BlackBerry Storm’s “original November 14 launch date has been delayed again because of a ‘software glitch,'” Jesus Diaz reports for Gizmodo.
MacDailyNews Note: Please see related article: RIM’s new BlackBerry Storm offers mechanical click screen, lacks Wi-Fi – October 08, 2008
Diaz’s tipster says, “It will be available for $199.99 with a two year contract. For companies the price will be no greater than $89.99, also with a 2 year contract.”
Diaz writes, “Seems like Research In Motion and Verizon are feeling the heat as the iPhone keeps pushing up in the enterprise.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “MacVicta” for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Take: No Wi-Fi. No iPod. No iTunes App Store. No sale.
$89.99 sounds more like it – they should sell it to the public for that and they might move a few.
… But then again, who would want to be stuck with one for two years. Nah, they should call it the Blackberry Bomb.
‘MacDailyNews Take: No Wi-Fi. No App Store. No iPod. No sale.’
Some companies will buy it anyway simply because it’s ‘cheap’ and then will try to force them on their employees who will simply say, ‘No thanks, already have an iPhone.’
Taking the world by storm…… not!
All the hype in the world won’t make Apple successfull in the enterprise market. They just don’t get it. That hype may work for the Xmas gift buying consumer but it always backfires on them with IT buyers. At the end of the day, Apple should spend more time actually making their products useful and secure for business and less time insulting our intelligence with hype about how great they are for business. I could care less whether users want a touchscreen or a real keyboard. Just give me the right security and administration tools. Today, BES delivers and Apple/Microsoft don’t.
I wonder what the two-year contract runs? Last time I saw a comparison of smart phones in the U.S., the iPhone contract was competitive.
I saw a guy today who was using his iPhone (paid for out of his own pocket) while leaving his company Blackberry sitting on a cabinet. He was doing corporate email just fine and enjoying it a lot more. He showed it to three people in the contracts office who were very impressed.
Many people simply do not comprehend the upside of the iPhone. But they will.
These will be 99 cents in 30 days. You cannot duplicate the iPhone experience.
“You cannot duplicate the iPhone experience.”
Such as the stark realization that your company’s critical, sensitive information has now fallen into the wrong hands and it’ll be easy to get to due to lack of real security features and remote wipe capability.
Its not a real storm if some Canadian idiots can delay it.
A real storm comes through and causes excitement, like the iPhone.
HeeHeeHee
I never understood why the BlackBerry brand was so popular, even before the iPhone was even thought of. The keyboard is awkward. The RIM GUI is mediocre at best with bad text rendering and low resolution screens. Plus on the Pearl models that scroll wheel is nice, but looks a little too much like that hard to use nib thing on Lenovo and “business” class notebooks. I guess you need something like that if your trackpad is small or you have a limited GUI on a phone.
The whole RIM-losing-ground thing doesn’t surprise me in the least. I don’t have an iPhone, but I do have an iPod touch with OS 2.1. It’s absolutely amazing, smooth, and I’ve had no problems and most little glitches are solved by restarting the device. Simple usually equals the easiest to use.
Gunboat, the iPhone has remote wipe.
@Connor MacBook:
which my company has tested and found to be wanting. Plus, having to use iTunes/QuickTime with its known security holes nixes the deal, as well.
The_IT_Guy says: ” I could care less whether users want a touchscreen or a real keyboard.”
Which is why many business owners (I for example) fire tech guys like this and instead use forward thinking, competent professionals who realize their customer is the user. In our business we use iPhone.
I wonder if it will support advanced features like cut and paste or threaded messaging?
God, another one.
Your ‘secrets’ are in your dreams.
You must spend all day looking for security holes and then making self-important statements about them.
Itunes has security holes. OOOH.
Well it is a frickin MUSIC player, for crying out loud.
Get a girlfriend and STFU with your empty paranoid delusions and egotistical bollocks about Apple’s software.
You probably have biometrics to get into the bathroom. Yawn.
It’s funny how little most people know about the regulations most F500 companies have to adhere to. We have to account for SEC/SOX/FINRA not to mention state level.
Reality is iPhone does not meet our needs thus we will not be deploying the device until it does. Acid trip or not without these controls in place we are subject to all sorts of fines. Obviously you don’t deal with HIPPA and NPI data in your current job.
Apple needs to provide better device management and device encryption. The current Exchange ActiveSync policies don’t mean squat when any user can easily jailbreak and circumvent these policies. So while most of us don’t work for the CIA we have requirements we have to follow and Apple is not doing anything to help us (or themselves). For now Apple is content being on the consumer / entertainment side of things.
iPhone can be used by users who wish to buy them on their own (footing the whole bill as well) if they want the company to provide a device and voice / date for now it’s Blackberry and we track usage monthly and reclaim devices not being used. Our annual wireless budget is now over 3mil a year so we actively support wireless usage and while iPhone does some slick things it needs a BES type environment (or a 3rd party vendor) to reach enterprise level readiness.
amazing how vitriolic these posts get
Its easy to see why people get angry when IT guy and Gunboat are so high-handed, dismissing the iPhone as a Xmas gift, etc.
Who the hell do you guys think you are?
I have an iPhone, love it, and run a small business using it as the main form of connection through calls and email all day and every day.
Have done for over 12 months now.
Dont need 411 anymore – Google maps.
Push and Fetch email keep me in touch within the hour, or less.
Nothing surfs the web as good as an iPhone – and if you want fast info, where else can you go?
The iPhone is easily the very best device I have EVER used.
As for security, its well known that the only security leaks that count are the HUMAN ones……
You iPhone naysayers are simply WRONG.
Fact is, the smart phone market just isnt in the ‘corporate’ world at all.
Iphone beats Blackberry because Consumer sales is where its at. WAY more cash.
If phones are so dangerous to your company, then dont use them, or dont send sensitive data out to Billy from accounts who may be in bed with a hooker as the new report gets sent to him….
I doubt there are specific fines and penalties for using the wrong phone, and I imagine the SEC is more concerned with stock manipulation than phone security. At least I hope that to be the case.
Fact is, custom and practise rule the world, sadly, and what we have always done is what we will repeat tomorrow, even though it makes no sense.
So if the iPhone isnt special enough for you, or doesnt fit your world, dont buy it.
There are a majority of users who, when they encounter the iPhone, will be happy to do so.
Criticising the iPhone because it doesnt do what you want is like saying a Porsche is no good for patrolling the streets of Bagdhad.
Pretty good on the Autostrada though!
Reason things get a little feisty here is because of high-handed tones from IT guy and Gunboat Smith.
I guess it riles people a little. Who knew?
relax @ the IT GUY
sounds like you’ve been sitting behind a PC for too long. Join the friendly discussion. Try a Mac or an iPhone for a month then just try to switch back to a PC or RIM phone. I dare you. 2 years ago I would have never thought I’d be preaching the gospel according to Mac!! Fun when you enjoy using your computer.
Thanks. Context is everything. Gunbutt and his IT guy are just bloviating.
You know, like Bill-O.
Nobody really takes them seriously.
Guys,
I’m totally behind the idea of getting iPhone into the Enterprise, but I have to say, IT guy/Gunboat has a valid point. There are some rules and regulations that require very specific levels of IT security for their business. This security extends to everything IT, including mobile data communications. Over the years, RIM had developed these solutions. Apple has not yet done that.
There is no question, iPhone would probably be perfectly acceptable from every angle for about 95% of all large corporations. The remaining 5% are the ones with specific regulations related to IT security and they tend to get so much more prominence, even though they represent a small percentage.
Apple has no intention (yet) to spend enormous amounts of time and money in order to heavily customise the iPhone and desktop/server software for a rather small percentage of their intended market.
Much like the Mac, Apple has no desire to aggressively pursue every enterprise customer. This is actually not exactly very desirable anyway; look at Microsoft. Vista can still run DOS code! We can’t have the best desktop OS unless Apple was free to turn on a dime and drop legacy support in order to advance technology.
iPhone will live just fine without the top fifty of the Fortune 500 companies.
@Predrag
Hear! Hear!
Apple have taken some small (?) steps toward the business/enterprise market for the iPhone. They may take more steps to pick the low hanging corporate fruit.
That’s just fine for me.
John
In the UK Vodafone have a MASSIVE advertising campaign saying the Storm has been made specifically for them.
Seems to me they’ll be a bit unhappy about a delay…
If they aren’t fast and it isn’t perfect, they’ll have missed the boat.
The_IT_Guy wrote: “That hype may work for the Xmas gift buying consumer but it always backfires on them with IT buyers.”
Let’s ask why shall we?
– IT don’t get it (yet) because
– IT are idle and blinkered when it comes to new opportunities because
– IT have huge problems staying alive running Windows
@Predrag – Thank you that is likely one of the most insightful comments on here in the past 6 months regarding iPhone and Enterprise and speaks to everything I have been stating.
I’m not here saying iPhone sucks, I think it’s a fantastic mulifunction device that definately shook up the industry. For us (F100 financial company) it’s just not 100% there yet.
Not all us IT people troll, been a Mac user since the 80’s and have a iPhone I’ve jailbreaked and enjoyed for months.
While areas of business require these extra security features ? Examples of companies would be awesome. Curious to know
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OK, I’m settling the argument – The iPhone has many enterprise features that appeal to corporate users, but it could have more and for now it has a consumer feel about it.
Everyone happy?
Now go back to eating your Wheaties that someone has obviously pissed in.
Any company subject to HIPPA regulations. Any insurance company. Any health care company. There are a whole lot of them. Fact is that the people who are telling you there are issues with deploying iPhone in the enterprise are correct.
Will Apple address those in the future? Maybe. Apple is, at its core, a consumer electronics company however. To the extent that many of its products work well in the enterprise is great and I use them myself, but I’m not giving iPhones to our HR department until encryption, remote wipe and policy enforcement are at a level I’m comfortable with and can prove to our auditors are sufficient. Right now they’re not.
You can like it or not, you can agree with it or not, but it’s a fact.
New technology never makes it into enterprise through the IT department. The IT department is there to enable the workforce. The workforce pays the bills. If your best sales guys want a better tool, they are going to get it. It’s up to you to make it fit your system. That’s your job.
Damn few IT departments make cell phone purchase decisions. Those decisions usually come up from the bottom.
I think one thing most IT people want to ignore is that while there are a few security limitations at this time limiting the device from the largest companies. There are lots of smaller companies that can benefit from its simplicity and ease of use. I use the iphone daily for all of my work related activities. Replaced my BB8820 with it. I would never go back to that archaic device. It simply does not hold a candle to the functionality of the iphone. Every wanker out there can complain about a keyboard all they want. Give something a try and you will see that after about a week you are able to type just as fast. As is the BB keyboard was intuitive the first time you used it. Try typing in a password with letters and numbers! The iphone is like anything Apple does… There simply are people who won’t use it because they fear change. It is their own inability to adapt that will be the demise of them as IT professionals. I remember when IT wankers were refusing to use XP as 95 and 98 were better. This is a simple example. IT pros like to keep people fearing the scary PC vs training people what to do for simple fixes. Main reason for not embracing OSX. Doesn’t need a geek smelling like BO to come by as it simply works.
“you will see that after about a week you are able to type just as fast.”
Only if you’re completely useless typing on a Blackberry keyboard. You’d be lucky to get 1/2 to a 1/3rd of the speed on the iPhone even with practice. The main issue is the autocorrection replacing correctly spelled words with wrongly spelled ones and the small key spacing causing mis-hits if you type fast but long delays if you wait to see if you hit the right key. Touch typing on the iPhone is impossible but possible on a Blackberry. The onscreen keyboard is the iPhone’s biggest weakness as an email device.
But it’s good that the variety exists. if you really want a keyboard, there’s plenty of devices that have them. If you don’t type much on your phone, and dont care about how good it is for that,and prefer a big web browsing touchscreen device then the iPhone works for you.
it’s good to see a company taking the time to get the software right before releasing a product.
Apple could learn a lot from that.
Where are all the BB lovers and iPhone haters now? Smoking their lying IT wanna be kielbasa pipes?
@Middilay
You forgot to point out the unique position IT workers find themselves in… gatekeepers. The gatekeepers who serve Big Brother.
IT are keepers of the flame who are not unlike the correctional officers who work in our prisons; they’re the herders who keep the sheep in the pen and the wolves away from the door. The ones who forget the sheep are the wolves get eaten alive.
Most are honest, decent, hardworking people and once they’re on the clock their brains undergo a chemical reaction wherein they become a hammer and everything looks like a nail. To them there are two kinds of people in the world; them and (sheep) everyone else.
They suffer from binary immersion. A state-of-mind that precipitates pattern-recognition. This black & white world can uncover even the smallest incongruent details. Everything becomes either/or, on/off, yes/no, right/wrong, come/go, green/red, safe/threat.
The most gifted among them however, are capable of If/Then/Else and can yield a wider spectrum of logic (they’re the one’s who smile once in a while) but since they’re not paid to think, they quickly revert back into hammers. You can witness this transformation every time you walk up to one.
They think they’re the backbone of the organization when in fact they’re just digital bouncers who sole purpose is to maintain the status quo. Some are very inventive. Like the guy who created DHSs Terror Alert threat-level indicator that uses color-coding and serves to notify the sheep when not to bother them.
They’re the suits, the secret service, and they’re not on your side. Those who can’t cut the mustard find plenty of employment opportunities at Geek Squad.
Make no mistake about it. When you approach an IT, they immediately begin sizing your threat-level. Ask a probative question and you trigger that chemical chain-reaction that makes them a hammer and you a nail, that needs pounding down.
IT thinks that they posses some kind of special powers. They are arrogant as all hell. They want you to beg them. They think that without them the world would collapse. The only reason they exist in the first place is to watch over MSFT poor sorry ass software. BSOD butt buddies. They are convinced that they are worth more than $5 an hour. They constantly accuse Apple of not playing nice. They have no outlook for the future because they hate change. They learned win2k workgroups and that’s all they want to learn for the rest of their lives. Lazy slobs.
I agree. Usually they’re lazy fat slobs. And they wear glasses.
Since AT&T;’s network or the iPhones use of their network sucks I very reluctantly switched to Verizon. I’ll see what the early repots of the Storm are but no wi-fi is idiotic and a typical Verizon dumb ass move.
Verizon will bend you over bubba. They have lots of IT types over there.
If and when iPhone comes to Verzion I will get one. I will let everyone else “Beta Test” the Storm for 30 Days before I will consider one. There are always plenty of people who want to go first. Traveling around the SE we get the best coverage with Verizon. In out of the way places, a lot of people borrow our phone to make calls. I am not ready to safrice coverage for features.
The_IT_Guy wrote: ‘I could care less’.
I really don’t mind the differences between the different varieties of English. In fact they enrich the language.
But what really gets on my nerves is when really bad and incorrect English gets standardized as is the case with ‘could care less’ in American English.
Could this wanker care less or couldn’t he?
He certainly couldn’t care less about the English language.
I hate to answer the uninformed comments of IT_Guy and his ilk with facts, but the iPhone has:
– remote wipe, as someone else mentioned.
– “enforced security and password policies”
– “remote management capabilities”
– “Cisco IPSec VPN” and “WPA2 Enterprise with 802.1X authentication”
– Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync support – licensed directly from Microsoft itself (I know, makes me wince)
Read it and weep, boys:
http://www.apple.com/iphone/enterprise/integration.html
Next time, if you’ve got something negative to say about the iPhone, base it on facts, not your ignorant fantasies.
If you had to support Microsoft Exchange you’d know the basic ActiveSync policies leave much to be desired (2003 SP2 here)and in typical MS fashion you need another server solution (System Center Mobile Device Manager 2007) to match what BES gives you. Apple has a tiny subset of these policies which meet the basic of IT Policy.
Yes the ability to remote wipe and enforce a password is a great start. What’s troubling is anyone who jailbreaks a iPhone can easily bypass said ActiveSync policies so unsure who “secure” that is. You also have zero management of the devices to track usage, ability to prohibit certain software etc. And what most companies are not requiring – whole device encryption is no where to be found be it from Apple or a 3rd part solution. Hopefully Apple gets some solutuon to address these needs.
I love how these threads always spin into some IT guys are evil and shouldn’t have jobs drivel. Unless you work at Apple or likely some college campuses a very large % of companies all use Windows so unless you want to work at the Apple store you kinda need to support what pays the bills.
So Mobile Admin’s issue is that the iPhone only supports current technology and ignores the software he bought 5 years ago? *sigh*
And this whole Remote Wipe issue is just a farce. If I were stealing a device for corporate info the first thing I’d do is turn the damned thing off. Remote wipe is impossible when the device (be it Blackberry, iPhone, or some other phone) isn’t connected to the network.
And if I wanted to really steal corporate data I’d steal your laptop which is far easier to get data off of, more likely to have useful data on it, and far less likely than a phone to be encrypted. And I know plenty of people in F500 and HIPPA industries running basic installs of XP on their laptops.
I just saw my first Storm ad on TV tonight… RIM appears to be emphasizing the “click” touchscreen, with a voiceover raving about how much it feels like a “real keyboard” and crap.
I guess that’s the gimmick they are going for — people who want a touchscreen but also want a real keyboard. Sounds like a small market to me. A touchscreen isn’t the draw of the iPhone — it’s simply a technology that allows the user interface to be so easy to use. I seriously doubt the Storm interface will rival iPhone, though I couldn’t tell from the ad.
(The keyboard in vertical orientation was hideous, however: each key has two letters on it just like vertical Blackberries!)
What’s this obsession with having phones full of security policies when laptops have nothing like that? In the UK you hear stories all the time of laptops being stolen with sensitive data on them, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a phone with anything truly important on it being stolen/going missing.
I have to say that I agree 100% with M.X.N.T.4.1, quite frankly it is preposterous to say an iPhone is not fit for corporate use because it doesn’t have full device encryption etc.
If you are using an iPhone in enterprise, it is normally as a conduit to a wider network. Nothing on the iPhone will be lost to other users, because it is all on the wider network that the iPhone is connecting to (Exchange, MobileMe etc.)
Fact is, no matter how much security you apply to a device, there will always be someone who can break it. That’s a fact. What you can do is make it as hard as possible for someone to get the data on the device, and personally I think Apple are going in the right direction.
And finally, if you are carrying an iPhone with data that is so sensitive that your nation cannot afford you to lose it, then tie it to your wrist.
***
For what it’s worth, I use my iPhone with my business that is involved in offshore oil exploration and shipping. I deal with business rivals such as NITC, BP and Chevron to name a few, as well as the likes of Samsung Heavy Industries (SHI – Engines) and Daewoo Shipbuilding (DSME) – all multi-billion dollar international corporations with trade secrets (engine designs etc.) that could save their rivals millions of dollars a year if they ever got hold of them. All these companies are fierce rivals, yet every time I meet with any of them, there is always at least one person using an old crappy laptop with XP Home, with no password to login to XP, no BIOS password to prevent booting… I could go on. So to say that iPhones are a huge security hole that should be prevented from entering the enterprise is quite ludicrous.
My $0.02
I love Apple and it’s products using Mac since 93 that said, mobile safari crashes ALL the time, iPhone 3G droped calls are getting a bit annoying.
APPLE FIX THESE PROBLEMS. Oh and I want copy paste thanks.
To the credit of Verizon (and for the record, Verizon gets very little credit from me), and RIM, at least they’re doing their part to not help develop stuff that runs on Windows.
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