Rage Against iPhone 4

This week was the official release of the Apple iPhone 4. While I await the delivery of my own device, I've been watching the media storm unfold. Having sold 1.5 million units on the first day of release, it follows that there are a lot of people who are undoubtedly quite happy. However, we are hearing a lot about the various launch problems.

Apparently, the redesigned and highly touted antenna isn't quite the magic bullet everyone was assuming it would be. And that fancy new screen has some issues of its own. The most interesting things that I've seen though are the folks who are really intent on destroying the newest gadgets. So without further ado, I give you:

Shooting the iPhone 4

Blending the iPhone 4

Dropping the iPhone 4

Is IT Dead?

Folks just can't seem to let go of this idea that IT is dying or dead. "Write it off," they say, "don't tell your kids to go into IT." This recent opinion article in ComputerWorld cites the recently announced layoff of 9,000 HP workers as some sort of proof.

Well, I just don't buy it. It is simply too easy of an argument to claim the death of this or that. What everyone seems to be forgetting is that the IT industry is primarily about technology -- and that is in constant flux. If HP were to have laid off all of it's Novell engineers when that great empire fell, would we be having the same conversation? Every technology has it's day, but unlike the article, I argue that the mission of IT has not and should never change. IT has, as its core mission, the objective of providing IT services to enable the business to achieve its solutions.

There is no to me difference whether those solutions exist within the walls of the company or not. IT has managed vendors, outsourcing and relationships for decades. When's the last time a company hosted publicly facing stuff out of a branch office by choice? Instead that's all moved to (typically) a third-party data center. Most enterprises don't operate their own conference calling center either, preferring to have a dedicated enterprise or voice carrier do it.

This idea of the "cloud" is all the same idea, just wrapped into another term. I agree that the network has become the world in which we live. Whether you call that the cloud or not is up to your own semantic distinctions. But, nonetheless, the cloud will not live on its own, will not integrate by itself and applications will not magically appear to leverage these things. All of this will still require dedicated, intelligent IT staff. They will just need different technology skill sets. 

And that is nothing new.

Office 2010 - Not So Fast

I've recently spent some time with Office 2010. Because I have an MSDN account, I usually get access to a lot of stuff from Microsoft prior to public release. I think the actual release date is tomorrow, June 15th.

Today, June 14th, I uninstalled it.

Several of my issues were rather minor. I felt that the file ribbon was a bit freakish in all the '10 apps. It is a bright and overly vivid green. This is a petty complaint, but distracting nonetheless when you are trying to get work done.

Outlook 2010 also incorporated the ribbon approach to the user interface. That was no problem. But the UI has become a box, with a colored "borders" around the entire application. This leaves white space in the middle and the email content there. It's like you are looking through a whole in the wall. Again, it's not a very welcome UI for something you tend to work with all day.

The real kicker though became the fact that the combination of Outlook and Excel suddenly decided that they couldn't open Excel files from the 97 to 2000 era. That certainly became an issue for me - within hours. I don't recall when it started happening or if it always was, but that just made it a no go.

So I uninstalled it and decided to go back to 2007. That was also apparently a mistake. Outlook 2010 did not uninstall or remove the Mail setup it had created on installation. When I went to install Outlook 2007, it could not handle the fact that Outlook 2010 (jealous anyone?) had been there and apparently Windows still only supports one Exchange account.

The solution to that at least was a registry change. You'd think in this day and age, what with Windows 7 and so forth that we wouldn't still be stuck using regedit. Maybe that'll be in the next version.

In the meantime, if you are running 2007 I recommend you stick. You'll do just fine. I suspect folks looking at Sharepoint 2010 would find some benefit, but others not so much. I'll wait for the next version at this point.

iPhone 4.0 Sucks

At least, that's what a variety of analysts are saying - pointing out various imagined slights against technology or themselves from the announcement last week. I'm not really on board with this sentiment for a variety of reasons.

• AT&T vs Verizon. I don't care much about this issue - though apparently Verizon users do. I am probably in a minority of cell phone users who both carry a personal and professional cell phone and carry one from Verizon and AT&T. In my area, there is little that distinguish the two. Try driving through the canyons in SoCal and see if you can hold a call. The last time I was on a conference call on a drive to the airport through Topanga Canyon/PCH/10 I lost signal 3 times with Verizon. Once was even on the 10. Long story short, you are going to have problems with any particular carrier in specific areas.
• Too small of a screen. Folks - you do realize this is supposed to be a phone right? I would really prefer that this be able to fit in my pocket and not require a backpack.
• The data caps, well, I've talked about that before. For heavy applications such as streaming video, I still think WiFi is the only practical solution until the 4G standard is approved and widely available - think a decade or so.
• Speaking of... No 4G. Ok, let's get this straight. Regardless of all the marketing by Sprint and others, there is no 4G standard. This is neither in AT&T or Apple's hands.
• Not enough storage. This is probably one area, I might agree. If I were a iPhone user who needed to walk around with a ton of music or video this one would be a problem. However, I'm not. I have my iPad for video and I don't take my whole library with me. I just take playlists. The only way this might impact me is that since the phone now records HD video, it might fill up the storage pretty fast. That's a point where you would need more storage and badly.
• Facetime is only on WiFi. I can see the point here, but once again let's think about this. How often have you had a seamless video chat session at home, over a fast Internet connection? I'll answer that. Never. Now, try to take that onto what are now straining 3G networks and it would be useless. This is actually a good call right now and since it's a software setting can always be changed in the future.

Now, here's why I think the device is going to do just fine in the marketplace.

• The price is excellent. To bring out this product at a price as low as $199 is pretty darn good.
• The speed is going to be awesome. This is the same chip from the iPad and the 'Pad is incredible snappy with applications, video, etc. Time is just about the only thing you can't make more of. This gives you something back. 
• High Def video. That's pretty sweet. This is already on top of a really sharp looking screen.
• The gyroscope. Just wait until the games come out for this version of the phone. It's going to be like a Wii in the palm of your hand. 
• And one last small thing. Glass front and back. I can't tell you how scratched the back of my iPhone 3G is. I can tell you that the front has not one - and I don't use any kind of case. This is going to make this unit a lot more durable.

Teach What, But AlsoTeach Why

The other day, I spent some time with a couple of new sales folks in my company. I was reviewing one of our products called WebFSC as we're starting a new campaign around it. I didn't have a plan for what to cover, I wanted to see how much they new about it. They had gone through some training and review already.

So when I asked them to tell me about it, they dutifully regurgitated a description of the key features that it had and how a customer might use it. And that was pretty good. Not all sales folks even take that step of knowing what or how, rather relying on improvisation.

Unfortunately, what I didn't hear was "why." Why a customer needs this product and why it is valuable. Immediately that is where I took the discussion. I reviewed very little of the product, in fact, over the course of the hour. But, what I was able to provide was context about the customer, the industry and the reality of the marketplace. I was able to help them understand why this product is important to customers.

As a result, they are now better equipped to help the customer how they can use the product to improve productivity and why they should. At the end of the day, mechanics are one thing. Helping a customer to understand the value in a solution is the real trick.

I'm Not Scared of Data Caps

There's been a lot of discussion in the industry about AT&T's move to change the iPhone data plans from unlimited to capped. I thought this was rather funny, because I suspect that I lot of folks complaining about this also complained about the fact that the only plan available on launch with the iPhone was unlimited.

It's almost a cinch that I'll be getting the new iPhone 4 as my 2 year old model is in near-dire need of replacement. While it's hard to say how much data I will use on the new phone, it turns out it's pretty easy to find out how much I'm using on my current phone.

I logged on to my AT&T account and saw that I haven't broken the 200MB mark so far this year. I can save myself $15/month cash and move down to the DataPlus plan when I get the new phone. 

Of course, tethering my iPhone to a computer and using that for Internet access would be nice. But that would require the DataPlus Pro plan at $25/mo plus another $20 for tethering. Additionally, I don't actually own a personal laptop and I already have tethering on my Blackberry for work purposes. 

But, here's a revenue opportynity for you AT&T. I wouldn't buy tethering for a computer, but I would buy tethering for use with my WiFi iPad. And, I'm pretty sure that if I did, I'd be using 2GB or more per month. The iPad is a device that is so good for streaming video and browsing the web that I bet that iPad users, use way more data that iPhone users. 

As of right now, Apple is saying that's not an option, unless of course you are into Jail-breaking. I suspect that's to protect the sales of the iPad 3G. Here's hoping when they roll out iPhone OS 4.0 to the iPad in fall that they'll change their mind.