Although most countries with nuclear arms will likely disagree, this was the statement made by Michael Gartenberg, vice president and research director at Jupiter Research in talking about the iPhone 2.0 launch today.
If he means the world of IT mobility, he might be right. The ability to sync emails, appointments, and contacts seamlessly through the ether is a truly enabling technology for today's businesses. In the last 18 months, Apple has taken huge strides to become a major player in providing "over the wire" syncing.
Once (in 2007) a computing platform with little or no successful syncing options - even when connected directly to your computer – the Mac has bubbled up to the top with today's launch of iPhone version 2.0. As most of you probably already know, the "new" iPhone - obtained by upgrading your 1.0 iPhone to 2.0 software, or just by buying the 3G iPhone - will allow "over the air" syncing with both Microsoft's Exchange groupware server, popular with larger companies with primarily Microsoft infrastructure, and Apple's $99 per year MobileMe service.
But if you're as immersed in Mac tech as we are, you'll notice that there's a pretty big gap between the "big business" Exchange businesses and the consumers that are MobileMe's customers. Missing from Apple's plans are the small to mid-sized Mac-based businesses, like ours.
In fact, we're a bit dismayed, because if anyone should have the features, it should be us. Why? Because we're running Apple's "premier" (i.e. only) server platform: OS X Server 10.5.4 (Leopard). If you're a small business that believed Apple's hype that OS X Server was the solution to your company's collaboration problems, then the iPhone will be where you'll be sorely disappointed.
Don't get me wrong - Leopard server is a great platform. At Tech Superpowers, we use the file sharing, networking, iCal calendar server, and even the built-in Wiki server extensively. I'd go as far to say that it is now critical to our daily workflow and, may I add, 10 times better than Tiger's equivalent features.
However, with the iPhone 2.0 release, we were hoping that "over the air" syncing would come to those of us that had invested in Apple's products for business. Yet, since the information released in June on the iPhone, we've seen nothing but disappointment.
Hidden in the depths of the details of Apple's Worldwide Developer's Conference, there were hints that greater support for the iPhone syncing may only come with the next major version of OS X server: 10.6 "Snow Leopard" - to be released sometime in 2009.
That means that small businesses, having paid $1000 for 10.5 OS X server, will now need to invest again in a major upgrade in order to get features that their Exchange and MobileMe brethren will have had for a year. That's sad and frankly it shows exactly how much Apple isn't focusing on some of its core customers.
In fact, the best thing that we can hope for is that a third-party developer will now use the iPhone SDK to devise a method of connecting Leopard's calDAV-based calendar server to the iPhone calendar over the air. Otherwise, we'll have to wait for "Snow Leopard" to be born.
It's a proud day to be an iPhone owner - the iPhone 2.0 launch means incredible things for Apple and the Mac platform. Just don't ask me about OS X Server for a while...
