push email on an iPhone – come on gmail ;)

As per my previous post, my posts are out of whack as I am behind on them. To summarise one of them.. I got an iPhone and it is the best convergence device I have ever had. It really does replace my mp3 player,PDA and phone.

One of the major reasons for buying the iPhone was its ability to push my work email out to me immediately (using our Microsoft Exchange servers). It works great (though it does not sync my Outlook tasks for some reason?!). One of the issues I had when I used this push email functionality on my Windows Mobile phone was how it worked with my personal email/calendar/contacts. I could use Windows Live’s services but it is slow, clunky and therefore impossible to really use productively. So I had to make do combining my work and personal information and using the mobile browser for email.

On the iPhone, Apple have released MobileMe to provide a solution to this. It looks like an interesting solution which allows me to maintain a separate personal and work contact list and have upto date email/contacts/calendars on the move for my personal stuff. Despite the marketing speak it is not push ala Microsoft Exchange but pulling contacts and the calendar every minute so it is so near instantaneous – not that that really matters to most people (there are mutterings about email being pull as well but I can’t confirm that – anyone know what the reality is on this?). Anyhow, the real problem for me is that it requires me to use a mobileme email account (someone@me.com). I use my own personal domain for emails running on Google’s Apps so switching accounts really isn’t an option. Maybe one day they will offer a similar service to Google. Not sure it would be a priority for them.

There is push email on Yahoo but again similar to MobileMe, I have to use their email addresses and the personal contact list merges with your work one. I’m not sure if thats better or worse than having it separate. I suppose the most important thing is that it does not sync back to my work computer. There does not seem to be any sort of calendar sync.

So as I am already using Google, the obvious solution would be Gmail push on the iPhone. Google released push email on Helio (a US mobile carrier) a while back but there is currently nothing for the iPhone, so right now I am stuck either syncing via IMAP or using my mobile browser. Of course that also means no personal contacts list integrated with the phone or a calendar. It looks like there is possible a timeline to this happening though it isn’t till September at least. I wonder though if it will allow a separate personal contact list or will Apple keep that functionality to itself.

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O2 just announced the tarrifs for the Apple iPhone and it is pretty stunning – £99 for the 8GB version on a £30/month tarrif, free on the £45/month one. It is on an 18 month contract BUT people who are already on an 18 month contract with the old iPhone CAN upgrade – it looks like you just extend the contract by a further 18 months. That means that unlike other 18 month contracts on mobile networks, the 18 months only ties you to the provider – you will still be able to upgrade to the latest and greatest Apple phone.

With Microsoft’s phones looking dated already and updated versions that are just glossy front ends (the backend OS is not due to be upgraded till next year) – Apple look to be wanting to take market share away from Microsoft and possibly gain a strong foothold in the business arena (the new phone supports Exchange email which is used by a large number of companies). This of course could then in turn lead to even greater uptake in Apple Macs. Right now the markets dont think so (shares were down 4% at one point yesterday) but I think this is an interesting move by Apple.

Apple finally caught me.. all my cynicism was used up on the launch of iPhone last time.. now they have gone and added the things I wanted to the new version.

So even I was trying to keep up to date on what was going on at the Apple WWDC – enough info had been leaked that I knew this device was going to be a phone worth having (and you have no idea how much it pains me to say it). Everyone knew Twitter was going down at some point and there were numerous posts on friendfeed saying it did – it certainly slowed down early on and I saw features being switched off all over the place. In the end I stopped using Twitter so I only know from other peoples’ comments that it did go down. I always check Techcrunch and even that went down for a little while.. the one site that seemed to stay up was FriendFeed and that’s where a lot of commentary was being done. Could this be the turning point against Twitter?

Now for FriendFeed to add Twitterlike functionality or maybe people could use services like Pownce/Jaiku etc and bring them all together inside FriendFeed.

Oh and the Friendfeed Room feature was a godsend.

much hilarity

I read this post on Scobleizer and agreed wholeheatedly with him why Apple have a great brand. I felt that they knew how they could connect with their audience. The idea to remember Rosa Parks on their website was sound. But..

I just read comments on Mini-AOL’s blog about the same topic. The question raised was “is it right to use her image with a company logo?” It’s a very good question. I went back to Apple’s website and had another look at the image. Sure enough there is the Apple logo and “think different” underneath, which I saw before but never really thought too much about – why should I? it is an image in memory of Rosa Parks – that was the main message. Apple’s logo and tagline is subtle.

If that poster had been used on a billboard somewhere I might have thought the same thing as Mini-AOL right off the bat. That of course for me is the problem. I think Apple did go too far “over the line” in this case. The line is of course blurry, but I think it would have been better to just show the image in memory of Rosa Parks – most people would have still have got the subtle connection to Apple’s brand – but at least the non-cynical could say that they were doing it to remember an important person in America’s history. I am not certain you could argue that with apple’s logo and tagline on it.

[UPDATE] There is a lesson to be learnt here – obtain all the facts before criticizing (or praising!) somebody. I found out over the weekend that Apple had previously run that specific poster in an advertising campaign – for me this changes things – they no longer took a poster of Rosa Parks and added their logo and tag.