John Gruber posted a link in his Blog "Daring Fireball" a few months ago, from a high level Apple Vice President that was with Apple some years ago. He did some amazing research in how a company fails, and what are the key signs. It was a fabulous read in that if growth does not come from new consumers, adding new products on a continuing basis, then these companies will often resort to price cutting to get new customers to buy... over time the loss of profit will end up displeasing shareholders, and if the company continues in this fashion rather than bring on new products to add revenue and profit to the company it will lose critical economic mass and eventually fail. Apple has brought new products to market, ipod, iphone and now ipad ... and their record is awesome. Apple spends more in R&D that many other companies spend in advertising.
RIM is under tremendous competitive pressure ... though it has been making good revenue, profits are slipping, and new product development is struggling. Check it out
I work for a huge company and I was told the following
1) employees will have the choice of accessing the companies corporate email, share point and other databases this year.
2) supported phones and tablets will be rolled out as in flowing order : iOS, android, rim, windows phone and other other
3) employees can have choice of employee owned or company owned devises (depending on supervisor approval)
4) the corporate IT unix/ windows folks are being dragged kicking and screaming to deploy this tech ASAP. Management is not putting up with excuses and feet dragging any more. It's not a question of if but when now
5) the only issue that is Remaining is two factor authentication and remote wipe before it is deployed and that "some very bright folks are working on a solution"
I work for a huge company and I was told the following
1) employees will have the choice of accessing the companies corporate email, share point and other databases this year.
2) supported phones and tablets will be rolled out as in flowing order : iOS, android, rim, windows phone and other other
3) employees can have choice of employee owned or company owned devices (depending on supervisor approval)
4) the corporate IT unix/ windows folks are being dragged kicking and screaming to deploy this tech ASAP. Management is not putting up with excuses and feet dragging any more. It's not a question of if but when now
5) the only issue that is Remaining is two factor authentication and remote wipe before it is deployed and that "some very bright folks are working on a solution"
"Up Your Nose with a Rubber Hose" mind you it will be said politely.
LOL! I haven't heard that one since, oh, 1959 or so.
Priceless. These days I have no idea how you could say it any more politely than that. Maybe "get hosed" is OK. The other alternatives are so widely used that even on a family-friendly site as AI lets them pass...
I don't think RIM, Nokia or M$ were resting on their laurels. They just didn't have any gas left in the tank.
Funny you should use that turn of phrase a couple of days after Dale Earnhart Jr ran out of gas just a hundred yards from the finish line (and a victory) and watched a a few cars pass him by.
This whole concept of a separation between Canada and the U.S. will soon lose more and moe meaning, it doesn't matter if Canada still claims Commonwealth status. The separating line between the two countries continues to blur. Soon everything will be labeled made in North America...
So that's why we have so many products with French labeling* down here!
* Oops - I guess I'd better start learning to respell things like "labelling."
Apple spends more in R&D that many other companies spend in advertising.
A few years ago Michael Dell was interviewed by the San Jose Murky Sleaze. One of the questions pertained to the company Dell's R&D budget. His reply was along the lines of "R&D? That's too expensive. We buy stuff off the shelf and assemble it, then sell at the lowest possible price."
Blackberries were almost ubiquitous among those with government provided at the US federal agency I work for. I bought a first generation iPhone on launch day and immediately started using it at work, initially connecting to email at work over the web when connected to the office wifi. A few others followed soon after. When iOS 2.0 came out, we quickly figured out we could connect directly to the office email server due to an Exchange setting that was set for Windows Mobile users. Personal iPhones appearing at work ballooned after that point. Eventually the IT folks got the message and officially offered iPhones as a government provided option, which are now as common as Blackberries. Maybe more so.
As a smart phone, iOS is fantastic. They've recently tried to start bringing in iPads as tablets and even low end net book replacements. It isn't working and they seem to be retreating a bit already. I haven't tried one at work yet, but from talking to those who have, I think there are essentially two reasons for the failure of iPads as an office tool - both of which would be trivial for Apple to fix.
The biggest problem is the lack of a user accessible file system that can be shared by other apps. It's a tolerable and not terribly critical limitation on a smart phone. But for a device essentially trying to act as a laptop, it's a serious limitation. Quite often situations come up with needed to access files on office filer servers, sharing files between apps, storing attachments from emails or attaching files to emails, or sharing files with jump drives. Not having a user accessible file system makes such normally trivial tasks impossible or sufficiently convoluted as to make the iPad impractical as a laptop replacement. Obviously iOS has the capability to manage files, surely it would be trivial for Apple to write an iOS app version of the Finder that could provide minimal functionality.
The smaller problem is the lack of a mouse. Touch is great on a smart phone, but on a full screen device, sometimes an external pointing device really is better. The bluetooth attached keyboard seems to solve half of the problem of using iOS as a laptop replacement, but without a capability for having a mouse (or trackpad) as at least an auxiliary external pointing device, the iPad again false short even though the iPhone is perfectly adequate as a smart phone. Here too, given that the simulator in the iOS SDK functions just fine with a mouse and given that iOS devices can already accept bluetooth connected keyboards to augment the on screen keyboard, it seems like this would be a trivial improvement for Apple to make.
The added benefit of both of these changes is that when iOS 5 comes out, if the bluetooth radio in AppleTV is activated and the app store opened up to AppleTV, it would essentially become a full fledged computer for $100 plus a TV, keyboard, & mouse. Give it Thunderbolt connector to allow room for I/O growth & flexibility and iOS could easily do to the low end desktop market what it has done to the smartphone and netbook markets.
Comments
Tech is a brutal business...one can't afford to sit on their laurels as it were. It has to be in your DNA to be constantly improving. Like Apple!
Right Apples wares their Laurels on their heads.
It is my understanding that iOS is currently under testing at a couple of DOE locations to assess it for replacing secure BBs.
You could be right. I read somewhere that Apple recently started limited testing for NSA Suite B certiification.
RIM is under tremendous competitive pressure ... though it has been making good revenue, profits are slipping, and new product development is struggling. Check it out
So what I'm asking is how is BES more secure than ActiveSync? Is BES encryption that much better?
No it is the same as everybody else's 1024 bit encryption which takes around 4 years for a super computer to break it using brute force.
1) employees will have the choice of accessing the companies corporate email, share point and other databases this year.
2) supported phones and tablets will be rolled out as in flowing order : iOS, android, rim, windows phone and other other
3) employees can have choice of employee owned or company owned devises (depending on supervisor approval)
4) the corporate IT unix/ windows folks are being dragged kicking and screaming to deploy this tech ASAP. Management is not putting up with excuses and feet dragging any more. It's not a question of if but when now
5) the only issue that is Remaining is two factor authentication and remote wipe before it is deployed and that "some very bright folks are working on a solution"
Anon
1) employees will have the choice of accessing the companies corporate email, share point and other databases this year.
2) supported phones and tablets will be rolled out as in flowing order : iOS, android, rim, windows phone and other other
3) employees can have choice of employee owned or company owned devices (depending on supervisor approval)
4) the corporate IT unix/ windows folks are being dragged kicking and screaming to deploy this tech ASAP. Management is not putting up with excuses and feet dragging any more. It's not a question of if but when now
5) the only issue that is Remaining is two factor authentication and remote wipe before it is deployed and that "some very bright folks are working on a solution"
Anon
"Up Your Nose with a Rubber Hose" mind you it will be said politely.
LOL! I haven't heard that one since, oh, 1959 or so.
Priceless. These days I have no idea how you could say it any more politely than that. Maybe "get hosed" is OK. The other alternatives are so widely used that even on a family-friendly site as AI lets them pass...
I don't think RIM, Nokia or M$ were resting on their laurels. They just didn't have any gas left in the tank.
Funny you should use that turn of phrase a couple of days after Dale Earnhart Jr ran out of gas just a hundred yards from the finish line (and a victory) and watched a a few cars pass him by.
This whole concept of a separation between Canada and the U.S. will soon lose more and moe meaning, it doesn't matter if Canada still claims Commonwealth status. The separating line between the two countries continues to blur. Soon everything will be labeled made in North America...
So that's why we have so many products with French labeling* down here!
* Oops - I guess I'd better start learning to respell things like "labelling."
Apple spends more in R&D that many other companies spend in advertising.
A few years ago Michael Dell was interviewed by the San Jose Murky Sleaze. One of the questions pertained to the company Dell's R&D budget. His reply was along the lines of "R&D? That's too expensive. We buy stuff off the shelf and assemble it, then sell at the lowest possible price."
Or, as the co-founder of Rolling Stone might say: The government is acting out of "sheer insanity and insecurity and fear."
Is that you Menno, disguised as Robin, who is one of us faithful?
I think this is great news, Wikileaks needs more material.
Wonder if the president's iPad is off-the-shelf, or if it's a skunkwork like his limo and aircraft.
You mean the limo that bottomed out in Ireland? At least the iPad is more useable.
Actually we'd say, " don't be a hoser eh and pass me another Molson's."
Take off, eh!
As a smart phone, iOS is fantastic. They've recently tried to start bringing in iPads as tablets and even low end net book replacements. It isn't working and they seem to be retreating a bit already. I haven't tried one at work yet, but from talking to those who have, I think there are essentially two reasons for the failure of iPads as an office tool - both of which would be trivial for Apple to fix.
The biggest problem is the lack of a user accessible file system that can be shared by other apps. It's a tolerable and not terribly critical limitation on a smart phone. But for a device essentially trying to act as a laptop, it's a serious limitation. Quite often situations come up with needed to access files on office filer servers, sharing files between apps, storing attachments from emails or attaching files to emails, or sharing files with jump drives. Not having a user accessible file system makes such normally trivial tasks impossible or sufficiently convoluted as to make the iPad impractical as a laptop replacement. Obviously iOS has the capability to manage files, surely it would be trivial for Apple to write an iOS app version of the Finder that could provide minimal functionality.
The smaller problem is the lack of a mouse. Touch is great on a smart phone, but on a full screen device, sometimes an external pointing device really is better. The bluetooth attached keyboard seems to solve half of the problem of using iOS as a laptop replacement, but without a capability for having a mouse (or trackpad) as at least an auxiliary external pointing device, the iPad again false short even though the iPhone is perfectly adequate as a smart phone. Here too, given that the simulator in the iOS SDK functions just fine with a mouse and given that iOS devices can already accept bluetooth connected keyboards to augment the on screen keyboard, it seems like this would be a trivial improvement for Apple to make.
The added benefit of both of these changes is that when iOS 5 comes out, if the bluetooth radio in AppleTV is activated and the app store opened up to AppleTV, it would essentially become a full fledged computer for $100 plus a TV, keyboard, & mouse. Give it Thunderbolt connector to allow room for I/O growth & flexibility and iOS could easily do to the low end desktop market what it has done to the smartphone and netbook markets.