh]

Can you copy-and-paste the 14-digit conference code + security code now? That's the one that kills me.

Does not matter to a properly setup enterprise.

[Anonymous Coward]

Junk mail filtering is done on the server level. Who wants their phone selecting and deciding what is junk.

Re:So what

[Monkeedude1212]

It matters because it'll make more people sheep.

Do you know how many people pick other phones over an iPhone simply for the ability to multitask?

a lot of the features are already on the server

[alen]

message rules are on the exchange server. junk mail is handled by the SMTP gateway.
BES does have an advantage since they have years of development lead time, but Apple/MS are catching up fairly fast. and the Apple/MS activesync solution is a lot cheaper and no server required. we've had a BES server for years and rarely used most of the management features. doesn't mean people don't use them, but a lot of organizations don't care to lock down people's cell phones. you can also write web apps with no itunes or any other deployment. last week i used my iphone to help troubleshoot a SQL issue.

the iphone web browser is better than blackberry. with HP iLO chips i can use my iphone to push the power button on a server remotely or get console access. can't do it on the stock blackberry browser.

the universal inbox is not as good as on my blackberry, but multiple exchange accounts is nice. i can easily add the accounts that hold the alert emails instead of relying on outlook rules in that mailbox to forward me the right emails.

the multitasking is also pretty good. listening to pandora uses about the same amount of battery as the ipod app.

Email design decisions

[fermion]

including zipped attachment management, junk mail filtering, message rules, and message flagging.

I am surprised that all these capability are needed for a mobile client. In particular, i would think corporate would want to junk email filtering at the server, otherwise there would be risk that an individual user might overfilter.

Likewise zipped attachments are something that is used for desktop, but I don't know why anyone would use them on a mobile device, but then I don't see why i get memos in MS Word format instead of PDF. Sometimes the feature bloat drives the bad habits. I suppose that on some mobile devices application installation might happen through email.

I would also like to see message rule and flagging pushed back to the server. I might be using one of four machines to look at mail. Everything is stored on the server. Keeping the rules consistant on all machines can be a pain. It would be much better to be able to set up one server to check mail, then reroute, then all the other machines feed off that. When I used to one machines going all the time at home, this more or less happened.

In any case many of these complaints seem more about wanting to do things the old fashion way rather than genuine functionality. It is like complaining that Python does not have a traditional for...next loop. Get over it.

Re:Email design decisions

[Kenja]

Zip attachments are more or less the norm for sending out documents, slideshows, etc. There is zero reason to not be able to utilize these attachments on a mobile device.

Re:Email design decisions

[delinear]

I use zip files all the time on my phone, they're useful for all kinds of reasons, such as to get around email servers aggresively blocking things like .js files, or when someone needs to preserve a directory hierarchy in a bunch of emailed files (i.e. they need me to debug some web code). Some devices might put all downloads into one directory, in which case if someone's emailing me fifty icons to approve, I'd rather they sent them as a zip that I can easily locate and move to my desired directory than have me wade through my entire downloads directory looking for the contents of the email.

I won't always have a PC to hand so it's nice to be able to handle those things from my phone (even if it's not always the first choice in terms of usability for doing so). Your logic also seems a bit circular - you're saying people asking for this functionality are just living in the past, at the same time you say you can't imagine anyone asking for this functionality - just because you can't envisage a use-case, doesn't mean nobody else can (for me this is far more useful than the ability to make video calls from my phone, for instance, but I recognise that some people might want to be able to do that, as redundant as it might seem in the digital communication age).

Re:Email design decisions

[PPalmgren]

The point is every business user has different needs, and an organization can contain hundreds of different subsets of "needs." It may be multiple ways to get the same thing done, but what works for one may not work for another.

Apple is used to telling its users what they want, but that won't fly with the corporate market. The business market already has many other options willing to take it in the ass for a contract. Anecdotal evidence on usage means nothing.

Re:Email design decisions

[iluvcapra]

GoodReader is an excellent app for downloading zip files and unzipping the contents. You can even tap on the attachment's icon in Apple Mail and it will launch GoodReader automatically. $3, but complaining is free.

Re:Email design decisions

[aaarrrgggh]

One of my clients has automated scripts that zip any file over 20k. Every spreadsheet gets zipped... not being able to access the archives is quite a PITA.

Re:Email design decisions

[Anonymous Coward]

such as to get around email servers aggressively blocking things like .js

A perfect example of why file compression should not be used in corporate. Corporate enacts a policy to minimize a vector that destroys corporate assets. Employees, who are used to employing that vector for day to day activities, uses a secondary vector to hid the primary vector. Corporate equipment becomes damages, the employee does not take responsibility for the damage, and further corporate resources are wasted. In other words, if certain things are blocked, it is not a good defense to say that we need this feature to get around things that are blocked for a very good reason.

There is probably another way that does not involve significant risk.

Re:Email design decisions

[EdelFactor19]

Probably because when they send the email they don't know (and shouldn't need to know) what device every person will access the email from. If someone is drafting a document, are they going to send you an ms word file of it, or a pdf? Neither, They are going to send you it in whatever format they were working on it in. And since you can't edit a PDF directly I'm going to venture they didn't send out a PDF just for the 2 people who might look at the email on a blackberry or an iphone at some point in time; they are going to send it out as a word document since most people are going to at somepoint open it on a computer that can open word documents... imagine that.

Re:Email design decisions

[s73v3r]

they need me to debug some web code

Is this really something you want to be doing from a phone anyway? It seems to me like that's something that can wait until I'm at a computer.

Re:Email design decisions

[mjwx]

Likewise zipped attachments are something that is used for desktop, but I don't know why anyone would use them on a mobile device

Because Bob sends me the entire web site and I'd like to read the changelog whilst on the road.

This has dozens of legitimate uses. I dont want to have to drag a laptop around where I dont need it. Right now on Android I can download zip files to the file system (SDcard) and open them with a file browser.

Re:Email design decisions

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a example of how there could a more efficient method, and how traditional techniques from passed down from unskilled staff to unskilled staff might not be the best. With 3G and 4G connectivity, it is not hard to SHH into a server and look at the logs directly. Such a method is very low bandwidth. The SHH client apps on the iPhone are very capable. Cat to view the change logs, diff to see the changes, and vi to edit.

Re:Email design decisions

[mjwx]

it is not hard to SHH into a server and look at the logs directly.

I suppose I expected too much of /.

What I meant was when I said "Bob sends sends me the entire web site and I'd like to read the changelog whilst on the road." I expected people to figure out that I meant an unpublished web site that Bob would like to use to update the live version. SSHing in and reading the log files wont tell me what Bob has changed in this version as well as any special notes that Bob has left for me that may be important in the implementation.

Junk mail filtering

[MadCow42]

The lack of filtering on mail is my biggest complaint (iPhone and iPad too)... it makes using mail frustrating to say the least. I really don't understand how difficult that would be!!!

Re:Junk mail filtering

[Skuld-Chan]

Why not have your network operator do that?

Re:Junk mail filtering

[MadCow42]

One of the biggest reasons is white-listing. My operator can't do that unless I provide my whitelist to them. My address book (updated on the go) is the whitelist.

Everything else goes to a "maybe spam" folder that I can peruse when I'm bored.

trolling reply is trolling.

[DJCouchyCouch]

A missing detail is a "huge fail"? Uh oh, someone's lost their sense of scale meter!

Re:trolling reply is trolling.

[Ephemeriis]

A missing detail is a "huge fail"? Uh oh, someone's lost their sense of scale meter!

I dunno. Seems to me that a smartphone should let you dial pretty much anything that looks like a phone number from pretty much anywhere. It's just text, right? Add some ability to select it and automatically copy/paste the digits into the dialing interface. Doesn't seem that hard to me.

The alternative is to make people manually copy & paste those digits into the dialing interface, or write them out and dial them in manually - both of which seem more awkward than they should be.

Especially when it is the location field of a meeting. I'll frequently schedule conference calls on my calendar, and put the phone number in the location field.

Re:trolling reply is trolling.

[illumin8]

I dunno. Seems to me that a smartphone should let you dial pretty much anything that looks like a phone number from pretty much anywhere. It's just text, right? Add some ability to select it and automatically copy/paste the digits into the dialing interface. Doesn't seem that hard to me.

Actually, the iPhone has had this feature since version 1.0 three years ago. Pretty much any number in an email message, web page, or SMS/text message can be tapped on and will dial automatically in the Phone application. This was long before cut/paste.

Apple haters like to bitch about any shortcomings in iOS, whether real or imaginary, but the simple fact of the matter is that even iOS 1.0 didn't really need cut/paste because most use cases were already handled by the software elegantly. I could tap a link in any email message and it would open in Safari automatically. I could tap a phone number anywhere and it would dial. I could email a link to my current page to anyone directly from Safari. I could email photos from the photo viewer app. These use-cases covered 99% of the possible reasons anyone would need cut/paste.

Re:trolling reply is trolling.

[DrgnDancer]

The biggest reason I hated the lack of copy paste was that I *also* lacked MMS messaging. Those stupid username/password combos you'd get to that useless website would have been much easier with copy/paste. Of course now I have both, and I've never used copy/paste *shrug*.

Re:trolling reply is trolling.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the iPhone has had this feature since version 1.0 three years ago. Pretty much any number in an email message, web page, or SMS/text message can be tapped on and will dial automatically in the Phone application. This was long before cut/paste.

Except the location field which cannot even be selected which was the whole bloody point of the original post.

Multitasking as defined by Apple

[not already in use]

Why do we accept Apple's glorified Suspend/Resume functionality as "multitasking?" Can my app be performing tasks in the background while I'm using another application? No? Well that's not multitasking then, is it?

Re:Multitasking as defined by Apple

[morgan_greywolf]

Agreed. There is a huge difference. On an Android device, I can ssh into a router or other server with an Internet exposed SSH port via ConnectBot, forward ports, etc., and then access my internal network intranet resources, VNC, etc.

Without true multitasking, I cannot do this on an iPhone.

iOS 4 is supposed to fix is this, is it not? Or did miss something?

Re:Multitasking as defined by Apple

[nine-times]

Can my app be performing tasks in the background while I'm using another application?

Yes. Apple has made it so that your entire application won't continue to run in the background, but that you can still have your application "performing tasks" (so long as it fits within the supported background "tasks").

From what I understand, Android does something similar. It's not crazy. It actually makes a whole hell of a lot of sense. If I'm reading an ebook, for example, I don't need to have my iPhone's system resources taken up trying to display a particular page that won't be displayed anyway because it's in the background. On a device with limited resources, it's better to suspend that whole application to free up resources.

So similarly with a browser, you don't need your browser actually trying to display web pages that aren't being displayed. All you need to do is enable background downloading. Downloading is pretty much the only thing that you actually want a browser to do in the background. Pretty much the only thing you want Skype to do in the background is receive calls. Pretty much the only thing you want Pandora to do in the background is download streaming audio and output it to the headphones-- you don't need Pandora to try to render album art that won't be displayed.

Re:Multitasking as defined by Apple

[shawnce]

If your app plays audio (for whatever reason) it WILL run in the background. (audio background mode)

If your VoIP app needs to maintain a network connection with a backend system so it can be told of incoming calls it WILL run in the background but only when network traffic is incoming or at a time you designate so you can keep your network connection alive. (voip background mode)

If your app needs to track your location it WILL run in the background with the level of location accuracy you designate. (location background mode)

(you can combine any combination of the above modes)

If your app needs to finish an active task, one that is not easily paused, it WILL run in the background.

If your application needs to do things at predetermined time you can schedule it and your app WILL run in the background.

http://developer.apple.com/iphone/library/documentation/iPhone/Conceptual/iPhoneOSProgrammingGuide/BackgroundExecution/BackgroundExecution.html

Re:Multitasking as defined by Apple

[DeadboltX]

The problem lies wherein you want an app to do something in the background, and Apple doesn't.

Re:Multitasking as defined by Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing new here. Just remember system 7, for instance. That was about 20 years ago, and at the time Apple already boasted its multitasking abilities, as a commercial argument against Windows. The truth was, it was "cooperative" multitasking, which meant that any application not designed for, or willing to, "cooperate", halted everything else until it had quit... or crashed, bringing the whole system down with it. Needless to say, at the very same time HP-UX workstations ran on very similar hardware, with X11 and all.
This whole fake multitasking thing is nothing but deliberate crippling from Apple. As usual. And as usual, Apple's survival and prosperity rely on their customers' technical ignorance.

Re:Multitasking as defined by Apple

[Timmmm]

Actually iOS multitasking works in exactly the same way as Android (i.e. when you switch away from an app its state is saved, and then it may be killed at any point).

The difference is that Android allows arbitrary 'Services' to run as well that aren't killed. Your app has to use these if you want 'true multitasking'. Apple seems to allow something like this, but with some kind of restrictions. I have no idea how they are enforced though.

Re:Multitasking as defined by Apple

[Late Adopter]

The problem lies wherein you want an API to do something, and it doesn't.

FTFY. This isn't in any way a new problem. Witness Hildon/Maemo, and Android. They all have approaches for handling multiple user-interfacing applications and how they interact with power management. Apple has chosen an approach, and it looks good enough for 99% of use cases. Everyone who is still complaining at this point will continue to do so until they get real preemptive multithreading, which is not necessarily wise to allow for arbitrary apps on a mobile platform.

Even more generally than all that: An API does something, but you want it to do something else? Name me an API that *doesn't* have that problem. Combating feature creep and having a consistent and sensible development paradigm is really *hard*, and it looks like Apple is serious about it.

Re:Multitasking as defined by Apple

[bluefoxlucid]

I often find myself alt-tabbing away from the browser on my Android device to talk on IRC while pages load, only to come back and find the browser was suspended in the background. Fuck.

Re:Multitasking as defined by Apple

[noidentity]

It allows concurrent state. You want concurrent execution, the next step up from that. Concurrent state is still a form of multiple tasks existing at once, better than having to quit one program to use another.

I understand Apple's goal to be to find what features are useful to most people, rather than throwing everything in. So it makes sense that they are seeing how this more limited form of multi-tasking does.

Re:Multitasking as defined by Apple

[HappyCycling]

Yes, the apps will do those things that you listed, but only if the developer enables them on the apps and pushes out an update. As of the launch of iOS 4.0 yesterday, there are very few apps that take advantage of those features.

Re:Multitasking as defined by Apple

[shawnce]

...clearly a temporary reality. Developers will update apps or release new apps utilizing these features (and the many others now available in iOS 4) over the coming months... or be faced with a competitor coming in with a better app. Several of the most popular apps that would benefit from multi-tasking are either already updated or in the approval process.

Re:Multitasking as defined by Apple

[PitaBred]

It can't do multitasking in the background? Better tell that to Pandora. I despise Apple products and prefer my Nexus One greatly, but even I don't lie about what Apple can do.

Re:Multitasking as defined by Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless I missed it, the one significant "multitasking" capability Apple left out was instant messaging -- probably due to to AT&T requiring a prop for their $20/month SMS bonanza. I'd be happy, very happy, to be wrong though. An application can update its "badge" so an IM client could indicate via the icon that it had a new message -- but it couldn't play a tone/chime to alert you. You would have to go back constantly to view the icons waiting for an update in the badge. That is bogus and makes IM basically useless. What is needed is the ability to background alert, not just a badge update, but an audio alert.

thoromyr

Re:Multitasking as defined by Apple

[shutdown -p now]

Yes. Apple has made it so that your entire application won't continue to run in the background, but that you can still have your application "performing tasks" (so long as it fits within the supported background "tasks").

From what I understand, Android does something similar.

It does, but it also does proper background threads. They are complementary techniques, and the former is not a proper replacement for the latter.

Re:Multitasking as defined by Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing new here. Just remember system 7, for instance. That was about 20 years ago, and at the time Apple already boasted its multitasking abilities, as a commercial argument against Windows. The truth was, it was "cooperative" multitasking, which meant that any application not designed for, or willing to, "cooperate", halted everything else until it had quit... or crashed, bringing the whole system down with it. Needless to say, at the very same time HP-UX workstations ran on very similar hardware, with X11 and all.
This whole fake multitasking thing is nothing but deliberate crippling from Apple. As usual.

Oh please. At the time of System 7's debut, cooperative multitasking was competitive with Windows (which, IIRC, also used cooperative for GUI apps at that point in time). And it was hardly deliberate crippling. If you'd ever bothered to inform yourself about the technical details, you'd know that the use of cooperative in 'classic' MacOS was driven by a number of unfortunate-in-retrospect Macintosh System design decisions dating back to the early 80s. I say 'in retrospect' because those decisions were a consequence of the pressure to ship a fairly sophisticated GUI on a computer which had just 128K RAM and 64K ROM, while needing to leave a significant amount of RAM free for applications. The design compromises forced by these resource limits later got Apple into a nasty backwards-compatibility trap which made it essentially impossible to transition to a preemptive, memory protected environment without breaking every Mac app in the wild.

(They never did solve that trap either, despite years of trying and failing. In the end they could only move forward by leaving legacy binaries behind.)

And as usual, Apple's survival and prosperity rely on their customers' technical ignorance.

Spoken like a typical slashbot. Yes, even though the iPhone kernel is the same as the MacOS X kernel and thus obviously supports any form of multitasking you could desire, Apple didn't allow starting more than one app at a time. But they had good reasons to do so, and they have equally good reasons to be careful about how they allow it now. Apple's customers like the end result: a smartphone where they never have to think about silly geeky things like adjusting their multitasking habits to conserve battery life. One man's "reliance on customers' technical ignorance" is another man's "sensible design for people who sensibly don't want to become tech experts just to use a phone".

It's not just Apple, either. Despite the hype, there isn't truly unrestricted multitasking in Android either. But noooo, you've latched onto the evil Apple hurting their customers meme, and mere facts and logic will not get in the way!

Re:Multitasking as defined by Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, I agree, I was wrong to attribute to malice that which can be explained by mere stupidity (the original Mac system design). Apple's OSes have always had great interfaces, and abysmal internal design, and contrarily to Microsoft, they didn't do it on purpose. Or maybe it's the reverse? :-) But, pray tell me, didn't Apollo's OSes have multitasking and a GUI long before Apple did, and run on smaller hardware?

Re:Multitasking as defined by Apple

[not already in use]

Apple allowing apps access to certain background services does not equal multitasking. You have a Nexus One, as do I. You can open the browser, begin loading a website, and do something else while that happens and come back to it in a minute. Good luck with that on your "multitasking" iPhone.

Re:Multitasking as defined by Apple

[PitaBred]

That's an application issue. If Pandora can play music in the background on the iPhone, then the browser can render. It's just a (bad) decision on Apple's part to not render when it doesn't have focus. iOS4 is just as multi-tasking capable as Android.

Quality Control Issues

[organgtool]

I've been reading message board forums that claim the following bugs:

• Installer ignores the user request to update without a restore - this can mean it takes up to several hours to apply the update while it syncs all of your files. I'm not sure if the phone is accessible while the restore is happening
• MMS feature no longer allows attaching pictures or video to text messages for some users
• Landscape mode doesn't work for some users in the iPod app - even with the screen orientation locking option turned off

Granted that last issue wouldn't really affect business use, but in general the quality control in many Apple products has gone to hell in the past few years. In all fairness, software companies across the board seem to be releasing utter crap for each major release and then issue patches to fix all of the issues. I wonder if Apple had to move employees from internal software testing to external software testing for the App store. In any event, I think most businesses will stick with BlackBerry, if for no other reason than the physical keyboard.

multitasking is a lie

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple calls it 'Multitasking done right'.

To anyone who's done multitasking, background threading, cron jobs and such, it's not even close. Only 1 app-type gets anything resembling multitasking. It reminds me of a hacked up and crippled PalmOS paradigm. If you're an iOS developer, you'll know what I'm talking about, read the docs, Apple thinks you're a typical VB hacker ready to abuse the system, i.e. they don't trust you to be a good programmer, that's the tone of the API docs--seriously. If you're not a dev, didn't sign the NDA, well, you're considered sheep, so believe the marketing and take the blue pill. Otherwise, you'll actually need to ante up the $99/$299 to take the red pill.

Re:multitasking is a lie

[Kenja]

"they don't trust you to be a good programmer"

Have you seen the stuff in the app store? They're not wrong.

Re:multitasking is a lie

[dhobbit]

It is "Multitasking done right" on a mobile platform. Apps that need to run in the background can provided they use a provided system service, audio, VoIP, launchd. The most important issue here is battery life and the second is memory which lead directly to the third which is performance. Developers always develop in a vacuum they didn't know what else will be running on the end users device and they have to assume that their app is the most important. Apple is just reenforcing that assumption If they want to play nice then they have to add a bunch of hacks and bloat in order to know when they should scale back CPU and memory usage to allow foreground apps to take over. This assumes a much more competent developer a lot more code. Apple is provided a shortcut, here's an API that can do all this work for you so you can solve the problem they're coding for not spend days writing glue and house keeping code. So to that end Apple provides a set of Legos for the devs to play with, the dev is not expected to build their own interlocking bricks and in actively discourage from doing so.

Re:multitasking is a lie

[jo_ham]

So you're saying that Android treats you that way too, since they are doing it exactly the same way as Android phones.

Don't let that get in the way of a good frothing Apple bash though.

Re:multitasking is a lie

[shutdown -p now]

So you're saying that Android treats you that way too, since they are doing it exactly the same way as Android phones.

You have an option of something similar on Android, but it's just that, an option (even though it's strongly pushed as a default through the API). Android also has true background threads that can do anything, and run for as long as they need to run.

Re:multitasking is a lie

[jo42]

"they don't trust you to be a good programmer"

Have you seen the stuff in the app store? They're not wrong.

You should see the questions that get asked in the Apple Developer forums every day.
You wouldn't believe how totally clueless many of these "developers" are.

Re:multitasking is a lie

[Anonymous Coward]

In non apple-shill speak:

To Devs: You people are stupid ! Just let me decide on what you're allowed to do. You can't possibly know whats right ! Morons !

To Users: No no no ! You cant just run whatever programs you want. That would be stupid ! Let us decide which programs you can. Want REAK multitasking? No you moron ! Thats not what you really want. This is what you really want. Here take it and learn to like it.

I truly hope you're getting paid to write your drivel. Otherwise you're just a whore who doesn't get paid.

bash

[djfuq]

It sounds like someone wants to bash apple because they cant wait a month for some new features to be implemented...

On one hand android may be awesome and customizable, but on the other hand it ends up getting too customizable. I want my phone to be simple to use, and UI to be basic and easy as possible.

Lets imagine someone figures out how to port android to the iphone. How many people do you suppose would really switch to it after trying it out? VS How many people would switch back to the iphone os after a short time? How long would they have tried it?

Re:bash

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot. None. Long enough.

Hope you continue to enjoy the safety of your tracking device you are renting from Apple.

Re:bash

[delinear]

I've been using the HTC Desire for just about a month now and I can tell you that it's incredibly simple to use and the UI is fantastic (HTC's Sense UI is really nice, adding widgets and shortcuts to customise my various home screens). My GF is not technical at all, she is an iPhone user and she has no problems using my HTC, while I like the fact that I can dig deeper and do some more advanced stuff when I need to (and so far I've not done too much besides replace the standard input method with Swype, switch out some of the basic apps, add tethering and some useful bluetooth functionality and installed a directory browser so I can upload SNES/GBA roms to work with the emulator app). I get the impression I've barely scratched the surface of what I could do, even without rooting my phone, but if I didn't want to take that route the basic phone experience is still very nice.

I get the impression from your post that you've not actually used the Android OS, you just heard that it allows more user control and automatically assumed that meant complex and horrible user experience. I can say it's anything but. Personally I would love the iPhone to be set up the same way, simple for the average user but with the ability to do more right out of the box, I think that would help drive forward development and innovation on both platforms - surely if Google (the company of perpetual betas and a web interface from 1998) can get this right then Apple (who have always prided themselves on offering a better user experience) can have a decent stab at it?

Re:So what

[flipper9]

The iPhone can't multitask? I've been multitasking for months now on my iPhone 3Gs, been tethering on AT&T, been using folders to organize my many applications, been able to lock rotation, all without a hitch. Granted I had to jailbreak the device (crazy easy to do with Blackra1n), but it works great!

This multitasking is vaporware, clearly.

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately not many folks can talk about the truth of multitasking, it's under NDA.

Messaging

[Anonymous Coward]

Still takes 10-15 seconds to open the text messaging program. Kudos mac.

Re:Messaging

[intheshelter]

It does not.

Message rules

[h4rr4r]

Message rules belong on the server not in the client. The same goes for filtering of junkmail. Why in the world have a server then push all the work on the client?

Re:Message rules

[drinkypoo]

As long as you can filter on arbitrary header substrings then it's reasonable to offload all of that to the mailhost, which can also run a webserver exclusively for the manipulation of lists (or that can, of course, be separated.) Most filter solutions (including Spamassassin, of course) will tweak headers with spam scores so that the users can file them on the client end.

Re:Message rules

[h4rr4r]

No matter what you filter on, on a well designed system you can have the mailhost handle that.

Re:So what

[MikeDataLink]

Wow. -1 Troll to you my friend.

You obviously haven't seen what retailers are doing with these devices.

Re:So what

[delinear]

And how's your warranty looking these days? It shouldn't be expected behaviour that you have to invalidate a warranty that you've paid for just to be able to use the device to its full.

No mention of Data Protection?

[bds1986]

I'm kind of surprised the article didn't make any mention of iOS 4's improved data protection methods:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4175

In short, the previously flawed encryption method of the 3GS is improved by encrypting the hardware encryption keys with your passcode. Additionally, passcodes can now be alphanumeric and longer than 4 characters.

If you're using a 3GS and have upgraded to 4.0, you'll need to wipe and restore the phone to take advantage of this (data protection, not the passcode), the link above has details.

Unzipping actually would be nice

[hellfire]

Junk mail, rules, and filtering absolutely should happen at the server level if you are using Exchange or IMAP, and any business still using POP for email is just shooting themselves in the foot for not understanding their tech better.

However, unzipping would be kind of nice. People send attachments to each other all the time, and email servers have attachment limits. New iPhone users will also have limited data bandwidth. It would be nice if someone could send me that file zipped to 20-50% so I could save time. It takes less time to download files than it does to unzip them and in advanced situations with larger files every little bit helps. Granted, you may be correct in that there are better solutions than trying to email me a 250 MB spreadsheet on a device that probably can't display it in a sophisticated manner.

Re:Unzipping actually would be nice

[Anonymous Coward]

Just a correction: new iphone users will NOT have unlimited bandwidth. AT&T used to levy that requirement, but has jumped onto the tiered pricing bandwagon. If I upgrade to a new iphone then I can keep my unlimited bandwidth, but new *users* cannot opt for the unlimited, instead of having to pay per byte over some fixed limit.

Re:Unzipping actually would be nice

[Anonymous Coward]

And of course you can't control what people send you.
As when she can't open a particular pdf, when my wife gets a zip attachment on her iphone when we're out together, she just forwards it for me to open on my WinMo phone. (Yes I know WinMo is meant to be ridiculed always, but really a lot of things do 'just work'!)

Re:Unzipping actually would be nice

[bertok]

Except that the trend for years now has been towards file formats that are already compressed.

All of the Office 2007 and later file formats are just zip files full of content. Try it, rename a '.docx' file to '.zip' and open it! Even Office 2003 can open these with a free plugin.

The OpenOffice ODF format is a zip file.

The Microsoft XPS format is a zip file.

Adobe PDF has had internal compression for a while.

Practically all image, audio, and video formats have been highly compressed for decades.

What kind of stone age file formats are in use at your corporation that additional compression is a huge benefit?

Cooperative multitasking is a relic.

[Anonymous Coward]

How is his comment "flamebait"? He's absolutely correct. Cooperative multitasking is a relic from the 1980s and earlier. There's absolutely no reason to resort to that approach these days. Absolutely none.

Re:Cooperative multitasking is a relic.

[timster]

Dunno about flamebait, but it sure is dumb. iOS 4's multitasking uses a pre-emptive scheduler (as it has since iPhone OS 1.0).

Talking about cooperative multitasking this way makes it pretty clear that you don't know what it means.

Re:Cooperative multitasking is a relic.

[wed128]

Actually cooperative multitasking still has it's niche, and is still used by plenty of modern equipment; It is used heavily by DSPs and deeply embedded real time systems.

although, something like the iPhone probably should jettison it; it's treading dangerously close to a general-purpose computer, and it's environment isn't as tightly controlled as the real-time systems i mentioned earlier.

Re:So what

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple was still selling refurbished 1st generation iPod touches last year. iOS4 is not compatible with those either. 1 year of support for the product I purchased from them doesn't seems very long in my eyes.

Lack of in house applications?

[Kenja]

Last I checked, building custom (internal) applications for the iPhone is still a major PITA due to the restrictive development license and app distribution system.

Re:Lack of in house applications?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, you can get an enterprise developer license that allows you to do just that.

Develop and push your own custom apps to your people without the restrictions of the apple store.

Re:Lack of in house applications?

[imthesponge]

Of course you pay far out the ass for that "privilege".

Poor Apple

[sootman]

They've only sold a few tens of millions of those things so far, and their new model took five whole hours to sell 600k units to regular customers, sight unseen. They'd better get their act together and start reaching out to the enterprise or that thing's gonna tank and take them with it.

Re:Poor Apple

[Kenja]

As I'm sure you know, quantity does not equate to quality. McDonnalds does not make the best cheese burger, despite their high sales figures. They do however offer things that many people want, but this should not be a reason to not seek other things that they dont offer.

Re:Poor Apple

[swb]

It often seems to me that Apple ignores the "corporate" market (or at least fails to cater to it) despite apparently high demand for their products among corporate folk who are forced by corporate bureaucracy to use products that cater to those markets.

As I'm often told by fans (btw, I own an iPad and an iPhone 3GS), "They don't need to", "It creates demand which drives their market", etc etc.

But at some point I would think that shareholders would believe that an Apple with even a slightly larger market would make even vastly more money, and thus push them in this direction. But that never seems to happen and based on Apple's skyrocketing market capitalization, my thesis is wrong someplace.

Re:Poor Apple

[imthesponge]

Spot on. The iPhone is marketed as a toy, not a business tool. Why would people expect anything different? Get a Blackberry.

Background image

[clone53421]

Apparently you can now select a background image. And by “can”, apparently I mean “must”... he suggests creating a “black or very dark monochrome image on your computer” and uploading it to the phone so that you can have “no” background image. An ugly hack but it does work I guess.

Re:So what

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm so sick of this stupid argument. All you have to do it flash it back with the original firmware, which is simple, if something goes wrong with it and you need to take it back to the store. If something is so wrong with it that it won't boot up, then it won't matter anyway if you had it jailbroken. OF COURSE it voids the warranty - think about it. You get a Camaro and the engine has more potential, so you put in a mod chip - guess what - voided warranty. Or you have a TV that is 60Hz but you try to upgrade it yourself to get 120Hz cuz you know it probably can do it. . . voided warranty. It's just a troll argument from people who can't afford the iPhone so they don't like it that so many people have and enjoy them thoroughly.

You're absolutely clueless, aren't you?

[Anonymous Coward]

Please give me the name of the company you work for, as well as the address of the location you're at. I want to make sure I never deal with them.

He probably has four separate phones because he has four separate phone numbers, and needs to be able to at least accept voicemail messages if more than one of his major clients call at the same time.

As a mere IT peon, you probably don't understand how sales work, or how salespeople perform their jobs. It's not unusual to see talented salespeople talking to two or three separate people at once, while organizing particularly large or complex sales. They actually do need to use several separate phones while they work. Your idiotic "4 accounts 1 phone" idea fails completely.

Re:You're absolutely clueless, aren't you?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then he probably needs one smartphone plus three cell phones. Problem fixed, significant monthly savings for the company. If you are on three different phones at once, then two of the people are getting really pissed off at your company at any given time.

Re:You're absolutely clueless, aren't you?

[Em Ellel]

Please give me the name of the company you work for, as well as the address of the location you're at. I want to make sure I never deal with them.

I get a sense the feeling would be mutual and appreciated.

He probably has four separate phones because he has four separate phone numbers, and needs to be able to at least accept voicemail messages if more than one of his major clients call at the same time.

I assume he does not have four separate computers to deal with four clients - so why does he have four phones? There is no reason one phone cannot get calls for four numbers, each with separate voice-mail or even with one voicemail box with separate greetings. I get a feeling the guy is such an ass to his IT guys, they are probably betting on how much torture they can put the poor idiot through ("I bet we can get him to carry three phone...." "NO, how about four Phones!!!")

As a mere IT peon, you probably don't understand how sales work, or how salespeople perform their jobs. It's not unusual to see talented salespeople talking to two or three separate people at once, while organizing particularly large or complex sales. They actually do need to use several separate phones while they work. Your idiotic "4 accounts 1 phone" idea fails completely.

Again, nothing that can't be handled easily with a single phone - ever hear of hold or conferencing? I think they had those back in the seventies... Perhaps you should make nice with your IT folks so that you can move into the current century.

Now, I totally appreciate a good sales person, I know a couple, but unfortunately they are such a tiny fraction of the sales force. Most of the sales are ignorant idiots with a god complex who think that four phones would make up for the fact that they are not actually paying attention to anyone around them including their clients (hint, it does not matter if you have a dedicated line for your client if you actually LISTEN to your client). And so what we deal with are sales people only think they are great, and have the need to actively put down everyone else so that they do not ruin their self-delusion. I mean, just because you close sales does not make you a good sales person - most companies who got my business, got it in spite of their sales staff -- not because of them. And thus the IT stuff makes them wear four phones and be happy with it and rest of the world makes fun of them.

In all fairness, there are plenty of idiots in IT too, so it could be that they don't know any better.

-Em

Re:You're absolutely clueless, aren't you?

[IshmaelDS]

1 phone can have more than 1 number directing to it. but regardless he can still have his 4 views just move emails for one client to one folder and for another to a different folder and so on and he can have his "views" while still using server side rules which are more robust and reliable. If a phone dies it's easier to view the emails you need on another phone by browsing to that folder.

Re:So what

[h4rr4r]

This is not true. The warranty on the camaro for anything GM could not prove the chip did stays in place. This is a law that needs to apply to more than just cars.
I say this as someone who voided the warranty on his droid by flashing it.

BES Security

[jamesyouwish]

I just wish they would focus on security or let us know what they have done to make it more secure. I hear about API's and third party software. What types of encryption is available? What are the chips used to secure? Everyone in my office wants a iPhone but I do not feel as secure as with BES.

Apple invents multitasking! All Hail the Emperor!

[Anonymous Coward]

..probably now trying to figure out how to charge you for it twice.

Re:So what

[amliebsch]

Jailbreaking is also a federal crime.

Re:So what

[intheshelter]

The iPhone could always multitask, from the first version. It just didn't allow multitasking for 3rd party apps. And let's face it, most people don't multitask on a phone, they task switch, which seems similar, but is not true multitasking.

Still fails to deliver?

[drumcat]

Still fails to deliver outdated 1990s email paradigms that only the stodgiest of business users still care about. Flags? Really? If flags are that big a deal, use Gmail via MobileSafari. And show me one phone that junk filters. Damn troll article. How did this actually get posted?

Closing security holes

[Anonymous Coward]

One or should I say 65 more things it does for business is address security vulnerabilities.

According to Apple several of these could lead to remote code execution.

See:
The H Security - http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/Apple-s-iOS-4-update-fixes-65-vulnerabilites-1027039.html

or Apple's own security advisory

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4225

Unfortunately I now have to agree to their new terms of service to get these security fixes:

http://apple.slashdot.org/story/10/06/22/0318202/Apple-Wants-To-Share-Your-Location-With-Others

Learn what's defined by Apple

[WebManWalking]

Suspend/Resume is just what you get by recompiling with the new libraries. There's an API if you want to do more. But when you think about it, retrofitting suspend/resume with just a recompile as actually pretty neat.

Re:So what

[EdelFactor19]

the problem is that if you could prove what the mod could do, you could also prove software to be bug free... and sadly thats simply not really possible... although frankly I'm inclined to believe that you shouldn't be able to do anything from software alone that should "brick the device" to the point where they couldn't restore it... Sorta like how your warranty on a desktop or a laptop isn't contingent upon you leaving windows installed on it... or even a macbook where you are free to remove OS X and install something else, the warranty doesn't go out the window.

How does this go out the window for phones in general all of the sudden?

Re:So what

[DJRumpy]

I also found the comments about rules and filtering a bit odd, considering the iPhone uses IMAP for mail accounts if it's available. The filtering, and rules would be handled server side, not on the client software.

So many ACs

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't believe I've ever seen this many AC posts by proportion in a slashdot thread before. It's amazing. Since they're rate limited, more especially so.

I wonder what causes this.

Re:So what

[Helios1182]

And my 486 doesn't run Windows 7. As operating systems change, so do their system requirements.

can it run windows?

[Anonymous Coward]

That is the only thing that counts.

Re:So what

[Anonymous Coward]

You would be surprised. There are a lot of PHBs that are disposing of their Blackberries for iPhones. Why? Apps.

Another major hurdle for the iPhone was Exchange support. Now that the device responds to Exchange security (including remote wipe requests), it has gained acceptance in a place where people thought it would never get entrenched.

So with apps allowing people to do specific things, combined with being able to check off the internal security box, iPhones are becoming a presence in the IT world as much as Windows Mobile devices (which businesses see no real upgrade path), or Blackberries (which are a staple, but are becoming lackluster).

Android is a strong contender, but it still doesn't have encryption of data, nor the ability to remote wipe. Both of these are a must with larger companies.

Re:So what

[Low Ranked Craig]

I have one of those and I'm perfectly happy with it. It still has reasonably good battery life and the aluminum case is superior IMO to the plastic case of the 3G and 3Gs. My warranty expired about 2 years ago. So what? I will say that I'm really liking the new one and will probably get one. Troll on brother, troll on.

So What - Fixed

[Low Ranked Craig]

None of this matters to people who don't work for big faceless corporations with Exchange server...

Bluetooth Audio?

[Meneguzzi]

I am reluctant to adopt this upgrade on day zero and the only thing that would make me do the upgrade is improved support for BT audio, which pretty much sucks in my iPod touch 2g. I also use the same BT headphones in my Android phone and it works brilliantly, so I wonder, has anybody done this upgrade and tested it with BT headphones like these ones? (http://www.sennheiserusa.com/private_headsets_mobile_bluetooth-wireless_music_502413)

Needs Profiles... and more

[ironicsky]

I wish Apple would build an update for profiles. I have a Jail broken phone and have a profiles add-on that allows me to set configurations for different things.

For example,
When I am at work my ringer turns off, vibrate goes on, WIFI turns off, 3G turns off, and notifications turn on.
When I get home, my WIFI turns back on, 3G turns back on, notifications turn off.

All that, and more happen based on time of day and GPS coordinates. It would also be great if they could make icons disappear based on profiles. When I let my girlfriends kid play with my iPhone I want her to be able to play games only, I'd love for apps to be hideable on-mass as part of a profile.

Password protected apps would be nice too (Also a feature in the JB world). If I am at a party I have no problems with people using my phone for music, videos, games, but my work e-mail, text messages and phone feature are passworded for obvious reasons.

Re:So what

[dotgain]

No, but my three-year-old AMD Athlon64 does, which would have been a better comparison.

Comes with a nice bug in the photo viewer

[Oryn]

Pick a picture, zoom it, then rotate the phone, now enjoy the splendour that is pitch black.
It does seem quicker though, have to see what the battery life is like.

Re:Comes with a nice bug in the photo viewer

[swb]

Doesn't work for me on a 3GS. I do have a problem with the little colored dots for seperate calendars in the Calendar app all being the same color.

I guess I could have waited for 4.01 or something but other than that it's been glitch free.

Was the last time you checked in 2007?

[Brannon]

You've been able to develop and push your own custom enterprise apps without apple store restrictions for years.

Why iPhone vs Android is silly

[Em Ellel]

I used to keep buying into the hype and rail against iPhone and for Android. Now having owned both, I recognize that the comparison itself is silly. Aside the "totalitarian regime" vs "pseudo-capitalism" difference in the platform philosophies, the products are like apples and oranges (pardon the pun). Its like comparing an old school word-processor and a computer(for fairness sake equally old-school) . This is not meant to belittle iPhone, but it is NOT a real smartphone. Its a really advanced feature phone.

The difference is that the "smart-phone" is like a computer, you can add/remove programs and alter how it functions so that it can be "smart" for your specific purposes - while the "feature-phone" is more like an appliance that offers certain features in a specific way. iPhone does have PIM capabilities that used to be primarely the domain of the smart-phones and even apps that make it seem like a smart-phone - but the capability of those apps is strictly as add-ons to the main appliance - not an extension/replacement of the OS. I mean, even 10 year old Motorola flip-phones - not smart-phones by any stretch of the imagination - had both PIM and apps capabilities.

Now, as far as features are concerned, iPhone is the best feature-phone by miles. Its amazing how much it can do and it keeps on stepping on the smart-phone territory more and more with new features in each release. Being a locked down feature-phone also enables it to have the best polished UI over the smart-phones - much easier to QA when. (Now, as an aside, I am not talking about jailbreaking, which does make iPhone more like a real smart-phone, albeit somewhat buggy as the developers have to constantly find hacks to insert functionality into existing code)

Android, on the other hand, is a whole other beast. It IS a smart-phone with all that it entails. You do not like how the on-screen keyboard works? You download one of the many other input methods (Swype rocks, BTW!!!). You do not like how SMS works? Go get a different SMS client. You do not like how mail works, there are many email clients to choose from. You want to have more than two sound profiles? Sure. You want to change the phone's configuration based on time, location, calendar, etc - no problem. You want to run something that will bring the phone to its knees and drain the battery in under 2 hours - of course you can get that too.

Does this make Android better than iPhone? Maybe - maybe not. It all depends on what YOU want. For me, I could not stand using the iPhone for all the restrictions on how to do things. But I thats why *I* want a smart-phone.

Still, I will admit that while there are many choices for certain functionality on Android, the iPhone's default, unchangable, functionality is very good, in some cases better than Android. Plus there is the "Windows" factor with iPhone being the defacto "Windows" standard of the apps market, there are more mature apps on iPhone platform than on Android (Hey, Amazon -- Summer is here, where is my Kindle App ????)

In short, if you are satisfied with what that iPhone offers - it may be the best thing out there for you. I highly recommend iPhone for older and less technical folk that don't demand much and just want something that works. If, on the other hand, you are more demanding and want something more than iPhone offers or more custom - iPhone is simply not good enough, and Android is your best bet by far.

As I mentioned there is also a philosophical issue of the tyrannical approach of "Big Brother Steve" vs free-for-all nature of Android development. This is not as clear cut as it appears, but more of an issue of personal philosophies thus the big debates on issues like government run health-care in the US. But it all boils down to - do you trust your dictator or does possibility(not existence) and freedom to create a better option outweigh a known entity you have no choice over. Like I said, its a personal decision and not as clear cut as it appears.

-Em

Re:Why iPhone vs Android is silly

[Anonymous Coward]

Pathetic. Stop the shilling and just admit you don't like Apple so you've decided to damn the iPhone with faint praise.

You are a hypocrite - pretending to advocate for the iPhone while really despising it and putting it down.

Re:Why iPhone vs Android is silly

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you buy the "SmartWater" brand of bottled water?
Why do u want a smart phone?
A phone has keys, a computer has a keyboard.
The phones now are approaching extra-personal computers.
Does the other one have a Linux Command Line console?
So why would i want it?

Re:Why iPhone vs Android is silly

[Em Ellel]

Do you buy the "SmartWater" brand of bottled water?
Why do u want a smart phone?
A phone has keys, a computer has a keyboard.
The phones now are approaching extra-personal computers.
Does the other one have a Linux Command Line console?
So why would i want it?

I have no idea what you are struggling to say here.

Yes, a "smartphone" is a marketing term, not a literal word (much like "personal computer"). Yes, smartphones approach (and in some cases surpass) functionality in personal computers. And yes, if that is not what you want, you would be a fool to buy one. These things are

I know why *I* want one, I have no idea why would you.

-Em

Re:Why iPhone vs Android is silly

[Nicky G]

Absolute bull crap. Blackberry was the phone that most people agree was first to be associated with the concept of smart phone, and still is considered a smart phone. It is not way more open than the iPhone, in the way that you argue Android is. Are you arguing that Android is the only smart phone platform out there? Ok, so you've invented your own personal definition of smart phone, and iPhone does not meet that set of criteria. Good for you. Back on Earth, nobody cares about your personal definition, and just about everybody disagrees with you.

Re:Why iPhone vs Android is silly

[Em Ellel]

Absolute bull crap. Blackberry was the phone that most people agree was first to be associated with the concept of smart phone, and still is considered a smart phone. It is not way more open than the iPhone, in the way that you argue Android is.

Erm, you can get many apps for blackberry that alter how it functions Not sure what you are trying to say.

Are you arguing that Android is the only smart phone platform out there?

Android... and Blackberry... and PalmOS... and Windows Mobile... and...well, there are plenty more.

Ok, so you've invented your own personal definition of smart phone, and iPhone does not meet that set of criteria. Good for you. Back on Earth, nobody cares about your personal definition, and just about everybody disagrees with you.

I don't think I invented this definition - its been around for a long time, nor do I think you are "everyone".

-Em

Re:Why iPhone vs Android is silly

[Anonymous Coward]

My name is iOS4. I had an accident and I woke up in 1985. Am I mad, in a coma, or back in time? Whatever's happened, it's like I'm having to implement basic stuff that's been around for decades. Now, maybe if I can work out the reason, all this hype about a phone can go away and people can get excited about something that matters.

Re:So what

[afidel]

The problem is you couldn't have Pandora and Skype running in the background while you composed an email which is a very real scenario for many smartphone users.

I could care less....

[Stone316]

about all the enterprise features they are putting or plan on putting in. I'm looking for the basics such as a VPN connection that will stay up longer than 5 minutes. Why doesn't it reconnect when it fails?

Yes we talked to Apple support and we couldn't get a resolution.

POP is dead! Long live IMAP!

[sl149q]

Why would you ever POP your mail to a single system today. That model died shortly after the year 2000!

Gmail and IMAP all the way. I read email where ever and with what ever is it hand. Windows / Chrome on the desktop. Linux / Chrome on my development system. Any browser anywhere. iPhone when I'm out. iTouch when I'm upstairs reading. iPad when I get around to buying one to replace the iTouch.

I just checked, apparently the Kindle can be used to do email ("by going to your email providers mobile website. E.g. m.gmail.com").

Not that gmail is perfect. I actually did get a spam email just last week.

Re:POP is dead! Long live IMAP!

[hitmark]

i highly prefer a deaf dumb and blind pop server to googles "smart" service.

Re:So what

[0100010001010011]

There are a ton of Android phones that are stuck on a bastardized version of 1.5, 1.6, 2.0 etc that their carrier runs that will never be able to be upgraded either.

And Verizon and AT&T are still selling those phones RIGHT NOW.

Re:So what

[mrchaotica]

the problem is that if you could prove what the mod could do, you could also prove software to be bug free... and sadly thats simply not really possible...

Yeah, but that's Apple's problem, since the burden of proof is on it to prove the mod did cause the malfunction, not on you to prove that it didn't.

The real issue here is that it's not worth taking Apple to court over.

Re:So what

[Achromatic1978]

Wow, apparently you're a troll. Imagine how bad it'd have been if you also mentioned that tethering your iPhone might lead AT&T to cancel your service for breach of contract, too...

There is a the ever so remote possibility...

[Brannon]

...that Apple actually knows what they are doing, considering that they literally cannot manufacture iDevices fast enough for people who are willing to buy them sight unseen.

anyone heard of this new "server" thing?

[Tom]

junk mail filtering, message rules, and message flagging."

Because, you know, no corporate environment whatsoever has any of these new "mail server" things, which do crap like that for you, with the added advantage that your rules are the same no matter if you read your mails on the phone or on the desktop. No, sir, we can not possibly do server-side filtering. We must do it on our phone.

I'm a business user, but...

[afm47]

Isn't that strange? I'm a business user (have my own company for about 15 years now), I have been using Mail for at least 23 years, longer than most oft PHBs have heard of the concept. Nevertheless, I have no use for all the concepts the article thinks are so incredibly important. Flags? Why not just answer emails and archive/delete them? Junk Filter? Doesn't your server do most of the work? Rules? To automatically archive messages you'll never read? Why not just unsubscribe from all those mailing lists? Some people forget that new tools often mean that old process are no longer meaningful, and that the tools needed to support those old processes are obsolete. So the troll who posted the article should try to get in sync with the present in order not to become obsolete himself.

How about ical/.ics support?!

[Kevin Stevens]

This article is missing what I think is the biggest drawback by far for using the Iphone as a business device- it doesn't support outlook meeting invites! My woman is in sales, and on my old blackberry we would email each other meeting invites for social events so we could keep stuff in sync (we both have big families and lots of nieces and nephews on each side that like to book dates far in advance, so conflicts happen often, and its really easy to forget that a month ago you agreed to go to a bday party 6 weeks from now which happens to be the day your buddy just asked you to come over for his bbq). If you use outlook to access your email, its just massively inconvenient to keep in sync, and last I looked, w/ a gmail account, you needed a jailbroken phone to keep your calendar in sync.

I can't imagine the iphone ever getting any traction in the workplace unless it handles outlook meeting invites.

Encryption

[Demogoblin]

Can the entire device be encrypted yet? From what I've seen, this seems to be the biggest concern from a corporate point of view.

Re:So what

[s73v3r]

And now you can.

How is it not multitasking?

[SuperKendall]

Only 1 app-type gets anything resembling multitasking

There are three core types of background applications.

Audio lets you play sound in the background, including over a network connection.

Location lets you act on location changes in the background (course of fine grained)

Voip lets your application act a a phone, including receiving calls.

Which of those three is not "real" multitasking? Your application is called, in the background, and does what is needed. Furthermore there's another type that lets you continue to do anything in the background, for a few seconds to complete some important task.

Re:So what

[mdwh2]

Granted I had to jailbreak the device

Apple, it Just Works, out of the box!

(When there's a new story about an Iphone virus, will you be first in line telling us it's a non-story, because it only affects jailbroken phones...?)

Re:So what

[mdwh2]

By that logic, dirt cheap feature phones from five years ago, such as the one I threw in the trash for being obsolete a few months ago, could "multitask", because you can run the built in applications at the same time (e.g., writing an email or text whilst I listen to music on the mp3 player).

I would expect more from something claiming to be a high end smartphone, let alone for a tablet computer, but maybe it shouldn't be counted as that after all.

Re:So what

[mdwh2]

Welcome to 1985.

Re:So what

[mdwh2]

Indeed, though I think this is relevant given the common myth of there being only one Iphone model - leading to claims such as "Look how popular it is that even a single model has sold 50 million", when really it's a whole line of phones, that should be compared accordingly (e.g., to Nokia's 250 million Symbian devices).

Similarly, you'll get people going on about how they've got an Iphone, as if that's some special status - yet this could be an old outdated 2007 model. It's misleading that people can say that the Iphone now supports (finally) multitasking (along with copy/paste, 3G and other basic features), when actually this is true only of the latest high end model, and might not be true of all the Iphones out there.

If someone says that my 2 year old 5800 doesn't support a particular feature, I don't get to argue back based on what a soon-to-be-released high end Nokia phone will do.

Re:So what

[Anonymous Coward]

Tonight there's gonna be trouble, Some of us won't survive, See the boys and me we mean business, Bustin' out dead or alive

Re:So what

[Anonymous Coward]

The Apple loving sheep will continue to love Apple no matter what they do. Most of them have no experience at all with the non Apple products they attack, but they'll shoot their mouths off anyway.
I'll add some more to it
In fact, it is pretty apparent that most of them have their heads in the sand because they still think that Apple invented and is the first and only one to use some specific feature. When they reluctantly come to the conclusion that maybe Apple was not the first to some feature, the SJ reality distortion field kicks in automatically and the response turns into the common adlib of a "Well... Apple does it better because it X" where X equals some unmeasurable non-repeatable value like looks cooler/just works/is slick/responds well/is seamless.

   

Re:So what

[hazydave]

People with multitasking phones multitask all the time. I do, every day.. no to mention the various daemons running on my phone. Even some Apple isn't going to offer on the iPhone4 (iOS 4 apps can "opt in" to limited multitasking, but only Apple can write daemons).

Anyone who thinks multitasking isn't important on smart phones is an Apple apologist, or just not thinking clearly. These phones are significantly more powerful than PCs were not all that long ago... and desktops have had full multitasking since the mid 80s, if not earlier (depending, of course, on your OS of choice).

Re:So what

[Anonymous Coward]

Pandora sucked in 1985. It was all Van Halen all the time.