Today Apple had its hype machine in high gear as it announced the upcoming release of iPhone OS 4 earlier today. The faithful all cheered and much of the press reported it as a great step forward. And indeed, Apple did improve the OS over the past version with some long expected enhancements. But it is interesting to see how much positive press was garnered by an announcement with so little technical detail – frustratingly little, in fact. You can read the glowing reports about the release at a large number of sites. So, let me take a minute to give you a somewhat more guarded take on what Apple announced today.
As a side note, let me just note that we have learned to be cautious with criticism that is targeted at Apple, so if you don’t want reality, or at least my take on reality, stop reading now. And since I generally focus on business users and their needs, I’ll start there.
A Huge Step Forward in the Business Segment
Apple made a few major enterprise feature enhancements to OS 4 to address what many companies have viewed as a impediment to wider adoption (and although Apple claims 80% of the Fortune 500 have adopted iPhones, 5, 10 or even 100 units in a company don’t exactly indicate a whole-hearted endorsement – I’d be more impressed if they talked about actual numbers of devices in F500 accounts. Apple says companies can now upload and update apps from corporate systems directly without having to go through iTunes. This is actually a big deal.
Companies will no longer have to side-load iPhones through a PC to get apps deployed. It also looks like Apple “sandboxed” the email client so data that is HW encrypted in the email inbox cannot be accessed without a “key” even if the device is accessed (which was the case before as jailbroken phones had email available to be seen). Again, this is a big deal and very positive. And the new management APIs sound like a major upgrade for policy management and device corporate governance. All of this is an improvement for business and I applaud Apple for moving in this direction. However, initial detailed information was sketchy, so I would want to see more details/specs before I would increase my rating on the marginal business-level security of the current iPhone for enterprise use, especially for regulated industries where security and compliance are utmost considerations.
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Multitasking and the question of 7
Apple also announced it added multi-tasking to the iPhone – but then said basically that multitasking is bad unless you do it our way. Apple announced seven services you can use for background tasks, which is a step forward from the current OS. But background tasks are not true multitasking, and the seven they picked, while important, certainly do not represent all of the functions I may want to run in background. Further, you can’t write your own multitasking capabilities into a program, except by calling their functions. So there are limits to the multitasking that is available. This may be an issue for companies that do a lot of background processing, like running a database or reporting app on a device in background. Apple does have a point – running true multitasking does eat up battery, and potentially has security implications. But shouldn’t that be a choice the user or app developer (or company) should be able to make?
Sticking a Finger in Google’s Eye
I see iAd as the key announcement here and a huge step for Apple. In fact, I think this is their way to stick a finger in the eye of Google, and even MSFT (Bing). It sounds like the only ads that will be going to iPhone and iPad ultimately will be through Apple’s ad-equivalent of its iTunes monopoly for music. iAd is a game changer, and I’ll bet someone will legally challenge this monopoly position (probably in Europe, where iTunes is being legally challenged). It also provides Apple with the potential of a not insignificant revenue stream through ad sharing revenues, etc. Good for them if they can get it. Bad for Google for the minions of iPhone users it would like to capture.
Apple also announced the iBook reader for the iPhone. To me, iBook is no big deal as I am way too old to read long books on a 3” screen. But I grant that some will like this feature. Apple also announced that the APIs for developers seem to have been enhanced. Again, I haven’t seen all that much detail, so I reserve judgment on how helpful that will be. Of course, there are a number of other features, like VoIP (Skype), folders, an improved unified messaging email capability, etc. All of these do seem like honest and welcome improvements.
Perhaps my skeptical nature is showing here. But I would be far more excited about all of this if Apple had produced some real details of how all this works, and allowed us to look at the detailed specs. No doubt this will all come soon. But until then, my enthusiasm for what they announced will have to be reserved, particularly as it relates to enterprise level enhancements. Apple, get beyond your peel and show me your core!
Jack Gold is the founder and principal analyst at J.Gold Associates, an information technology analyst firm based in Northborough, Mass., covering the many aspects of business and consumer computing and emerging technologies.
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