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March 06, 2008
And to think...
... I almost wasted $300 last night.
So, I have to admit that I have been working a lot of hours lately. I'm not so proud to admit that I've put in almost 50 hours this week and it's only WED. Last night, I got so tired of working insane hours that I decided I need to be able to do some of this work from the comfort of my room. My company has issued me a laptop to lug around but I don't really want to go through the whole ordeal necessary to sign into our secure network each night when I get home. Then it struck me that most of my job revolves around responding to emails. If I just glance at my inbox from time to time I would probably avoid needing to sign in at all.
Sadly my iPhone doesn't do Microsoft Exchange without the same secure network login process, and even then I have to use web-based email. If you've ever used Exchange web access, you know my pain in that.
I was all geared up to actually drop my iPhone in favor of a Blackberry or WinMobile device last night, the only thing that stopped me was that I had a bad headache when I planned on going so I didn't.
Imagine my surprise when I am catching up on Engadget on my lunch and find that Apple is adding Corp Exchange Push Mail support to iPhone in June. I can handle the wait as long as I now know that it's in the works.
Exchange and Activesync support were the only 2 things holding up the show for me. I love everything else about my iPhone (well maybe I'm not so much a fan of the limited capacity of 8GBs but it's not horrible. So that's that. The iPhone is now the perfect mobile device. I can work, I can surf, I can rock out. What more is there to ask for from a phone?
I also heard tale that Apple was adding support so that 3rd party developers could make software that runs on the iPhone and you can buy and install it directly from the iPhone itself. This is common in WinMo phones and Palms but the iPhone had been so locked down that if it wasn't available in iTunes you pretty much couldn't have it. I'm glad to see Apple trend away from that. That being said... it's not necessarily unlocked. Looks like they are limiting developers and taking a hefty chunk of the profit if the developers decide to charge for their product, but at least we iPhone users will now be able to enjoy something other than what Apple decides we want.
Posted by Decemberice at March 6, 2008 09:31 PM
Comments
> I also heard tale that Apple was adding support
> so that 3rd party developers could make
> software that runs on the iPhone and you can
> buy and install it directly from the iPhone
> itself.
Yep. I'm downloading the beta SDK as we speak. It's over 2 GB. I should have it in my hands, virtually speaking, some time tomorrow. :|
It's just a beta SDK, though. You won't be downloading (official) 3rd party software until June or so.
> but the iPhone had been so locked down that
> if it wasn't available in iTunes you pretty
> much couldn't have it.
Oh, trust me, there is a thriving 3rd party software scene for the iPhone (those that are "jailbroken"). I've got an NES emulator, a virtual piano, a beat-box, a VNC client - so I can log into my computer at home, a terminal (with SSH, etc), you name it.
I think Apple figured out at some point that had they not opened it up officially, they weren't going to get a cut and would lose control over it.
> That being said... it's not necessarily
> unlocked. Looks like they are limiting
> developers and taking a hefty chunk of the
> profit if the developers decide to charge for
> their product
As a matter of principle this pisses me off (Imagine if the Mac were like this? There's no legitimate reason why the iPhone shouldn't be similar), but as a matter of practicality it won't make a difference.
I had to wait half the day just so that Apple's site would stop crashing on me long enough so I could start my download.
Developers are rushing to get in on this, and I expect smaller Mac developers are going to as well (the API is basically just stripped down Cocoa, so Mac devs have it easy).
I'll keep my jailbroken iPhone so that Apple isn't my gate-keeper, but in all reality they stand to make a ton of cash from this in the long run.
- Jeff
Posted by: Jeff at March 7, 2008 12:39 AM
On the web site where I got my last phone, they have unlocked iphones. If I had the money, I'd think about getting one.
Posted by: Austin at March 12, 2008 12:57 PM