All Apple Employees get iPhones, Email Service?

[d21mike]

With all Apple Employees getting iPhones, which Email Service are they planning to use? Is this just a gift for personal use or does Steve expect the employees to use them for any kind of business purpose?

Does Apple provide Blackberry devices to any of their employees? If so, will those employees not carry both an iPhone for personal use and a Blackberry for business use?

It seems that most people on this forum believe that the iPhone is for personal use and not really intended for business use. I have said that Apple should support Exchange and Blackberry Connect as a priority to attact more business customers. Most people seem to feel that the priority should be more toward consumer features.

As a small business owner I sure would not want my employees to have to carry 2 devices, especially if I was giving them both.

 

[mkrishnan]

As a small business owner I sure would not want my employees to have to carry 2 devices, especially if I was giving them both.

I don't think it would be that hard for Apple to implement IMAP+IDLE or something like that for their own corporate e-mail, and it's probably a reasonable guess that their people will use the iPhone with something along those lines in place of their blackberries....

 

[d21mike]

I don't think it would be that hard for Apple to implement IMAP+IDLE or something like that for their own corporate e-mail, and it's probably a reasonable guess that their people will use the iPhone with something along those lines in place of their blackberries....

I agree that is probably a good direction for email (maybe with SSL). However, my understanding is that most people that use use Blackberrys or Exchange is that their live calendar and contacts at a lessor degree is also very important. My point is that just getting email would not be enough to replace most peoples Blackberry.

 

[mkrishnan]

I agree that is probably a good direction for email (maybe with SSL). However, my understanding is that most people that use use Blackberrys or Exchange is that their live calendar and contacts at a lessor degree is also very important. My point is that just getting email would not be enough to replace most peoples Blackberry.

Ahh, I see what you're saying... the iPhone right now cannot do two-way live interactions with a network calendar. Yeah, that is an issue, and very few things outside the Blackberry Enterprise Server world can do that. Although...Leopard Server will be able to manage network calendars with two-way interaction. Perhaps the iPhone will receive an update and be able to use this? Still leaves the problem that most of us don't / won't have a Leopard server to serve us iCals...

 

[d21mike]

Ahh, I see what you're saying... the iPhone right now cannot do two-way live interactions with a network calendar. Yeah, that is an issue, and very few things outside the Blackberry Enterprise Server world can do that. Although...Leopard Server will be able to manage network calendars with two-way interaction. Perhaps the iPhone will receive an update and be able to use this? Still leaves the problem that most of us don't / won't have a Leopard server to serve us iCals...

Right. Someone else said that maybe Apple wants to push open standards like what is available with the Leopard Server. That is the reason I started this. I wanted to know what Apple Employees were doing now. Of course maybe Apple Employees do not currently use Mobile Technology to do their job. If they do I would think they are probably using the BlackBerry. Could not see them using Windows Mobile Devices for obvious reasons.

Windows Mobile Devices allow for 2 way over the air sync of Exchange Email, Calendar, Contacts and I think Tasks. Also, now they can do the same with Windows Live Services.

I just was hoping to get an advance direction of where Apple may be heading.

 

[mkrishnan]

Windows Mobile Devices allow for 2 way over the air sync of Exchange Email, Calendar, Contacts and I think Tasks. Also, now they can do the same with Windows Live Services.

Are you sure about that? I wasn't using an exchange server when I had WM5, but I thought that the Exchange server over WiFi or cellular data was strictly limited to e-mails. Is this a new WM6 feature?

Anyway, though, the iCal standard has taken on a lot of steam, particularly with Google using it. I hope that the technology Apple made will find its way abroad, such as in allowing two-way editing of Google calendars from mobile devices and iCal.

 

[sbrownla]

Are you sure about that? I wasn't using an exchange server when I had WM5, but I thought that the Exchange server over WiFi or cellular data was strictly limited to e-mails. Is this a new WM6 feature?

We used small business exchange server at the law firm I worked for. It was amazing and once I set my wm5 phone up and showed my boss, he picked up a wm5 device immediately.

Calendars, email and contacts sync'd no problem via push, so it was all real time.