Rim may need to buy Palm. That would be bad news imo and will just serve to highlight how far behind they feel they are. RIM pioneered push email. But this is now a commodity. But we have gone beyond email. And RIM did not anticipate this and now are falling behind others who did like Apple and Google. Anyway I just wanted to provide a voice that you might not like to hear but may be good to hear. good luck.

Any other middleware solution has a significant cost over free. I also question how much personal liable will actually get adopted by corporate environemnts. How many companies allow you to bring your own laptop? There are many issues to figure out all while still having some standards, accepting the risks of PL. The myth is you save money put you are just shifting expenses from the hardware (capital) to support or increased backend build out (VM, Citrix, VPN etc).

Who pays for the CAL for the PL users? What are the policies for them? Are they limited to mobile email or can they leverage any mobile applications you deploy?

I just don't see user driven IT being to model most companies embrace.

I don't have it installed at home but from memory you will now be able to control:

- disable the camera
- disable safari
- disable apps based on rating
- enfoce password (already present via EAS)
- enforce timeout (EAS)
- Populate VPN settings

The rub would be only some of these will extend via EAS so unless you are running a capable middleware (Good, Trust Digital, Mobile Iron, Sybase) you have no better security. I'd like to know how the data protection is “better' they didn't mention FIPS, didn't allude to background processes being allowed for security functions (encryption, agents for capture of things like SMS etc) so I'm assuming it's not in there.

Will this drive further iPhone adopotion? Maybe – you still need to use another solution, it depends on the company budget and policy for personal liable mobile devices (of any flavour) I think if / when they gets figured out you will see an explosion of multiple devices in companies (bearing they work with whatever middleware is in place) and the needed policies can be created and agreed upon. Once you open that door it's hard to go back ..

RIM should have a good WES and announce some good stuff to show they are not just sitting around. I'm really hoping a firm annoucement around the Webkit browser is put out, some good new BES intergration (SharePoint would be huge) etc. If anyone's going let me know I'll be there …

Steve Main
steve@caspan.com

RIMM stock used to be $200+CAN and has split several times over the past 4yrs. Their corporate OS is PROVEN! By an industry that does not compromise because that industry CANNOT suffer at the hands of a compromise – security, efficiency, and robust operation & uptime of months, not days (charging in-between). This is the perfect OS for consumers. As a Unix Developer, you should know better than to make such a statement – Unix was developed in research for military not the corporate consumer market. Sure the Capt cracked AT&T's wireless network time/date settings back in the 80's but only because their IT had no clue how to secure it.

Evidently OS X has a Unix – via Darwin core under the GUI and part of that is still in the heart of the iPhone OS.

Right now, there is NOTHING that compares to RIM's AutoText within the BlackBerry. And the founders & engineers at RIM BUILT their successful business by USING their product to keep connected with their business, personal and partners; much the same way that Apple uses OS X Server internally for iTunes, and OS X client for their retail stores.

Paid to deride? I wish. That would be a fun job.

First I can not think of a situation that would not be covered by some combination of these approaches. So give apple credit on completeness (Although as Kyle pointed out ‘Task Completion’ is a bit ambiguous, so we will have to see how exactly that is implemented).

Still the question is why. This approach is far more complicated (both for apple and the developers) and offers little benefit. The argument for this approach is battery life, but with the exception of GPS usage, I am not convinced that the battery life saved by this approach would be larger then the extra battery usage from running all of these background tasks to handle the psudo-multitasking…