iPhone 2.0 Makes a Virtue out of Lockdown Vice

Back in March, when Apple unveiled the details of its eventual iPhone 2.0 upgrade, I opined that the firm was on its way to seizing a slice of an enterprise smart-phone market in which the BlackBerry and the Treo currently reign. Now that I've tested the 2.0 firmware myself, I do still believe that the iPhone will become a popular enterprise device.

However, as with all Apple products, embracing the iPhone means relinquishing to The Steve some of the control and flexibility that organizations are accustomed to expect. Treos and BlackBerry devices come with carrier and device options that mirror the diversity of the PC market, standing in contrast to the locked-down, single-source rigidity that marks the Mac side of the market.

What makes iPhone 2.0 different than the Mac, however, is that while Macs offer up more or less the same functionality as do PCs, only wrapped in a sort of leather bucket seats veneer, the new iPhone balances its locked-down aspects with something unique and worthwhile: the App Store--a software management framework that's absent not just from Treo and BlackBerry devices, but from Macs and Windows PCs as well...

Exchange Interop for the Rest of Us

Apple's announcement yesterday that it plans to add support for Microsoft's Exchange groupware server on iPhone and iPod Touch devices has gotten me thinking about Exchange support (or lack thereof) on other platforms, such as Linux and, strangely enough, Apple's own OS X. It's possible now to link up pretty much any mail client on any platform with Exchange via IMAP, but in order to access all the non-mail data that makes Exchange worthwhile, you need to find another route.

iPhone Goes Enterprise, Treos and BlackBerrys Go Away?

Come this June, in enterprises across the country, I expect that Treos will begin to wither in the eyes of one-time loyalists, and that erstwhile thumb-keyboard addicts will start to judge their BlackBerrys to be significantly sourer. That's because June is the month in which Apple has promised to ship an enterprise and third-party application embracing the 2.0 version of the firmware that drives its popular but so-far solidly consumer-focused iPhone and iPod Touch devices.

Apple's iPhone will be far from the first mobile device to offer the enterprise connectivity and management features that Steve Jobs announced today. However, from a hardware perspective, the iPhone and the iPod Touch are, by far, the most impressive mobile devices I've ever laid hands on...

Macbook Air: Weighing the Pros and Cons

Apple's subnotebook wunder-machine is nigh. I've been waiting for an ultralight Web and writing machine for a long time now. So, should I run out and pant outside my local Apple store until the first units arrive?

Based on the information available right now, let's weigh the pros and cons...

Root My iPhone

I received an iPod Touch for Christmas, and before I loaded it up any MP3s or set a single Safari bookmark, I "jailbroke" the device, thereby opening it to all sorts of handy community-supplied applications, including, as Ryan Naraine is reporting today, potentially malicious code:

Security Watch - Apple - Malicious iPhone (Prank) Trojan is Eye-Opener According to warnings from two different anti-virus vendors, a malicious iPhone software package circulating on the Web could cause legitimate third-party applications to be nuked if the Trojan is uninstalled from iPhones.

Even though the trojan that Ryan wrote about wasn't all that malicious--an application that messes with its neighbors upon uninstall sounds more like shoddy packaging than naughty pranksterism--the fact is that a jailbroken iPhone or iPod Touch is a malware outbreak waiting to happen.

The screenshot to the right says it all: When you're running anything on an iPhone, you've doing it as the superuser. I imagine that when Apple decides officially to open their superfly devices to third party applications, they'll rectify the run-as-root situation, since full-sized OS X handles this pretty well.

In addition, I'd like to see the software development community members whose apps populate the Linux-like Installer.app repositories on my iPod Touch implement a code signing framework like the ones that Ubuntu, Red Hat and others provide. You may not be able to tell for sure if the app you're installing will do what it's supposed to do, but at least you can feel confident about where it came from.

eWEEK Labs' mobile and wireless expert, Andrew Garcia, was too sensible to leave his iPhone jailbroken, but I plan to keep my iPod Touch hacked. Without third party apps, the Touch is a slick MP3 player with a Web browser, but with the app doors open, it's the best handheld computer I've ever used.

Crossing My Fingers for an Insanely Great Macworld 2008

This week, the Macworld Conference and Expo returns to San Francisco, and, for the first time since the 2002 show in which Apple's pre-show boast of, "Beyond the rumor sites. Way beyond" turned out to refer to a flat-panel iMac, I'm feeling excited about the announcements that the Black Mock-Turtlenecked One might hand down in his annual Expo keynote.

It's not that I expect Apple to confirm my June 2005 prediction that the firm would unbind OS X from Apple-only hardware and take on Microsoft in earnest in the client and server operating system space.

While such an announcement would certainly be exciting, it seems that Apple's 2007 iPhone success has confirmed the belief of Steve and Co. that as long your hardware is sufficiently insanely great, you don't have to play by the same rules as rest of the computer OEM crowd.

I haven't thought in the past--and I still don't--that the iMacs and PowerBooks and Xserves that have headlined previous Macworld Exposwere great enough to prompt individuals and organizations to surrender the privilege of choosing from a variety of vendors in order to purchase their desktops, notebooks and servers.

After watching Apple succeed at coaxing some actual innovation out of the molasses-slow cell phone industry last year, and after receiving one of my all-time favorite Christmas presents last month--a slim, shiny iPod Touch--I'm ready to believe that Apple is capable of shaking up the client OS world on its own terms...

eWEEK Labs Walk-Through: Apple Mac OS X Leopard

Apple's newest Mac OS X revision has hit the streets, boasting an advertised 300 new features. Is the latest big cat out of Cupertino worthy of Mac users' upgrade dollars, and should Windows and Linux users consider migrating?

eWEEK Labs' tests have just begun, but based on my first few hours with Leopard, the new OS shows promise.

Check out this Apple OS X Leopard Walkthrough for a peek at Leopard...

Microsoft Can Learn from Its Big Mac Sales

My Microsoft Watch colleague Joe Wilcox is reporting today on some rather eye-catching Apple/Microsoft numbers:

"Here's a big number: 20 percent of Microsoft Office's U.S retail sales are the Mac version, according to NPD. Here's another: Mac users account for 10 percent of retail Windows Vista Business and Ultimate sales."

If OS X, with its estimated 5 percent market share, can account for 20 percent of Office's retail sales, and if a significant share of Vista purchases are going to users who wish to run the OS simply as a virtualized application layer, it's worth asking how many dollars Microsoft is leaving on the table by limiting its cross-platform efforts.