9to5 Staff

Not surprisingly, the big four non-Apple civilians who had been given iPhones to play with (and had signed their life away in NDAs) finally showed their cards ahead of the rest of the media yesterday. Also, not a surprise to anyone, they loved it almost unconditionally.  How does the public let Apple get away with this round robin “give us good reviews and you get our newest product early, bad reviews and we give our new products to your competitors” game?  “Freedom of the press and Democracy Inaction” as the Daily Show would say…so here they are, your unbiased reviews:

• Wall St. Journal (Walt Mossberg doesn’t seem to have the ability to criticize Apple): The iPhone is Breakthrough Handheld Computer
• New York Times (Pogue not big on badmouthing Apple either): The iPhone Matches Most of its Hype
• Newsweek (Oh man!  Time Warner’s  Time must have said something wrong – they have always had 1st dibs – lesson learned!): At Last, the iPhone
• USA Today (wow – kinda lowbrow populist for Apple, no? – don’t believe me? look at the ads on the bottom): Apple’s iPhone isn’t perfect, but it’s worthy of the hype

They really all just wrote the same review – what is on Apple’s PR website plus:

• Pros: It’s a game changer device. Interface, hardware amazing, etc. – which, give credit to Apple: it is revolutionary.
• Cons: Keyboard takes time to adjust to and has no tactile feedback (duh), EDGE is slow (double duh), no iChat and 200 SMS messages/month (this should be the headline) – but why?  Haven’t any of you heard of Meebo!?  Ever thought to review that?

What is most frustrating about these reviews is the lack of any coverage of the most “Game-Changing” part of the phone. The “Lock-in“.

Why would Apple want to lock you into one particular phone company?  What’s the advantage?  Besides the need to create a CDMA version of the iPhone, not much.  Visual voicemail on T-Mobile?  I am sure it’s not that hard, especially the second time around.   The iTunes registration?  Not much there either.

Why not sell it direct like Nokia is doing with their very capable N95 phone in the US?  More customer base, more options, equals more sales – right?  Why would Apple choose to follow the super lock-in model that T-Mobile has built around the Sidekick – (which relies on 3rd party Danger server but despite the lock-in has had considerable success?)  Maybe, like me, Steve Jobs is super-pissed that he can’t take his Sidekick 3 overseas and use another carrier – even if just for phone and SMSing.   Probably not…in fact, if the Apple people knew this frustration and hate, they would not voluntarily, and without any benefit, lock in their customers to one carrier.

Apple isn’t such a control freak that it would give up customer experience, sales and exposure – all for control..

…well maybe it is.

Because Apple has to be taking some of the monthly customer payment cut.  There is no other logical explanation for why Apple would choose to lock itself in with AT&T.  Now how much?  Probably not a lot.  Maybe $5-10/month.  Maybe a bit more on the SMS plans – otherwise why only 200 SMS messages and no iChat?  But multiply that little amount times 10 million customers and 24 months and you’ve got a pretty healthy chunk of change – not many companies would scoff at a quarter of a billion dollars or more.  Apple has had a taste of the economics of scale from the iTunes store, which besides Apple’s stated best intentions to only make money on iPods, is turning a healthy profit.  Go MBA’s!

For instance if Apple makes 1 cent on each of the 10 billion itunes songs sold through iTunes, that is $100 million.  If they make 10 cents, that is a billion dollars.  Economics of scale are nice when you have a large marketshare, aren’t they Apple?

It is also the reason Apple is having a very difficult time finding a partner in Europe.  They say “Arrogance” is the reason why no one wants to deal with Apple.  This is business…5-10

-No people, of course they aren’t real!!  Just Photoshopped…

A posting from Seth Godin’s website…big, simple, true…

..can be applied to many things but made me think of Gartner’s and many IT Director’s thoughts on iPhone – that it is bad for business

Most organizations need a good reason to do something new. 
All they need is a flimsy excuse to not do something for the first time. 
And they often need a lawsuit to stop doing something they’re used to.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/06/reasons-and-exc.html

As more and more people migrate to Google Apps from Lotus/Exchange/etc, the more important migration tools become. The biggest so far was released by Google this week, one which will pull your users email into their Google Apps email through IMAP.  This should work with Microsoft Exchange (so long as IMAP service is enabled on the server – and which can be enabled at migration time if it isn’t already) and Lotus Notes – through the IMAP connector.  99% of the other mail servers on the planet use IMAP save for a few old POP3 servers still in circulation so this might be a great time to migrate your users if you were on the fence before about Google Apps.

From Google’s Help Page:

Google Apps email migration enables domain administrators to transfer
the existing contents of users

Our iPhone sources have dropped a few more tantalizing bits on us about the upcoming iPhone. This continues the recent coverage of the YouTube button and the VERY interesting new features. There is so much information coming to the surface about the iPhone and its consumer capabilities but we did find some business focussed capabilities in the little guy.

VPN:
The iPhones will have the standard OSX VPN client when they ship next week.  This will allow connecting to Macintosh and Windows VPN Servers on L2TP or PPTP over IPSEC.  The client is very simple and will be set up from its own settings pane.  Cisco PIX VPN connectivity is a little blurry as some configurations work with the default OSX client as it does in the Macintosh client, others do not.  Cisco is rumored to be working on a VPN Client for the iPhone as well as Soft Phone integration into its latest Call Manager Server but that is a long way off, if at all.

There are also reports of email functionality of IMAP over SSL – adding to the business case for iPhone (Contrary to the Microsoft-funded  Gartner, 451, and IDC statements)

Word Docs and Excel Sheets
The iPhone utilizes Leopard’s Quick Look functionality to view Microsoft Word and Excel Files.  Once viewing the files, you cannot edit them, however, unless you use Google Docs and Spreadsheets through the Safari Browser.  According to Apple’s website, Quick Look works with nearly every file on your system, including
images, text files, PDFs, movies, Keynote presentations, and Microsoft
Word and Excel files.  It will be a welcome addition to iPhone.

Gartner, IDC and 451 Group research analysts this week warned IT administrators to keep iPhones away from their businesses.

It looks like someone is doing illegal stuff and posting their WWDC version of Leopard to the Torrent sites. As you probably know it is illegal to get software like this and Apple is particularly adamant about keeping their intellectual property from falling into the wrong hands.

However, this is big news if you are a criminal and want to try out OSX 10.5 (and have a Dual Layer DVD Burner or extra Firewire hard drive laying around).

It is a good way of preparing for the features that will be coming along soon and getting a head start on your neighbors who will likely be downloading this little gem as well….

This is new as far as I know, but has probably been in existence for awhile…. It looks like Apple has been putting an archive together of Technical resources for Pro people.. Go figure.

The area is broken down into: Profiles, Techniques, Mac OS X Tips, Resources.  From there it covers the gamut of topics as they relate to Design, Film & Video, Photography, and Music & Audio.  Check it out!

MacEnterprise.org (the new-ish home of the former macosxlabs.com) is having a webcast on Intermapper on
Tuesday, June 19th 2007. 

From the entry:

I’ve used Intermapper from Dartware on a few occasions and I have to say its the best Network/Server monitoring product of its kind for the Mac platform.  Nagios and Lansurveyor are just too much of a hassle though their featuresets are sometimes more diverse.  If your company is on a tight budget or needs some exotic type of network monitoring, Nagios may make more sense.  There are a few other Linux/X11 server/switch/client/etc. monitoring tools out there but none of them is the complete package that Intermapper is.  

Dartware used to have a 5 client free package but it looks like it has been removed from their site in lieu of a two week trial evaluation.

Dartware also have Webinars (I just learned a new word) and are held every Tuesday and Friday at 11:00 EDT.  If you’d like to find out more you can E-mail Dartware now to make your reservation.

The resignation of Roz Ho as General Manager of the Macintosh Business Unit before WWDC 2007 should have been a premonition of Microsoft’s incredibly poor showing at the event (either that or she knew how painfully lame it was going to be). It had been speculated that Redmond would announce the distribution of the new 2008 version of its market dominating Office suite at the event.  But Microsoft had nothing to announce. Is this a sign of things to come?  When will it get released and will Office 2008 be the last upgrade to Office that the Mac sees?  Are Bill and Steve not getting along as well as they appear to be with Walt Mossberg?

Microsoft has a long, well documented history with the Mac platform. Indeed, Microsoft’s ventures with Apple even pre-date the Macintosh as Bill Gates reminded the audience recently at all things D…  It’s also well known that  Microsoft Word, possibly the World’s most widely used paid application, made its debut on the Mac Platform.  Additionally, when Apple was at its lowest point right after Steve Jobs returned to the helm to rescue the company, it was Microsoft that put a cash infusion into Apple and guaranteed to develop their Office software for a few more years (nevermind that Microsoft’s actions were most likely motivated by the effort to stay out of Monopoly court).  So what has happened recently to chill the relationship (or water in hell)?

First, Apple is doing very well for itself now and Redmond doesn’t feel like they are so in control of the Operating Systems market anymore. Apple’s iPod is a huge success that dwarfs its Zune/Plays for Sure competitors. AppleTV is set to make some inroads into Microsoft’s Mediacenter strategy and XBox businesses. Apple’s laptops, seen as the future of "desktop" computing are their strongest product.  By all accounts, the iPhone looks to surpass all of these and put a huge dent into Microsoft’s large lead in the up-and-coming smart phone business.

Next, Apple is playing very well with Google, Redmond’s arch-enemy. All of the new tools that are going into iPhone are built on Google APIs. Apple is also playing a lot with another Microsoft rival, Sun in the sandbox. ZFS, Open Office and Java (though Steve Jobs has been hard on Java and Sun in general lately) have all been mentioned alongside Apple products in recent months. In fact, besides MSN Messenger, what major MS product has had a major upgrade since 2003? Internet Explorer for Mac stopped in 2003 at version 5.1 right about the time Safari was getting started. Look at their current downloads page.  They still have OS9 Apps.  Office 2004 was released late in 2003 and has only recieved bugfixes, security patches and some minor performance improvements since then. Microsoft Office is far and away the biggest application that hasn’t been ported yet to Universal Binaries.

But why?

Maybe Microsoft doesn’t know how to deal with this hi-tech x86 processor from Intel?  It is very cutting edge!

Microsoft beat everyone getting applications to OSX when it was first introduced in 2001. Had it not, it is doubtful that the new Mac platform would have been as successful as it has been. Microsoft can definitely get it done. So why has it dragged its heels this time around? No one outside of Redmond (or Cupertino) knows for sure but perhaps Microsoft is a bit uncertain about the future. If they continue to feed Apple with quality software for the enterprise they might see some serious inroads being made into their territory.

Or not.  

The "desktop" paradigm is changing so fast that by the time apple has a chance to catch up, the category probably won’t even exist.  Which is why the new race is to find the next form factor.  What does that look like? It might be wearable or practically invisible, and take the form of a watch, glasses, phone or whatever. However, I bet it looks a whole lot more like an iPhone than the current Windows PC ….Microsoft may have won the desktop battle, but the battle for the next thing is on, and the race is wide open.

Microsoft can’t afford to go easy on Apple this time.

Now you may be saying, "what about Silverlight" – which is Mac compatible but not on the development side. Also, there is renewed interest in developing Windows Media for Mac. Microsoft’s Bungie division still makes some Mac games as well. I think this is because Microsoft is afraid of losing developers, developers, developers to other technologies that include support for the very influential <10% Mac user base.  So this is by no means comprehensive.

I think Microsoft will get its final version of Office out for Mac in fairly short order – perhaps trying to steal some thunder from the iPhone launch?  Like all other versions it won’t work as good as the PC version (Office 2007) lacking in Enterprise specific areas and  it will look like a kids game with crayon colors and bubbly fonts.  But unlike all of the other times, that won’t matter.

I did an article for CMSWire (a great daily read that’ll keep you up to date with the Content Management Systems landscape) on Safari for Windows where I shared some of my experience with Safari and rationalized its port to Windows. Read! 

Other sites tend to agree that it is the iPhone that has motivated Apple’s hand.

I just read a great blogpost by Mozilla’s COO,  John Lilly that
expanded upon what I thought was a huge blunder on Apple’s part in
announcing that they were porting Safari to Windows.  By the graphs,
pictured, It seems that Apple wants Safari to gain market share at the
expense of not IE but of Opera and Firefox.  And those are not slipups or typo’s either.  Apple goes to great lengths to clearly define each and every aspect of a keynote presentation.

As an avid (and currently
livid) Mac Firefox user, I have to say that this is appalling to me.Why?  Well 1st of all Firefox has made browsing on the Mac a much better experience ever since IE bowed out of the platform 5 years ago.  A lot of sites are unable to render properly, if at all, on Safari and without Firefox, it would be a whole lot harder to be a Mac user.

Secondly, Firefox has the best set of plug-ins available on the Web.  Lots of tools for Web Developers and power users alike.  Until last week it was the only browser that allowed you to have a somewhat similar cross platform experience…and the only one that you can use the Google toolbar on the Mac platform.

Finally, where is Apple to say that there should only be 2 Browsers?! Alright, enough…I am hoping this is some sort of mistake or that Apple’s developers will overturn this ‘strategy’ from the inside. If you are passionate about this, make your statement on Digg or elsewhere. 

I just took Safari out of my Dock.

These two companies are a bit too intermingled….

Computerworld hooked me up with an upgrade of Parallels to put through the ringer for a review. I installed 3D apps like Quake, Maya, etc to test the new OpenGL and DirectX VM skillz along with stalwarts like Visio and Dragon Naturally Speaking. Would my Parallels image hold up? Read on to find out…..(hint – Parallels is awesome)

Edit: I expanded this post a bit for coverage on CMSWire. Please check it out.

The iPhone will be able to support Google Docs and spreadsheets.  How can we make this claim?  
Google Apps now work on Safari 3.  We checked it out, you can too.

And if there is any take away from WWDC 2007, it is that real Safari works on iPhone.  So obviously Google is on the “Browser is the SDK” bandwagon for this new Web 2.0 that Steve Jobs keeps talking about.  

So by the transitive property GApps works on Safari, Safari (fully)Works on iPhone, therefore we must conclude that Google Apps will work on Safari.

Albeit at EDGE speeds.

Don’t believe me?  Open up Safari and… Try it for yourself

Now how about getting the word out?

Taking a page from their ipod shuffle campaign that touts the limitations of not having a screen on an MP3 player as the newest and greatest thing, Steve Jobs tried to convince a auditorium full of developers and a global community of 950,000 that they would in fact have a very advanced Web 2.0 iPhone User “SDK” (software developer kit) or lack thereof…

 <applause!>

..or, in other words, a browser

Which we’ve all known about since January.  

Yes it is a very nice browser.  Safari supports most CSS and web standards very well.  It also is now on Windows…hoo-ahh!  The iPhone Safari also does some nice zooming and panning and has some nice features.  It might even make the iPhone for Business possible.

But it is JUST a browser

……..When did Steve Jobs turn into Karl Rove?

and therein lies the problem…that this message is just SPIN.  The same message could have been relayed by saying this:

No, we aren’t letting anyone into our iPhone development for the foreseable future, our platform is too delicate, AT&T won’t let us and we haven’t quite set up the proper security restrictions for an API.  We may in the future…or we may not.  It does browse the web though.

Yes iPhone!

<waits for applause?>

So that is the problem here.  Every religion/political party/NGO/etc has their mantras and their view of situations – and specifically how to view a bad situation.  So let’s make no mistake about it..

Apple is telling all of its developers at its yearly World Wide Developers Conference, that its biggest product in 30 years will not have a dev kit for them but instead they should build webpages is a BAD situation.

But now I am sitting here knowing I’ve been SPUN and as a natural reaction, I am looking at the rest of the picture and wondering what else have I got at this WWDC?  

• Games?  So Mac is catching up to windows/Xbox/PS3 on that.  That is kind of nice, kinda eh.
• Leopard?  Yep…all of the features you knew about plus some eye candy.  ZFS?  Sun is on my shitlist now so no…well maybe
• Leopard Server, nothing new that we haven’t already seen/talked about.
• Safari for Windows?  What’s that got to do with me?  A). I don’t use Windows, B). I like Firefox better anyway.  Why not build Safari on Linux?  Or put the Mac OS on Windows in a Virtual Machine?
• .Mac is going to suck slightly less and maybe a few of you shouldn’t stop paying us for something you can get elsewhere better, cheaper, Googlier

So what am I supposed to be getting excited about again? 

In reality, Apple PR should really be advised not to let the SPIN cycle get out of control.  Especially at the WWDC.  I mean yeah, most of the people in attendance are rabid fanboys, but these particular fanboys are also smart, technical and know when they are being spun (some of them anyway).  

Here’s a suggestion in the hypothetical senario where this would happen again:

Today we are announcing that we aren’t providing a SDK for the iPhone?  Why?  Because it’s a phone and not a computer.  The tolerance for freezing, looping, “pinwheels” etc. for a phone is extremely small.  Also, this is a first edition and there is just enough memory and RAM to fit the things we already have built.

The good news?  This is a platform is the same as the rest of the mac lineup and in a year we’ll be on a processor as fast as a current mac Mini, have quadruple the RAM and more room to maneuver.  There will also be faster data speeds and a larger userbase.

In the meantime use AJAX webpages to interact with this phone and its computer-like browser, that’s all we can give you at the early stage of this product’s lifecycle.

Keep in mind that I am a huge fan of porting apps to to the web whenever it is possible and I don’t necessarily think that the iPhone being a closed platform is a bad idea. It is just insulting to be SPUN and detrimental to the rest of the message (WWDC). Let’s leave the “We are harvesting the forests” to the politicians.

Will the iPhone be the first MID device?

We’ve learned that the iPhone platform will be of the same ilk as the Macintosh and AppleTV platforms and indeed most of the computer world – the venerable Intel x86 platform. 

Sources confirmed today that the iPhone paperwork contains references to the Intel McCaslin processor running at 667mhz. It went on to confirm that later versions of the phone will use a faster/more efficient version of the chip dubbed “Menlow” in time for its European and subsequent 3G incarnation.  Obviously in 2008, in time for its Asian debut, it would be a prime candidate for Silverthorne.

There was also speculation that there were other devices coming out from Apple that would follow along in this chipset path.  Perhaps tablets?

It makes sense that Apple would tie its range of software to one development platform and furthermore, use Intel’s chipset to do so as most of the other Mobile Internet Devices (MID’s).. that have been announced are doing.

For example HTC announced its Shift device, which will run Vista will ship with an Intel chip instead of its previously announced VIA chip.  Additionally, over the past few weeks, a few other devices out of Asia have been announced with this platform including Sony’s UX-90 line.  The iPhone however will be the only one not resembling an oversized Sidekick!

 It had previously been speculated that the iPhone would use chips from former Intel division ARM or Samsung or even Taiwanese manufacturer VIA.