Why iPhone's not obligated to permit Google Voice

How to Fix the App Store - BusinessWeek

During the last few months, there has been a lot of noise about "opening up" iPhone to other carriers and Apple being forced to permit Apps that go against its "policy". I can understand public pressure from customers that might force Apple to make these changes, but what role do regulators, analysts and columnists have in "forcing" Apple to change its commercial practices?

My simple argument is that Apple has no obligation, except to its customers and shareholders, to change its strategy with respect to the iPhone. The FCC or any other regulators have a role to play if market dynamics are getting distorted or becoming uncompetitive due to Apple's practices. Let's look at the exclusive deal between Apple and AT&T for instance.

Apple's share in the entire mobile phone market is negligible, it cannot distort the market. Even if one were to limit the market to "smartphones", Apple still has low double digit market share and is not the market leader. Further, this is not the first or only "exclusive" device deal with an operator... most US operators (unlike, say in India) bundle devices with the service and many such deals are exclusive. The Pre is available only with Sprint: why isn't that a big issue then? Of course, I can understand if iPhone customers (or likely customers) don't want to be on the AT&T network (as is indeed turning out to be the case now) and put pressure on on Apple to open up other networks. But what are Apple's options: the other major network in the US is Verizon which is on CDMA and so is Sprint. T-Mobile is the only sizable GSM operator and is a distant 4th... I am not sure iPhone users are looking at T-Mobile as a credible alternative.

Now take the Google Voice situation. I am sure a lot of customers want to use Google Voice and perhaps, a lot of iPhone customers want GV. Apple needs to consider their opinion, else those customers have other choices. They can move to phones that are on the Google Android platform which obviously supports GV, or any other smartphones that choose to support GV. Note: the customer has choices. Then why should any regulator seek to intervene and possibly seek to enforce that a particular App be made available on the device / service. I can understand it if it were a regulated service that is required to be offered, for instance 911 calling. But here we are talking about an Internet Telephony service which by its nature thrives on "free market" forces. Google cannot try and force its way onto every device. If that were to happen, then everyone would need to enable everyone else... I would love that world, but that is not a practical situation.

Regulators and analysts need to go after dominant players and platforms... that's where customer choice is limited and there is need for intervention. Apple is a relatively small player in most of its markets (PC, OS, Smartphone, etc. except MP3 Music Players and Online Music Stores); however it dominates public perception -- that's perhaps the reason everyone wants to regulate Apple like a dominant player.

Disclaimer: I personally disagree with the strategy of exclusive tie-ins between service providers and device manufacturers; I wish Apple would break its exclusive iPhone deals with a few operators. I am also indifferent to Google Voice because it is not available in India (and may never be, considering policymakers have sought to kill Internet Telephony in India). I wish Google Voice were available on the iPhone. But I wish these things would happen because Apple cares about customer needs, not because of some regulatory intervention!

Snow Leopard and Exchange Mail: More

Mail in Snow Leopard and Exchange

(Work in Progress)

More Positives:

1. Sent mail from Entourage did not show up as Sent Mail on my Blackberry; but with Mail, it is different. Truly synched across various access mechanisms

2. Spotlight search much better & faster than Entourage search

3. HTML formatting is retained when replying / forwarding mails... in Entourage, tables inserted into mails would get all mangled up when quoted in a reply/forward (a BIG thing)

4. You can Quick Look attachments from the Mail application itself (instead of having to save the attachment somewhere and then use the QL), assuming you don't want to launch the app


Some Negatives:

1. Yet unable to put a pop-up when new mail arrives; when I am working on something, I like to see who has sent the mail/Subject so that I can decide if it is worth switching attention

2.

Mail in Snow Leopard and Exchange

One of the most-awaited features in Snow Leopard was obviously the Exchange support built into Mac apps of Mail, iCal and Address Book. Apparently a lot of people failed to read the detail (even though, to Apple's credit, they did mention it quite prominently in their marketing material). Everyone caught the "Out-of-the-box support for Microsoft Exchange" but did not focus on the "latest version of Microsoft Exchange Server".

There's quite a battle raging on Apple Discussions on Snow Leopard and Exchange, with more than 15,000 views and 145 replies in the last one week. The main problem was that most people that this would be as simple as iPhone connecting to Exchange... this was possible on the fly for most people; however, Snow Leopard is not as easy that.

The main things to consider:
1. SL works only with Exchange 2007. If your company/service provider is still using Exchange 2003, tough luck!
2. Even in 2007, certain upgrades (Service Pack 1, Update Rollup 4) need to be installed before SL can connect. Also, your Exchange admin should have enabled EWS (Exchange Web Services) protocol.

My IT folks were actually in the midst of an upgrade from 2003 to 2007, and so I lucked out. However, I now face greater security restrictions on Mail access than ever before. What has changed:
1. Our 2007 installation has locked ActiveSync: so I cannot use Exchange mail on the iPhone that used ActiveSync for connectivity
2. VPN connectivity is a must before I can access Mail from outside our LAN. Even my Entourage that could earlier connect using https to the Outlook WebAccess now requires VPN connectivity
3. My IT admin has blocked Port 993 which is used by Mail to access IMAP services (Gmail, MobileMe)... so when I am connected to the VPN, I cannot access my personal mail services on Mail; if I disconnect from the VPN, I cannot access office mail... so using Mail as a single client for all my mail services means that I am not online with all my mail accounts at the same time.

Note that all the above issues are driven by the manner in which my IT Department has chosen to implement Exchange 2007 and the additional network/security policies in place. These would vary from one organization to the other, and therefore, everyone is unlikely to have the same user experience.

Bottomline: Mail is a much better and easy-to-use app for all mail services, include office mail. One disadvantage is that I need to keep iCal open for accessing my calendar... however, even with Entourage, I always had two windows open for Mail and Calendar. Mail and iCal are much faster apps than Entourage ever was. Over the next few days I hope to migrate my archived mail from Entourage to Mail, and say good-bye to Entourage. Hopefully.

Update: Apparently my network admins don't like Blogger too... so I have to disconnect from the VPN to post to this blog... hmm... a confrontation appears imminent :-)

Snow Leopard is here... but it is not here :-(

Apple (India) - Mac OS X Snow Leopard - The world’s most advanced OS

Grrrr.... (hope that sounded like a Snow Leopard expressing dissatisfaction!)... I am so disappointed that Indian users of Apple / Mac products have to wait for the OS X to become available. I understand that India is not yet a large enough market for PCs and software, and Apple may not have India anywhere on its priority, but if you are present in a market, then don't treat them differentially. Particularly if you have any plans to address that market... when it becomes large and attractive enough.

I can understand delayed launches in some markets when it comes to hardware products: there could be issues of production capacities and logistics of shipping them to various global markets. But software...?

The least Apple could have done was announced a date when Snow Leopard would be available in India, and put a price for the upgrade. I contacted Apple India call center twice during the last fortnight, and all they had to say was that they had no information and would let me know when they heard something. Come on, Apple should be able to do better than that!

I have friends and colleagues in the US, UK and elsewhere who can easily put the dmg on an FTP server for me to download, but... that's exactly what I don't want to do. For too long, India has been blamed for piracy of software and entertainment products; perhaps, the producers need to examine the role they are playing in driving Indians to piracy...


Update: I finally got my Snow Leopard Family Pack in London when I was there last week, obviously more expensive than what it might have cost in India, but, what the heck!

How to Sync Two Macs?

ChronoSync | Perform File and Folder Synchronizations and Backups Like Clockwork | Econ Technologies

Having got my new iMac at home, I am now faced with this difficulty of keeping my desktop and laptop synchronized. I obviously want to work on the iMac because it is faster and has a better screen, but I need to ensure that my documents (at least) are constantly updated on the Macbook Air so that I can seamlessly work on the laptop when I go out for meetings or travel.

I used an external hard drive for a very long time, storing all my documents on it, irrespective of which computer I used, at work or home. However, it was a bit cumbersome, and also there was the danger of the hard disk getting lost or being accessed by someone else.

I have read a few good reviews of ChronoSync which promises to sync and backup two Macs, but comes at a modest price of $40. I have just got myself the Demo version of the software to see if it is as good as others claim it is. Then perhaps I will shell out the 40 bucks.

Any other suggestions or ideas?

My New iMac is here!

I added to my list of Apple gadgets with the acquisition of the 20" iMac last evening!!!

Am I pleased or what?

My first impression after I opened the box was, damn! this is big!!! It did not fit my old computer table, and I had to rearrange furniture in my house to create an appropriate table for the iMac.

I did not get much time to play with the new toy since it was too late last night and I had an early morning trip. Traveling tomorrow too, so it will be a while before I can fully test the new machine's capabilities.

One issue that I now need to think about: How do I keep my Macbook Air and the iMac synced so that I can seamlessly work across the two devices, particularly when I am traveling?

Updates soon.

Will Outlook for Mac in 2010 matter?

Microsoft: Outlook Will Replace Entourage in Office for Mac - Business Center - PC World

Entourage on Mac has in general been a disappointment; it reinforces one's view that Microsoft does not really want to offer a good Office product for Mac users. Imagine you spend $350 (!!!) for a software package and get a sub-standard email program that cannot even open PST files and is considerably different from its Windows equivalent (on the other hand, the other Office applications: Word etc. are not very different from the Windows experience). Finally, Microsoft has announced that -- about 15 months later -- they will replace Entourage with Outlook. (Of course, I expect that moving to Office 2010 will entail at least an additional $150 upgrade cost!)

Would it really matter? Why did Microsoft make this (almost) pre-mature announcement?

One can guess that the imminent release of Snow Leopard is a major reason for this. Snow Leopard adds Exchange Server support to the Mail and iCal apps; so many Exchange users would be more than happy to dump Entourage (which serves no other purpose than as an Exchange client today) and shift to the native Mac apps for mail, calendar and address book. These offer much better integration (& sync) with other mail providers (Gmail etc) and devices (iPhone).

In a year's time when Outlook is launched as a replacement to Entourage, perhaps there would be very few Mac users that would have any reason to welcome Outlook. And perhaps, in order to prevent this migration, Microsoft is trying to provide a glimmer of hope to Entourage users... wait for 15 months and your problems will be solved. Well, I am hoping that a good solution is just about 15 days away, and will cost just $29...

Will share my experiences with Snow Leopard / Exchange support later...