Entries Tagged 'Tech' ↓

MobileMe upgrades .Mac email on the iPhone to use rapid push updating. Here’s how it works, and what’s new and different in MobileMe mobile mail, how to configure junk mail and security, and what’s still missing.

Inside MobileMe: Secrets of the Cloud and Mobile Push
Inside MobileMe: Mac and PC cloud sync and mobile push
Inside MobileMe: Apple’s Push vs Exchange, BlackBerry, Google
Inside MobileMe: iPhone Mail
Inside MobileMe: iPhone’s Exchange alternative for contacts and calendar
Continues: Inside MobileMe: iPhone Mail

Daniel Eran Dilger
Gene Steinberg of the Tech Night Owl podcast invited me talk about the new iPhone 2.0 and MobileMe last week. Mac author Adam Engst, Editor/Publisher of TidBITS, also delivered a historical perspective on the growth of the Internet and some recent Apple-related problems.

You can hear for yourself and subscribe to the Tech Night Owl RSS feed at: The Tech Night Owl LIVE with Gene Steinberg. Steinberg also hosts The Paracast, a regular podcast on the paranormal, and a Science Fiction Forum.

July 31, 2008 episode of the Mac Night Owl: July 31 08 Continue reading →

Daniel Eran Dilger
What secret partner has Microsoft discovered to bail water from the deck of Zune and its Zune Marketplace music store in a last ditch attempt to take on Apple’s iTunes, the iPod, and iPhone? Microsoft’s own Windows Mobile, of course, with some help from Windows Vista!
Continue reading →

Apple’s MobileMe provides mobile device push and an innovative Wide-Area Bonjour push sync mechanism for securely updating desktop clients over the Internet. There’s currently nothing identical to the service on other platforms, but there is some feature overlap with Microsoft’s Exchange Server in corporate settings, RIM’s BlackBerry mobile push messaging, and web-based service offerings from Google and others. Here’s a look at how MobileMe compares in price and features.

Inside MobileMe: Secrets of the Cloud and Mobile Push
Inside MobileMe: Mac and PC cloud sync and mobile push
Inside MobileMe: Apple’s Push vs Exchange, BlackBerry, Google
Inside MobileMe: iPhone Mail
Inside MobileMe: iPhone’s Exchange alternative for contacts and calendar
Continues: Inside MobileMe: Apple’s Push vs Exchange, BlackBerry, Google

Mobile providers in Japan are crediting the launch of Apple’s iPhone 3G with dramatically shifting large numbers of subscribers between providers. The impact of the new phone is also answering critics who insisted the iPhone would find only limited interest in Japan.
Big in Japan

According to the report “iPhone Affects KDDI’s Net Subscription Growth,” by Japanese tech business journal Tech-On, SoftBank Mobile, Apple’s exclusive provider of the iPhone 3G in Japan, led other providers in the country in new mobile phone subscriptions, grabbing up 215,400, more than half of the 391,500 new activations in Japan during the month of July. “We believe our large net growth was an iPhone effect,” SoftBank representatives said.

Continues: iPhone 3G rocks Japanese smartphone market

MobileMe is advertised as push messaging service, so some users were disappointed to find that some desktop updates may take as long as fifteen minutes to find their way up to the cloud. However, the service does also support push IMAP email as well as full desktop push updates from the cloud, at least on Mac OS X. Here’s how Apple’s service works with the client software on desktop Macs and PCs and on the iPhone.

Inside MobileMe: Secrets of the Cloud and Mobile Push
Inside MobileMe: Mac and PC cloud sync and mobile push
Inside MobileMe: Apple’s Push vs Exchange, BlackBerry, Google
Inside MobileMe: iPhone Mail
Inside MobileMe: iPhone’s Exchange alternative for contacts and calendar
Continues: Inside MobileMe: Mac and PC cloud sync and mobile push

Daniel Eran Dilger
Windows enthusiast blogs are atwitter with the news that mobile giant Nokia is considering a partnership with Microsoft to install the Zune Marketplace software on its phones, a move they hope will pull Microsoft’s MP3 player out of its doldrums and make it a contender that can rival the iPod. There’s a few bricks missing from this load however.
Continue reading →

While Apple’s previous .Mac service left many unclear as to what it offered beyond email and web hosting, its value under the new identity of MobileMe is far easier to communicate. MobileMe is all about push messaging, delivering immediate updates to mobile iPhone users over the air for their mailbox, calendars, and contacts as well as web bookmarks. This segment in the Inside MobileMe series looks at how the various components of the MobileMe service work together.

Inside MobileMe: Secrets of the Cloud and Mobile Push
Inside MobileMe: Mac and PC cloud sync and mobile push
Inside MobileMe: Apple’s Push vs Exchange, BlackBerry, Google
Inside MobileMe: iPhone Mail
Inside MobileMe: iPhone’s Exchange alternative for contacts and calendar
Continues: Inside MobileMe: Secrets of the Cloud and Mobile Push

IBM has unveiled a sneak peek of its new Lotus iNotes, a web app client for its Lotus Domino messaging server to bring email, calendar, and contacts to iPhone. The move fulfills rumors of customized iPhone support for Lotus Notes and demonstrates IBM’s evolving interest in Apple within the enterprise.

Planned for delivery later this year, Lotus iNotes is built upon IBM’s existing Lotus Domino Web Access infrastructure. The company’s web site invites users to “bring the enterprise to your Apple iPhone” and says the software will deliver a “rich Apple iPhone user experience.”

IBM published a series of screenshots of the tentative iNotes user interface, with the disclaimer that details are subject to change without notice. Those changes may likely include closer adherence to Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines for the iPhone, as described in Apple’s Introduction to Safari Web Content Guide for iPhone.

Continues: IBM expands Lotus Notes Mac support to iPhone (screenshots)

Here’s a look at how Apple transformed its .Mac service into MobileMe and why the launch failed so spectacularly. In a followup segment, we’ll dive deeper into how MobileMe works, how it compares to competing services, how the service delivers push messaging to the iPhone 2.0 software, and whether it’s worth the annual subscription price.

Inside iPhone 2.0: the new iPhone 3G Hardware
Inside iPhone 2.0: iPhone 3G vs. other smartphones
Inside iPhone 2.0: the new iPhone 3G Software
Inside iPhone 2.0: iPhone OS vs. other mobile platforms
Inside iPhone 2.0: the new iPhone App Store

The new push messaging architecture in iPhone 2.0 is second in importance and relevance only to the Apps Store and the third party development behind it. Apple announced push messaging initially as being support for Exchange Server 2007 via ActiveSync, Microsoft’s push messaging system that the company is advancing in an effort to steamroll RIM’s BlackBerry Enterprise Server. However, just prior to the release of iPhone 2.0, Apple also unveiled its own push messaging service: MobileMe.

Continues: Inside iPhone 2.0: MobileMe Push Messaging