I just came across this interesting interview with Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer. He talks about the iPhone (and that it wont make a huge difference in the business market) and other stuff.
That brings me to my thought on the iPhone and Apple’s strategy on the business side (not that Apple would care in any way:-) ).
First off, I am a big Apple fan and I like their Hardware and their OS a lot. Some years ago, I felt that Apple should have brought out a MacOS X for the Intel chip, now that they have done so, I still don’t understand why they don’t come out with a MacOS X for “the rest of the Intel world”, meaning not only Apple Hardware. I understand that Apple wants to convert users to the Apple Hardware, and in the long run will succeed with it, but they could gain some momentum if they would release a MacOS X which would run everywhere right now.
There is also another factor, that I think Apple is badly missing, and it is the Business side of computing. Sure, there is a Office for the Mac and in this year there will be the Intel Version of it as well (and I can tell you it will be fast and nice (I am a MS beta tester and use Entourage 2008 right now)), but that it just not enough. Now, Apple came out with a iPhone, looks nice and sure will sell, but from an aspect of a office user, a IMAP access will just not do it. Today’s business users want to have access to their corporate email, calendars and contacts. This is something that RIM with their Blackberry and Microsoft with their Exchange Server services have realized. Constant access to any information everywhere is the key and if Apple wants to enter this market they will have to allow their users and hardware to talk directly to the mentioned services.
Nevertheless, one can use today’s business solution with a Mac already. This leads me to our setup we have here.
We got a Exchange Server 2003 installed, that handles our eMail, Calendar and Contacts for the Office. Since SP2 of the Exchange Server Microsoft features the Push-eMail functionality. Thus one can use a Active Sync enabled Phone to deliver eMails directly to mobile devices. Now we just installed a Blackberry Enterprise Server so that Blackberry users can access the Exchange Server, also. As a Mac user, we have Entourage installed which allows us direct access to the Exchange Server. This setup works great. Adding a calendar event within Entourage, syncs it within minutes with the mobile device and vice versa. Same goes with the eMail.
Regarding the Blackberry, I personally switched to a Blackberry device as well. The Windows Mobile device I used to use, drove me crazy. Windows sometimes refused to sync correctly with the Exchange Server, sometimes I could not pick up calls, in the end I had to reboot the device every day just to get it working correctly. I hope this will now be over with the use of the Blackberry device.
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One of the reasons that Apple doesn’t make OS X available for the rest of the Intel world is that by constraining the equipment that the os runs on, the save a fortune in testing, development and certification costs. They are also able to provide a much higher level of service if they know that your equipment actually works together.
Personally, I find the Exchange/Outlook combo maddening. The best solution I have ever put in place physically was the old Netscape server trio of Messaging Server, Calendar Server and Directory Server. That was many years ago and it worked great. Exchange STILL falls short of the productivity of that setup. How many iterations of exchange/outlook is it going to take in order to do a simple contact lookup? Try looking someone up by their phone number in the MS address book.
Since the Netscape products have been swallowed by Sun (which to me always seems like a company that doesn’t really want to sell anything) and Google has made their apps available (http://www.google.com/a/?utm_medium=et&utm_source=bizsols&utm_campaign=gafyd), I’ve since switched to Google for domains. Now, I don’t care what OS or hardware my people are using. I don’t really have to think about it that much and I haven’t noticed any difference other than on the bottom line.
Maybe you can help me with a problem I’m having. I have two macs at home and I love them so much that I insisted I get one at the office and that just happened last month. My office operates on an exchange server and I have a blackberry. I use Entourage and I downloaded PocketMac for the blackberry. The problem is that there are too many syncing options and I don’t know the best way to go. Apple techs say not to use the sync tool in Entourage, that I should use the one that comes with OSX and that makes sense, except then it wouldn’t sync contacts and calendar in Entourage. When I did my first sync with Entourage, it synced with .Mac and it wiped my home address book, reinstalled it on Entourage at home and then resynced with address book. This is probably not so bad, but is it the best way to go?
Also, I am having problems with the PocketMac application. It goes 95% through the process and then gets hung up on “syncing data”. I’ve reinstalled twice. Any ideas there?
I am actually not using any sync application for syncing with my Blackberry at all. What we rae doing is to use the Exchange Server, which holds all of the contacts, emails and calendar data anyway, as our main repository. All the Blackberry BES Server does is to forward all data to your Blackberry as well.
the same goes with Entourage. If you set up an account in Entourage and add your account as a Exchange Server account you will not need any syncing application. Thus your BlackBerry is actually just another client for your Exchange Server.
Hope this makes sense.
Thanks very much. I passed that on to my IT people to see what they think. Any ideas about how best to sync my contacts and calendar so that everything is tight between Entourage at the office and my .mac account?
David
I am sorry for my late response, but I am on business travels in Latin and South America. Ok, if you want to sync your BlackBerry with your Mac then there is really only one application to do that for you. Head over to Markspace Website and grab they Missing Sync software. Haven’t tried it myself, since I don’t need a sync with anything other then my Exchange Server, but I have heard nothing but good things about it.