Tech Advice: An iPhone update and car audio systems corrections

The Tech Advice column that ran in the July 14, 2007, issue of the Columbia Business Times pronounced the newly released iPhone a good product, thought not for everyone.

But that caveat went away on March 6, 2008, when Apple announced the features of iPhone 2.0.

The iPhone 2.0 is new software, not a new phone (though one is coming this year) but software for all iPhones. The upgrade, coming in June (probably along with a new physical iPhone), has two key parts. The first major improvement is the integration of Microsoft Exchange and ActiveSync. Second, the release includes the implementation of an SDK (software development kit).

In the last paragraph of the July column, I stated the iPhone 2.0 software “might not mean Exchange calendars.”

Turns out it does. Apple has fully integrated Exchange and ActiveSync. Contacts and calendars are synchronized instantly with the server, and e-mail is pushed to the phone the moment it is received. Apple also included the ability to wipe the iPhone remotely if the phone is lost. The absence of these features in the first edition steered me away from recommending it to everyone, but now the iPhone should work seamlessly in Enterprise environments, even with VPNs (virtual private networks). Even so, some users need more than just Exchange from their phones.

When the iPhone was released, Apple locked down development to protect the phone’s operational integrity.

Apple did not want bad third-party software to cause problems outside of the company’s control (a good call on a new product, with so much riding on it). This lack of software became a major point of contention among users, developers and Apple. Apple quickly suggested that creating a Web-based application could solve these problems and, in a recent update, allowed for Web links to be placed directly on the iPhone desktop for easy access to these applications.

However, there are still plenty of people who need to edit documents on the road or have yet to move to an iPhone because they have third-party apps on their Symbian or Windows mobile phone they cannot live without.

The SDK and App Store solve these concerns. Apple has release a beta version of iPhone 2.0 and development software for developers to create, test and optimize their software. Come June, Apple will open the iPhone App Store to help distribute software and to protect the iPhone (making sure applications are not illegal, malicious, etc.).

It is clear the iPhone has been a success. It is already the most popular mobile browser (meaning more sites are browsed with the iPhone than any other mobile device). More than four million had been sold worldwide, as of mid-January, and the iPhone ranked second in sales for smart phones its first quarter on the market.

I believe the release of iPhone 2.0 software (most likely coinciding with the release of an updated handset) is going to be just as big as the initial release of the iPhone. The combination of Exchange, instant synchronization via ActiveSync and the ability to make the iPhone do anything via third-party applications suddenly removes all limitation for the iPhone. I expect that in three months the iPhone could be the solution for just about everyone.

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Correction
After my March 7 column on searching for Columbia’s best car audio system, I got an e-mail from Dan Hinske of Dirac Research. He pointed out that I mistakenly referred to the audio system in the M5 as LOGIC 7. The system at the heart of BMW’s M5 is a proprietary signal processing technology called Dirac Live, which corrects the impulse response of each speaker, resulting in linear and extremely accurate sound reproduction inside the vehicle cabin; the audio quality is better than that of a LOGIC 7 system.My second mistake was calling the company Dual Input Room Acoustics Calculator. Dirac Research and Dirac Live are in no way related to the Dual Input Room Acoustics Calculator product from Acoustics Engineering. I feel slightly less guilty for this mistake because I got my information directly from the BMW 2008 pocket guide for employees.
Jonathan Sessions owns and operates Tech 2. To reach him please call at 573-443-1555, email at jonathan@tech-2consulting.com, or visit www.jonathansessions.com.