What iOS 4 Does (and Doesn't Do) For Business 253
snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Galen Gruman investigates what businesses can expect from Apple's new iOS 4. Multitasking, the biggest new capability, is for now simply a promise, as apps will need to be retrofitted to make use of the capability. The other big new capability for IT, a set of APIs that allow BlackBerry-like management of the iPhone, such as auditing of policies and apps, over-the-air provisioning of apps without iTunes, and over-the-air configuration and policy management, also remains in the realm of promise, as the various mobile management tools that have been reworked to take advantage of the new iOS 4 capabilities won't be available until July or later. And despite the fact that email works more as it does on the desktop, iOS 4 still fails to deliver several email capabilities key to business users, including zipped attachment management, junk mail filtering, message rules, and message flagging."
Re:The mac (Score:5, Funny)
Poor Apple (Score:5, Funny)
They've only sold a few tens of millions of those things so far, and their new model took five whole hours to sell 600k units to regular customers, sight unseen. They'd better get their act together and start reaching out to the enterprise or that thing's gonna tank and take them with it.
Re:Email capabilities (Score:0, Funny)
When all you have is a hammer...
Considering that I don't work for your company, I'd say "$0" is a pretty low bar for you to overcome.
Furthermore, even if we did work at the same company, by definition, my job is not to "bring money" into the company and everything I do would probably go right towards "expenses". On the other hand, I'd be willing to bet that my work would reduce annual costs at least on par with your generated revenue.
First thing on my list: Restrict all employees to a single company phone.
Re:As a former Blackberry user... (Score:1, Funny)
Some appointments are life-threatening if you miss them: Pick up the kids, tax audit, anniversary...
Luckily 2 of those things aren't anything a Slashdotter ever has to worry about.
Re:You're absolutely clueless, aren't you? (Score:3, Funny)
Please give me the name of the company you work for, as well as the address of the location you're at. I want to make sure I never deal with them.
I get a sense the feeling would be mutual and appreciated.
He probably has four separate phones because he has four separate phone numbers, and needs to be able to at least accept voicemail messages if more than one of his major clients call at the same time.
I assume he does not have four separate computers to deal with four clients - so why does he have four phones? There is no reason one phone cannot get calls for four numbers, each with separate voice-mail or even with one voicemail box with separate greetings. I get a feeling the guy is such an ass to his IT guys, they are probably betting on how much torture they can put the poor idiot through ("I bet we can get him to carry three phone...." "NO, how about four Phones!!!")
As a mere IT peon, you probably don't understand how sales work, or how salespeople perform their jobs. It's not unusual to see talented salespeople talking to two or three separate people at once, while organizing particularly large or complex sales. They actually do need to use several separate phones while they work. Your idiotic "4 accounts 1 phone" idea fails completely.
Again, nothing that can't be handled easily with a single phone - ever hear of hold or conferencing? I think they had those back in the seventies... Perhaps you should make nice with your IT folks so that you can move into the current century.
Now, I totally appreciate a good sales person, I know a couple, but unfortunately they are such a tiny fraction of the sales force. Most of the sales are ignorant idiots with a god complex who think that four phones would make up for the fact that they are not actually paying attention to anyone around them including their clients (hint, it does not matter if you have a dedicated line for your client if you actually LISTEN to your client). And so what we deal with are sales people only think they are great, and have the need to actively put down everyone else so that they do not ruin their self-delusion. I mean, just because you close sales does not make you a good sales person - most companies who got my business, got it in spite of their sales staff -- not because of them. And thus the IT stuff makes them wear four phones and be happy with it and rest of the world makes fun of them.
In all fairness, there are plenty of idiots in IT too, so it could be that they don't know any better.
-Em
Re:Email capabilities (Score:3, Funny)
If four different email views are critical to your operation, it sounds to me like your IT staff are the ones bringing in the money.
Re:The mac (Score:2, Funny)
Wow, you're out of date. It's "African-American Berry".
Gotta love when editors get a bit choppy on that sort of thing. Like the add copy I saw for an "African-American Corvette" in the paper a few years back. (It was a car. It happened to be painted *black*. That makes it a black Corvette, not an African-American one.)
Or the article about a local flower show where the references to "pansies" (a flower) was replaced with "homosexuals" to avoid being deemed insensitive.