The IT Guys Blog

This one will have the Apple folks up in arms. I say no to the iPhone for business use.

I’m not here to say the iPhone isn’t beautiful or user friendly or any of that. I love the look and feel and it works excellent as a phone/ internet browser. The issue for me is the lack of physical buttons and lack of support for direct push.

Without buttons how would I ever be able to answer all those e-mails while driving my car? I’m sure the State Troopers love that one… But in all seriousness the lack of physical buttons makes the iPhone very tough to use in certain situations. Imagine your keyboard at your desk was a flat sheet of glass. How well would you be able to type without looking at it? Business users like to multi-task and they need tools that allow them to write an e-mail while on the go and still be able to listen to the people in the board room or pretend to.

My other gripe is the lack of direct push technology supported. This is something non-business users wont understand but it’s important for mobile devices to support this. Especially when your company has already spent a dump truck full of money on Exchange or Domino. Devices like Black Berries and Windows Mobile Devices support direct push in some fashion or another. Black Berry makes you pay for enterprise software while Exchange has built in support for direct push. Direct Push gives you the nice link between contacts, calendar, e-mail, notes, etc. So when you get to your work computer it’s already sync’d or if you get your phone stolen you didn’t lose anything. Direct push also has a certain management aspect to it that I won’t go into. But when you support multiple wireless devices it’s nice to be able to centrally manage them.

Hopefully after reading this you don’t have the urge to hunt me down and throw your iMac at me. But if you do, just remember the IT Guy LOVES his iPod.