iPhone OS 3.1 Breaks Exchange Connectivity

eriq — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 21:05:00 GMT

CIO.com broke a story last week about issues relating to Exchange connectivity with the iPhone 3.1 OS update. Essentially, older iPhone models will lose their ability to connect with Exchange 2007 when they install the iPhone OS 3.1 update, the current iPhone models will work fine. According to the Apple KB on this issue, the iPhone 3GS supports device encryption, while the earlier iPhone models do not, and their recommendation is to have the Exchange administrator change the mailbox security policy to stop requiring device encryption.

Right now, there is no good solution other than not updating to iPhone OS 3.1 on older phones if Exchange 2007 (i.e., SBS 2008) is in the mix. While I'm hoping that Apple will do the right thing and figure out how to support device encryption on the older iPhone OS models, the other options of disabling device encryption (*shudder*) or updating the iPhone hardware to the 3GS model (*cough*) aren't necessarily viable.

If you have customers who are running older iPhones against Exchange 2007, please get the word out that they need to hold off on the iPhone OS 3.1 update until there is a better solution for the Exchange connectivity issue.

On Kindle

eriq — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 06:47:00 GMT

OK, so no sooner than I get my previous post online, I receive notice that Amazon has released a Kindle app [iTunes link] for the iPhone. So if you want to read SBS 2008 Unleashed in Kindle format on your iPhone, well, now you can!

On Two Weeks with the iPhone

eriq — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 00:48:02 GMT

Last week, my eOnCall episode covered my first week with the iPhone. OK, yeah, I cheated a little bit because I recorded the episode on Wednesday, when I hadn't really used it for more than about 4 days, but who's counting. It made for interesting Internet Radio at least. So I thought it was time to do a little deeper analysis of my life with the iPhone thus far for the blog, for those who read this and don't listen to eOnCall.

When I decided in March that I was going to get the iPhone 3G (after Exchange support was announced for iPhone 2.0), I took a hard look at how I was using my existing Windows Mobile device and what features I could live without, if need be. Once I developed my list, and reviewed what should and might not be supported on the iPhone, I determined that the benefits still outweighed the odds, and since I had so many clients who were going to want me to support their iPhones, I knew I would be getting it shortly after the product released.

The fates were not in my favor on that last bit, however. A few weeks before the July 11 iPhone release date was announced, I booked a flight to Redmond for a work project at Microsoft, leaving on July 13. If I was going to have any semblance of support for my customers who were planning on getting the device that weekend, I knew I'd have to wait in line on Friday or Saturday, and given that there would likely be some problems that would need to be addressed the day after I got the unit, I decided it would have to be Friday.

I got up early Friday morning and made my way to my local AT&T store, a store that I had already checked with earlier in the week to ensure that they were on the list of stores that would be getting the iPhone. In my haste (and sleepless state) I neglected to eat breakfast before leaving, so I stopped at Sonic on the way to the store. When I arrived at the store, the line wasn't terribly long, but I got out my folding chair and parked myself at the end of the line. About 15 minutes after I arrived, and AT&T employee came through and was counting the customers in line. About 10 people in front of me, he stopped and started talking to them. Sure enough, they received 80 phones, and cut the line off at 75 people. I didn't make the cut. I only marginally wished that I hadn't stopped for breakfast at that point. Instead, I headed to the office, and started trying to reach the local Apple stores by phone to see if they were going to have enough stock for me to drive the hour to the store locations and wait in line.

I called the Willow Bend store, and not only did they assure me that they would have plenty of iPhones, they also said that the wait was about 2.5-3 hours. An hour drive time later, I found myself in line with the rest of the idiots.

Nine hours later, I made it into the store. That is where the 3 hour activation nightmare started. Yes, your math is correct. 12 hours in the Willow Bend mall to spend $300 on a phone. I left at 11pm to make my way home. I not only missed a bunch of billable work, but I also missed margarita night at Sweetwater. Five minutes after leaving the store, however, I had the phone configured to sync with my Exchange server, which was the #1 reason I wanted to get the phone, and seeing how easily that mission was accomplished, I was able to get some sleep that night, knowing that I'd be able to walk my clients through that setup easily.

What I didn't have was my old cell phone number active on the phone. That took a call to AT&T Saturday morning to get worked out, and even at the end of that call, it wasn't completely working. I was able to make outbound calls, and I could send and receive text messages, but I could not receive calls. All inbound calls continued to go to my Verizon voice mail. They did advise that it could take 24 hours to complete the switch, so I prayed for no emergency support calls on the weekend and went on my way to get ready for Redmond.

Sunday I still didn't have inbound calls, which made it difficult to take a call from a customer with a dead server, but fortunately my normal phone system, and my wife, took care of that while I was jetting over the western US. When I landed in Seattle, I attempted to call AT&T, but their service centers were closed on Sunday. Great.

Cutting to the chase, the phone got switched over on Monday and started working as expected. Now it was time to really put the device through its paces. In my spare time, however. And that basically brings us to today.

So what follows are the tasks I was using my Windows Mobile phone for and how I've adapted those tasks to the iPhone. And my take on how successful the transition has been.

E-mail

This is my #1 priority for a cell phone, besides making and receiving calls. Given that cell phone reliability and call quality really hasn't changed in 10+ years, I'm not even looking at that aspect of the iPhone, other than it works about like any other AT&T phone. It is what it is. But e-mail was key.

Windows Mobile: I had native Exchange ActiveSync on my device, and several folders that I read on the phone. I have dozens of mail folders in Exchange, but I only wanted to read a few of them on the phone. Sending e-mail was important, too, but my primary use was reading.

iPhone: Exchange sync just works. My Inbox (I almost typed iNbox, how silly) gets updated immediately when I get new mail, and I'm able to send e-mail easily. I have access to all of my mail folders, but the iPhone only syncs those when I open them, so if I want to read from some of my more voluminous mailing lists (which are automatically sorted into folders by Exchange), I can, and I don't have to worry about the phone syncing every time a message comes into one of those folders. That feature alone should save some battery (more on that later).

I don't like that I'm forced to read mail in the "newest on top" format, and there is no option for how to sort mail on the iPhone. I'm a "new messages on bottom" reader, and I'm really hoping that a future update will give me the option to read the way I'm used to. In the meantime, I'm adapting.

I also hate that the mail application shows EVERY folder in my mailbox, and there is no way to collapse folders and sub folders. There are only a few mail folders I really want to access on the iPhone, but they come at the bottom of the list, and it takes multiple pages scrolls to get to the parent folder where they're located. Again, hopefully an update will address some of this.

One thing I love about mail on the iPhone it that it's much easier to handle multiple e-mail accounts. I have several accounts that I can now follow on my phone, and I wasn't able to easily do that with my Windows mobile device.

But the last thing that drives me nuts about mail on the iPhone is that I have one, count it ONE, e-mail signature for outgoing messages, no matter how many accounts I am sending from. One signature, just not going to cut it.

Mileage tracking

Windows Mobile: The #2 task I used my Windows mobile phone for was keeping track of my car mileage in Pocket Excel for tax purposes. I had some nice formulas built into the spreadsheet to help calculate mileage, and at the end of the year, I'd sync that file to my PC, extract the data, and send it off to my accountant for processing. Easy, efficient.

iPhone: I have looked at a number of apps in the Apple Store, but have yet to find one that does what I want for mileage. Oh, there are several apps that help you track gas mileage, but nothing for travel mileage that gets as granular as I want. Right now I've reverted to pen and paper, but I'm hopeful that one of the developers I've contacted will add a module like what I've suggested. In the meantime, this is a big loss, but not a deal breaker.

Calendaring

Windows Mobile: In my business, it's key for me to have an accurate calendar with me at all times, and syncing my phone to Exchange is something I've grown really accustomed to. Windows Mobile handles this nicely, once you have all the DST patches in place everywhere.

iPhone: Ugh. Calendaring has a long way to go. Yes, the iPhone syncs all of my calendar appointments to the iPhone, but they all come over as REQUESTS, not as ACCEPTED appointments. So when the 15-minute reminder goes off, it's not a notification of a pending appointment, it's a "please confirm this request." If I click "Maybe" the appointment stays on the calendar and life goes on. This has become my default action. If I click "Accept," the appointment stays in my calendar, but whomever set the appointment gets ANOTHER "so and so accepted this appointment" e-mail in their box. 90% of the time, that's me, so when I accept an appointment I set for myself, I get an e-mail indicating that I accepted my own appointment.This has got to change in future releases.

I don't spend much time creating new appointments in my phone, much less for multiple people, but I do understand that there are issues with doing this on the iPhone. I don't want to belittle that fact, but it's not something I do regularly, so it's not been a major deal for me.

The issue that IS a major show-stopper for me, though I havent' had time to review it yet, is that calendar items are apparently not stored in GMT, but in local time. When I went to Redmond, a paltry two time zones away from my beloved Central, my 8AM CDT appointments showed up as 8am PDT appointments. The time on my phone synced with the local service providers, but apparently did not adjust for time zone. Fortunately, I had no appointments I was trying to keep while there, and I don't travel between time zones that often, but it was a major point of note and I will be looking into that as time permits.

Contacts

Windows Mobile: Syncing my contacts with exchange makes it very easy for me to have phone numbers for customers, family, and friends in my phone. And I can take pictures of those people with my phone and it gets updated to my Exchange server, so I can see their faces in e-mails in Outlook.

iPhone: the iPhone pulled my contacts down fine. I have heard there are issues with modifying contacts on the iPhone and those changes don't get sent back to the server. I have deleted contacts from my iPhone (former employees) only to have them NOT delete from Exchange, but actually get sent back down to my iPhone. Annoying? Yes. Cause for a revolt? No. Again, hopefully will get addressed in future updates.

Apparently the iPhone doesn't perform well with a large number of contacts, either. It takes a very, very long time to search through contacts in the Contacts app (which I never get into any more) or in the phone app.

Voice Dialing

Windows Mobile: I had to purchase a voice dialing software for my Windows Mobile phone a long time ago, and I got really used to using it, especially while driving. Made making calls a nice, simple process.

iPhone: No voice dial software. Sure, you can "voice dial" through AT&T's service, but you have to dial a number to get to where you can voice dial, and so what's the point? I've adapted to either not making outgoing calls while driving, or waiting until I'm stopped to find the contact and dial their number. Not happy about this, either.

GPS

Windows Mobile: I had purchased a bluetooth GPS receiver and Destinator software for my Windows Mobile device. It worked very well for tracking my current location and for turn-by-turn directions. I really needed to update my maps this year by purchasing the new version, but I held off on that given the GPS support built into the iPhone.

iPhone: yeah, it has GPS support, and it can do turn by turn directions, but it definitely works like a 1.0 product in that regard. Being able to search for local items in Google Maps is really nice, and much nicer than what I got with Destinator, because it's real-time querying the web. However, the maps always point North is Up on the iPhone, and that's taking some getting used to. Also, the GPS is prone to hanging up, and has been the main reason I've had to reboot the iPhone the few times I've had to reboot it. Some other apps make use of the GPS locator, and those get wonky, too, when the GPS drops off the planet. iPhone 2.0.1 supposedly has some GPS enhancements in it, so we'll see how well it works then.

Battery Life

Windows Mobile: Sucked. I was having to charge my battery every night. I know most of that was the constant syncing with Exchange, but it got old, quick. In some cases, I had to take a USB cable with me so I could charge the phone with my laptop, and a car charger was simply not an option.

iPhone: Yes, everyone hates that you can't change out the iPhone battery, including me. And I'm having to charge my iPhone every night, even after charging it during the day as well. And I'm not using a LOT of the iPhone features, either. I have WiFi and Bluetooth turned off, I've filtered more of my e-mail into sub folders out of the Inbox to keep Exchange sync to a minimum, and I don't listen to music on my iPhone at all. Car charger and secondary USB cables are an absolute must, and I have yet to get a car charger that actually works.

Internet Access

Windows Mobile: I hated Pocket IE on my Windows Mobile device. Access was slow, and the web was practically useless, so I hardly ever used it.

iPhone: Internet browsing ROCKS! Apple nailed the browser on this device. Granted, there are many web sites that use dynamic content that is not going to work on the iPhone, but I've already seen several sites redesign alternate pages specifically for the iPhone, and that's going to become more prevalent, I think. I look up lots of stuff on the web now that I never would on my WM device.

Applications

Windows Mobile: I had acquired several apps for my WM phone, including a couple of solitaire games. I tried several times to download apps directly to the phone from the Internet, but had very limited success. I resorted to primarily using only the native apps, save for GPS, voice dial, and games.

iPhone: I have yet to get through all of the apps in the Apple Store, not because I've not had time to look, but because there are so many. And more are added every day. I'll have a future post outlining my favorite iPhone apps at a later time, but the iPhone wins hands down in this category for me.

Twitter

Windows Mobile: I started updating my tweets via SMS messaging about 6 months ago, and it worked.

iPhone: I downloaded and started using Twitteriffic and won't look back. Not only can I easily update my tweets, I can see what's happening with the tweets of the people I'm following. Great app.

Touch Screen

Windows Mobile: I carried a HTC 6700 for the last six months and hated it. The touch screen was constantly going out of alignment to the point that I had to turn off my passcode to get into the phone because the screen just wouldn't respond in the correct locations. The 6700 was the worst implementation of touch screen in the HTC series of devices I've used for the last 4 years.

iPhone: Dude, it just rocks. The iPhone exemplifies what touch screen was meant to be, especially with the multi-touch capability. Other vendors can only attempt to copy what Apple has done here and hope to come close to the success of the interface.

So that pretty much covers what I had been doing with my old phone and how I've adapted to the iPhone. The stuff that's broken is way broken, but the stuff that works is solid. Overall, I'll say that I'm about even on productivity for what I was doing with my phone after switching. I'd love to say I'm more productive, but I can't. Maybe in a month or two, but not now. My productivity increase will likely come from updates to the iPhone software and new apps for the device. Time will tell, but that's where I am thus far.

If you stuck with me this far through the post, please note that I'm going to be trying out posting from a couple of different iPhone blogging apps in the next few weeks. Hopefully, that will allow me to blog more quickly those things I've been wanting to get out. And yes, I'll blog about that, too.

On iPhone and Exchange

eriq — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 20:07:00 GMT

It's official! Apple will support connections to Exchange server in the next version of the iPhone, according to Apple's web site. No date has been made publicly available for the release of the next version of the iPhone software, nor does Apple indicate if the company will make the iPhone available through carriers other than AT&T. But for those who have been asking about if Apple will support Exchange Active Sync, the answer is apparently yes.

And yes, I have applied to be in the Enterprise Beta for the iPhone 2.0 software.

OnQ : iPhone

iPhone OS 3.1 Breaks Exchange Connectivity

On Kindle

On Two Weeks with the iPhone

On iPhone and Exchange