Microsoft Licensing of Exchange Active Sync to Apple

Brad Feld had an interesting post this afternoon about Microsoft’s intentions in licensing of Exchange Active Sync to Apple for their new Snow Leopard OS. I commented over on the post, basically in agreement with Brad (at least its how I interpret Brad’s post) that a potential motivating factor is to entrench Microsoft’s back-end enterprise system understanding that the end-user interface will face additional competition and its in their best interest to hold onto the back-end infrastructure.

Brad’s post raised a tangential question I had, which is the purpose of this post, how does Apple’s licensing of Active Sync affect Google’s attempt at interfacing with Snow Leopard’s native applications? A while back Google licensed Active Sync from Microsoft for use in their Google Sync product which helps connect Outlook and other handheld devices to Google apps. So now that Apple’s native apps can sync with Exchange and Google Apps have Active Sync capabilities when will Google Apps  sync with Snow Leopards native apps? Brad ponders that the Apple license may in an attempt to keep Google Apps out of the enterprise, but if Google is able to utilize their licensed Active Sync protocol do eventually Google and Apple do and end run around Microsoft and control the enterprise back-end and front-end? This of course assumes that enterprises would be willing to switch to Google Apps, which is still unproven. But as a user of Google Apps, I’m left wondering will I shortly have built in sync for all services between Google and OS X’s apps?

Apple’s 9/9/09 event

There has been a lot of speculation the last few days over what Apple will release or talk about at tomorrows event. In general, I’ve taken much of the talk leading up to previous events with a large grain of salt, just as I am tomorrows. I don’t think we’ll see an apple tablet, although I can’t wait for one to come out (or the CruchPad if its out first). But stepping back from tomorrows event and thinking about the next 12 months for iTunes/iPods/iPhones I personally feel moving to the cloud would be the biggest “revolutionary” step for Apple to make right now. MG had a good post on this topic today, and it rang true for me. I run iTunes on my iMac, which in turn is the central place for all my music, iPod/ iPhone syncing, and as a result photo storage. Its the only computer with enough storage to handle it. But I would love to be able to sync my iPhone with my MacBook Air while traveling, or play music from my Library through iTunes on the Air, or at my work computer. Such functionaly is going to come, its already coming, the quesion is will Apple lead or will another player steal their thunder.

Besides an iTunes in the cloud, i think updated iPod touch’s that include GPS and a camera would be nice. Not necessary but nice. I would actually like a large capacity Touch to put all my media on that would have GPS (camera don’t care so much about) to travel with. As a result of the limited iPhone battery and my constant usage of the device I’m basically unable to play music on the iPhone and would shell out for a second device to travel with. Even more impressive would be functionality to keep two device “in sync” so that application data would be shared between two device. The goal being a seemless user experience transition between devices (including data stored in applications) *even more important for an Apple Tablet, assuming it runs an iPhone like OS*.

On a related topic, come on Apple why can I not sync my iPhone/iPod Touch with my Mac via Wi-Fi if I’m on the same network? That would simplify things greatly.

iPhone rant #1

While I love the iPhone there are a few elements of the functionality that I really don’t like.

Bugging me the most lately is the fact that you can not end a call (unless you are using a headset) without first clearing through (selecting close or view) EVERY text message received while on the call.

This may not seem that annoying, but with how often I get SMS messages from twitter and other people cobmined with confrence calls it becomes really annoying. Even for the short calls.  I REALLY JUST WANT TO END MY CALL, I’LL DEAL WITH THE TEXT MESSAGES LATER.  What I don’t want to happen is for me to forget about the text messages just so I can end a call.

Please Apple fix this.

What little quarks about the iPhone aggravate you?