Welcome to From the Forums. If you are curious as to what all of the hot topics are on the TiPb forums, this is the place to be. In order to create any new threads of your own or reply to any of the following threads, you must be a registered member. Becoming a member is a simple process that will only take a few minutes out of your day, so if you haven’t already, head on over and register now.

The first thread comes to us from jaguar11 and he wants to know how many push applications do you currently have on your iPhone? Sure the availability of push notification enabled applications was pretty slow at first but a lot of developers are finally coming around. Hopefully that is a good sign of things to come.

Next up we have a great poll thread from toomanyphones – what iPhone GPS application are you using? It seems like the GPS application market has exploded the past few months as so many developers took advantage of TomTom getting to the party late. So what is your GPS app of choice?

This thread was started by yours truly – what native iPhone application or feature do you use the least? Is copy and paste all it was cracked up to be? How about the landscape keyboard? The possibilities are endless, let us know what you are thinking…

Last but not least, smileyboy started a poll thread that poses the question, what’s your monthly data usage? Are you someone who barely uses data with your iPhone or are you making sure you get your money’s worth for the high prices the carriers are charging?

See you on the forums!

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

From the Forums: Push Apps, GPS Apps, Native iPhone Apps/Features, Data Usage

Crunchgear is reporting that Till Schadde of Equinux has been noticing some weirdness with his AIM app and push notifications. Namely, Schadde has been seeing his AIM messages go to random recipients. He discovered this by being notified that a message he had sent to his iPhone version of AIM was redirected to a random stranger. That stranger then contacted Schaddle to let him know and to supply him with a screen shot of his message.

In the past, TiPb has speculated that there are indeed some issues with hacktivated iPhones. And for those of you who are unfamiliar with “hackivation”, it’s simply a process that tricks an iPhone into believing it has authorized itself with Apple via iTunes and is ready to be used, but is actually activated by other, non-Apple software.

These hacktivated iPhones are not being assigned a unique push ID by Apple the way iTunes activiated iPhones with legit SIMs are. One of our readers, Greg, summed it up best in the comments from our last push notification issue post:

The difference is hacktivation, not jailbreaking. There’s a fair bit of crypto involved in the activation process and the “fixes” so far involve taking certs from other phones. This will only work for so long; eventually people are going to have to be on official carriers and paying official plan rates for Push and YouTube and who knows what they’ll cert off in 3.1 or 4.0?

The Dev Team seem to be working on a fix but it does not appear it will come anytime soon as they’ve avoided even posting a fix on their blog. Instead, they quietly posted a link on their Twitter page to a very beta fix.

All of this is yet another part of the cat and mouse game, but it’s important to try and understand what’s going on: normal iPhone users should have nothing to worry about at this time.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

AIM Push Problems – Hacktivated iPhones to Blame?

It’s that time again — time for us to pick out some of the hot topics on TiPb’s forums. In order for you to reply to any of the following threads please be sure to register. It’s a painless process that will only take a moment of your time.

Forum regular, Duvi, started an interesting poll recently, does anyone believe there will be more than one iPhone next year? My personal feeling is we will be seeing a similar situation as we did this past June 19th. One new iPhone with the 3GS possibly sticking around at a lower price. Thoughts?

This next thread was started by yet another forum regular, cjvitek, who wants to know how many of you actually use the spotlight search feature? Personally I’ve found the more apps and music I put on my 32GB 3GS, the more I find myself using the Spotlight Search. How about you?

Clg82 started an excellent thread for those of you who are looking for all of the Push Notification applications available in Apple’s App Store! Be sure to check this thread out for the latest apps that push. Don’t see one listed? Feel free to add it to the list!

With over a million new iPhones sold recently, most of you probably are in need of some sort of help and/or basic tips to get the most out of your new iPhones. Well TiPb has got just the place for you. Have a question? Look here: iPhone Help. Search here for help and If your search comes up empty feel free to post a question in your own thread. You’ll have an answer in no time!

Bonus poll thread! A war of words seems to be brewing between the Dev Team and George Hotz regarding both of their respective jailbreak solutions. Now that the Dev Team released their jailbreak software (redsn0w) after purplera1n, which piece of software do you prefer – redsn0w or purplera1n?

See you on the forums!

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

More Than One New iPhone Next Year? Spotlight Search, Push Apps, and iPhone Help — From the TiPb Forums

If MobileMe is Apple’s “Exchange for the rest of us”, then ActiveSync is Microsoft’s “Exchange for the most of them”. After Windows and Office, it’s arguably the 3rd pillar of Microsoft’s business domination. Blackberry’s can (and almost de facto do) connect to them, Windows Mobiles certainly connect to them. Even the aging Palm OS Treo’s have ActiveSync support. And with the 2.0 software, the iPhone does as well.

Caveat: Microsoft loves them some monopoly power and proprietary solutions (in this case, for example, using their own MAPI rather than the IMAP IDLE standard for “push” email). They may be becoming increasingly open in the face of Web-based competition, but their crown jewels are still closely guarded. So, while Outlook connects directly to Exchange for — according to them — the “richest experience”, and Windows Mobile probably follows a close second, iPhone like other ActiveSync licensees connects via something called Outlook Web Access, the same way a web browser might.

How does this experience stack up in richness? Read on to find out!

What is Exchange ActiveSync?

This is similar to how Blackberry’s work, though rather than every device being handled by a single central Network Operations Center (NOC), devices can connect to any Windows Server running Exchange (typically your business’ Exchange Server, or a Hosted Exchange solution).

What Kind of Data Does ActiveSync Push?

Email messages, calendar events, and contact listings.

Setting up ActiveSync

Exchange is a magical yet mysterious beast, typically requiring regular IT supervision and administration. If you’re interested in setting up Exchange for the iPhone, Apple provides a PDF overview, as well as utilities to aid in enterprise deployment.

To setup the iPhone for Exchange, start by setting up an email account by tapping Settings, then tapping Mail, Contacts, Calendars, and then Add Account…, and choose Microsoft Exchange.

What you do from there will depend on what version of Exchange you’re running. Theoretically, if you have Exchange 2007, your iPhone will be able to almost configure itself. If you have an earlier version, like the Exchange 2003 Server I was connecting to, you’ll have to enter your Exchange login info (user name, server name, password, etc.)

Using ActiveSync

Due to the problems with Apple’s iTunes activation server on launch day, July 11, I left the store with a still bricked iPhone, and while I was able to unbrick it later at home, I couldn’t connect to iTunes properly and therefore couldn’t sync my data over.

So, while I had a working iPhone 3G, it was a working iPhone 3G with nothing on it, no email, no calendars, no contacts… But a perfect opportunity to try out ActiveSync!

I went through the setup and immediately saw my mail begin to download. I tapped over to calendars and there were my appointments for the day. Contacts? All there.

It’s just that simple… which is really the point.

ActiveSync Email (and Spam!)

Email via ActiveSync works the same, with the same options, as any other mail account on the iPhone 3G, the only difference is the “push”.

Drawback? “Push” spam. If you get a lot of spam (and due to the nature of what I do, my business address has been scraped for over a decade, and I get tons and tons and tons of spam), you’ll immediately discover the annoyance of being buzzed/beeped whenever an “enhancement” or “warez” or “please help get my millions out of Africa” email comes in.

The server-based blacklists, heuristics, etc. filter some, but it’s always a balancing act to nuke the garbage while keeping customer or partner messages from getting accidentally nuked along with them. I’m experimenting with filters via Web Access, but so far this is looking like a major problem for me, given that the iPhone doesn’t seem to have any client side filtering of its own. Little help, Apple?

ActiveSync Contacts

Contacts enjoy both the standard iPhone 3G contact options — and if you use Exchange 2007 this includes picture support — and also Exchange Directory Search. Don’t have someone from the MegaCorp in your local list? Just tap on Groups, Directory, and search away:

ActiveSync Calendars

Like contacts, ActiveSync calendars support all the basic functionality of iPhone 2.0 calendars, with the immediacy of “push” updates (add or delete an event on your iPhone, and it shows up or disappears on your Outlook client or Web access right away), and something else: invitations.

If a co-worker plans a meeting and adds your name to it, you receive an invitation in your Calendar Inbox:

Invitations will display a handy number badge, same as email or SMS, to tell you how many invitations you have. You can choose to accept or decline them. Very sweet.

Bonus: Sharepoint

At its simplest, Microsoft Sharepoint is an online directory for document sharing and collaboration. MobileSafari (the iPhone 3G’s browser) can access corporate Sharepoint sites. Due to its high speed connection and its ability to open Office documents (Word, Excel, and now PowerPoint), and PDF files, the iPhone 3G becomes a good way to access your company’s shared directory from pretty much anywhere.

Again, however, because it’s not Internet Explorer and it’s not using the proprietary ActiveX plugin technology, you won’t get the “richest experience” possible. Hopefully Microsoft will continue their new push (pun intended) towards openess and provide non-IE browsers with a “richer experience” via better AJAX implementation. Maybe even SproutCore…

Using ActiveSync and MobileMe Together

Because I’d originally used ActiveSync with my old, indiscriminate Palm 680, when I hooked up my iPhone 3G, it pulled down a lot of Contact crud that was outdated, and that I’d never bothered to clean out of either Outlook (which I rarely use anymore). This also meant that I had a lot of duplicates from my prior MobileMe update. (But it did show off the awesome new color and translucency effects of the iPhone 3G’s calendar!)

However since ActiveSync is “push”, I just fired up Outlook Web Access in Safari and deleted all non-business, non-current contacts. Almost instantly, my iPhone 3G updated to reflect the changes, and the duplicates were dispatched, the crud cleansed. Likewise, I removed business events from iCal, removing them from MobileMe, which preventing duplicates on the iPhone 3G’s calendar. Now MobileMe exclusively handles personal data, ActiveSync business data, and thus far they work together seamlessly.

Conclusion

ActiveSync, due both to Microsoft’s enterprise domination and the magic of the technology, is an incredible addition to the iPhone 3G, and something that should make business users who value a large, multi-touch screen, not to mention the potential of Unix in your pocket, the polish of Apple’s interfaces, and the promise of the App Store, seriously consider the iPhone in their Enterprise.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Walkthrough: Exchange ActiveSync On Your iPhone 2.0

Ouch! Was that the sound of Crackberry Kevin Hulking Up for another NERD FIGHT, or RIM CEO Mike Lazeridis smashing the desks over at R&D?

Seems like Gizmodo’s Jesus Diaz has just put Apple’s new MobileMe push Email, Contacts, and Calendars service through it’s iPhone paces and their verdict?

BlackBerry is dead, dead, dead. Dead.

And this from a self-confessed former Crackberrian, no less, using a Spanish SIM, on a UK Network, over EDGE! Along with the better, faster, and more powerful OS, Diaz credits the flawless App Store, media, and new enterprise and consumer features as making the Blackberry look “like a brick”.

Yowzer, they say there’s no such thing as bad press but… Yowzer…

As to MobileMe itself?

Not a single glitch—the thing just worked almost instantly. Knowing that Apple is using Sun Java Messaging Servers, probably paired with Synchronica or Consilient’s over-the-air synchronization modules, I’m not surprised. It feels like they have put together a rock-solid operation.

Sign me up! (D’oh, I’m already legacy’d in!)

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Gizmodo Says iPhone MobileMe Kills Crackberry Dead!

Ah, .Mac, the poor abandoned stepchild in Apple’s 360 degrees of spherical integration. It’s the online service Google, Yahoo, and even Microsoft Live kick sand at on the playground.

Sure, Back-to-my-Mac can rock, and syncing can be oh-so-sweet, but c’mon, what have you done for us lately?

Could be a lot, if rumors pan out. We’ve already brought you word on possible iPhone 2.0 .Mac “push” mail, and even reports of a total revamp. Now it seems the revamp may be more of a full on renovation, including a brand spanking new name!

[Dmitry Chestnykh, the CEO at Coding Robots] went through the iCal Localizable.strings file in the recently released 10.5.3 update and found a number of changes. In particular, he found a lot of evidence that the .Mac brand name is going to be replaced. Apple is apparently using a placeholder %@ which will be dynamically replaced by the new name, whatever that is, when it’s released.

Read

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

.Mac: By Any Other Name Would Sync More Sweetly?

During the iPhone SDK Roadmap event today, Apple strolled up to RIM, slipped out a glove, dropped a brick into it, and slapped out one “boom” of a challenge.

Blackberry is an email monster, no doubt about it. Intoxicating “push” delivery and back-end IT administration have made it the darling of the enterprise world. But it isn’t without problems: due to the centralized server-model RIM utilizes (where all mail is collected by RIM prior to being pushed out to end-users), there’s a single point of failure for all Blackberry users everywhere (as seen in two recent, service-wide outages) — and a single point of exploit as well (where an attack on RIM’s server could compromise the privacy and security of the entire user base).

Read on for more!

Apple is eager to exploit this weakness — so eager, in fact, they went right into the belly of the beast itself: they licensed Microsoft ActiveSync to provide direct Exchange support for iPhone.

Come the iPhone (and iPod Touch) 2.0 firmware update targeted for a late June release, every user will be able to enjoy instant “push” access to a wide gamut of Exchange services, including:

• Push email. Write a message, it appears instantly (web congestion notwithstanding) on another Exchange user’s client.
• Calendar integration. Add an event and, “boom”, it’s in Exchange.
• Push contacts. Create or update a contact and everyone sharing gets the update right away.
• Global address list. You get your company’s contacts, updated live all the time.
• Enterprise level security. Including Cisco IPsec VPN, authentication and certificates, 802.1x, policies, configuration tools, and remote device wipes.

Still not convinced Apple has slid up to RIM’s lunch, fork in hand? Phil Schiller, VP of Marketing, displayed a nice slide showing iPhone’s simple Exchange connection (iPhone – Exchange) compared to RIM’s more complex model (Blackberry – NOC – Message Server – Exchange).

“Microsoft has come up with a much more advanced architecture, where the iPhone can work directly with the Exchange server in a more reliable and affordable way.” (Engadget)

ZING!

“You should ask [RIM if Apple is sending them a message]… we’re not sending them a message, we’re sending customers and developers a message that we’re trying to serve their needs.” (Engadget)

POW!

“Why aren’t CIOs really worried about security? Every email message sent to or from a RIM device goes through a NOC up in Canada. Now, that provides a single point of failure, but it also provides a very interesting security situation. Where someone working up at that NOC could potentially be having a look at your email. Nobody seems to be focused on that. We certainly are.”

BOOM!

Bringing up Nike and Disney, while a little nepotistic given the relationships, as well as pointing to academic institution Stanford, put some real-world business deployment on the table. Apple sure does seem serious.

So, should RIM worry? Will legions of CrackBerry addicts give up their hardware keyboards and defect, en-masse, to Apple’s Mobile Platform? Or are they immune to the famed Reality Distortion Field, and laughing even now at Apple’s eye-candy attempts to woo IT? Is Gruber right, “This doesn’t make the iPhone a BlackBerry killer, but the iPhone can do more BlackBerry-ish things than the BlackBerry can do iPhone-ish things.” What do you think?

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Apple to RIM: You Been Served!