Microsoft Employees Love Their iPhones 366
portscan writes "There is an entertaining and telling article in the Wall Street Journal about iPhone use by Microsoft employees. Apparently, despite it being frowned upon by senior management, iPhone use is rampant among the Redmond rank and file. The head of Microsoft's mobile division tried to explain it away as employees wanting 'to better understand the competition,' although few believe this. Nowhere does the article mention attempts by the company to understand why the iPhone is more attractive to much of Microsoft's tech-savvy workforce than the company's own products."
Same thing with iPods (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I loves and hateses my Preciousss (Score:2, Informative)
AT&T didn't block VoIP over 3G. They told Apple to disallow VoIP apps over the 3G network.
The iPod Touch runs the same software with no restrictions.
Re:I loves and hateses my Preciousss (Score:4, Informative)
That was common with Verizon, but not so much anymore. My Droid does not have any features noticeably locked, and I'd easily argue that it's a much more open platform than the iPhone. Better? Debatable. But certainly more open.
Re:I loves and hateses my Preciousss (Score:3, Informative)
You're pretty clearly out to get Apple here, even though every other phone manufacturer does the same thing. If a US carrier tells them to disable a feature or they won't carry the phone, they do it. Apple is sadly no different.
But clearly, nothing is going to dissuade you from your anti-Apple rant.
The google route. (Score:5, Informative)
Why should they even need to?
I cant fathom why you would think that such a thing is logically a good thing to do.
The problem Apple has is not that it restricts the app store, that is fine as it is Apple's app store. The problem is that Apple restricts the iphone to the app store and the app store only.
Google's way around this was to add an option into Android that permitted the installation of programs from anonymous sources and leave this option disabled by default. Therefore if you liked the kind of walled garden security that application restriction provides then you can have it, but if you wanted freedom it was three clicks away. But this kind of approach requires device level security, which the iphone has little to none of.
Re:I loves and hateses my Preciousss (Score:3, Informative)
Hmm you guys in the US got shafted by having one exclusive carrier for the iPhone. Here you buy it unlocked and can use it on any network. And most allow you to tether it and use whatever apps (incl. VoIP) you want on it, out of the box.
Sad that the iPhone is more crippled in its ~home~ market than anywhere else. I couldn't stand owning a network-locked phone.
Re:I loves and hateses my Preciousss (Score:3, Informative)
Either way, obviously iPhones would be way better if Apple didn't restrict development and distribution of 3rd party apps.
I think there's two reasons why this isn't happening:
- I don't think the network providers like the idea, as it might lead to trojans spamming their network.
- Apple certainly likes to have control, as they have realized that the most important thing they own is their brand, and they are protecting their image at any cost.*
*) Take for example the Rickrolling that happened on jailbroken phones a few months ago. If you read most media reporting on it, the detail that it could only happen to jailbroken phones got lost. It's the kind of news that Apple is desperately trying to avoid and the reason why they keep a lid on the store and fight jailbreaking.
Linux ACPI support... no thanks to Microsoft. (Score:4, Informative)
Linux ACPI support would probably be even better than it is now were it not for Microsoft.
http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=2010011422570951 [groklaw.net]
Re:I loves and hateses my Preciousss (Score:3, Informative)
you can view Apple's comprehensive app store blacklist at https://iphone-services.apple.com/clbl/unauthorizedApps [apple.com]
Observations on the bus (Score:2, Informative)
I commute between Seattle and Redmond on the #545 bus used mostly by Microsoft employees and contractors. Often I notice that most of the passengers are using their cell phones during the bus ride. My guess is that looking around the bus gives me a pretty good sense of what phones are popular on the MS campus. Yes, many many iPhones. More iPhones than Windows Mobile phones. I notice some people have both a Windows Mobile phone and an iPhone. I am starting the see lots of Android phones however. It will be interesting to see what happens when Windows Mobile 7 comes out.
Of course there is lots of non-MS software which is used extensively at Microsoft. Labview, Matlab, and JMP are all used a great deal because there are no real MS equivalents. I've never noticed any non-Office productivity suites being used by my coworkers, but that is probably because Office works well enough, and the latest version is always available for employees.
Re:I loves and hateses my Preciousss (Score:3, Informative)
I think it's well understood that Apple is imposing the restriction on sources of apps to the App Store alone, and the disk mode restriction is Apple's alone, as that is irrelevant to the carriers. The objection to AT&T was their unilateral imposition of a limitation on VoIP software causing that limitation to be imposed on the rest of the world by fiat, just because of the carrier in the home market.
I'm under no illusion that Apple is all saintly in this matter - the iPad's limitations clearly demonstrate Apple's increasing desire to control the whole user space. That's a good thing in some minds, and unsurprising in the non-software part of the consumer electronics industry. In many ways, it's a question of defining where freely tinkerable computing ends and a restricted consumer product begins, and it's something yet to be defined.
Re:Jailbreaking fixes many of the iPhone's limitat (Score:3, Informative)
Why in the world would you want to run GMail over activesync? IMAP with idle works great for my gmail account.
Um, because ActiveSync uses real push (via formatted SMS notifications) and IMAP IDLE just requires a constant data connection chewing your battery?
I don't own an iPhone; I thought that was just common knowledge (how EAS worked).
Death to Microsoft...etc .. ad nauseum (Score:1, Informative)
I love WM as a platform. Wouldn't trade it for any other mobile OS currently in existance although many of the others are quite good.
My favorites; Internet connection sharing, no rooting necessary (Ahmm..Andriod if you hope to use anything other than their crappy java implementation), no restrictions on what you can do with your own device and the battery is replacable (Ahmm IPhone). WinCE has a rtos kernel, excellent voice recognition (MUCH better than Andriods), full networking stack VPNs...etc Full BT stack (Some std profiles are STILL missing on the iphone and many Andriod profiles are still buggy) There are a bazillion UI and today screen applets - you get to decide exactly how your device looks. My phone doesn't crash, isn't slow, runs for several days between charges and does not get in my way. Suspect many of the people making empty statements about the WM platform actually have never used it or know very little about it.
Re:I loves and hateses my Preciousss (Score:3, Informative)
* want your apps to be able to download, save and play back locally-stored media
"3.3.13 If Your Application includes or will include any other content, You must either own all such content or have permission from the content owner t use it in Your Application."
* want to write free (as in speech) software
"3.3.16 If Your Application includes any FOSS, You agree to comply with all applicable FOSS licensing terms. You also agree not to use any FOSS in the development of Your Application in such a way that would cause the non-FOSS portions of the Apple Software to be subject to any FOSS licensing terms or obligations."
The others are correct, though.
Re:Eh no? (Score:2, Informative)
Since MS employees are highly likely to get a discount on MS products it is extremely telling that it can't even sell its own dog food to its own employees.
Of what few discounts there are, one would do better buying elsewhere. Used to work there years ago, and of the friends I know that still work there I'm hard pressed to think of one that doesn't have an iPhone.
It just doesn't send the right message. You wouldn't think it normal if the vast majority of MS employees used Mac's would you?
Ironically, MSFT employees can get a decent discount on Macs through the internal discount program.