Greyhawk's Meanderings

1 - By your suggestion... I did all three... and I don't even have an iPhone...

...but I might someday...

2 - Are we serious here? Many of our clients have not seen an IBM rep for years.

And today, after Apple introduce their iPhone 2.0 business platform without any IBM related content, Ed Brill and others ask for our support to convince (beg) Apple to let IBM put Lotus Notes in the iPhone.

Wow! Maybe Apple have just read numbers and decided to go with Microsoft. So what should IBM do?

There are good people well payed at IBM, I think that this is their problem. Let them show us what they have for the iPhone, other (better) than DWA. I am not saying I don't want to contribute, but I really think that this have nothing to do with Notes users.

Have we spoke too fast this year @ Lotusphere 2008 in Orlando about the iPhone?

3 - Well, here's the thing. I think as consumers and customers of Apple, signing petitions, emailing them and making forum posts can only help Apple realize there is a market.

Quite frankly I think this was more IBM's ball to drop. They announced iphone support prematurely, and then looked bad when the last keynote showed Exchange only. Now, several months later, they look even worse.

My thought is that Traveler either isn't good enough, or IBM didn't price the licensing aggressively enough to get Apple to bite.

Either way, IBM knows we are not happy, and bitching at them will only get the apologists to rise up.

My thought is, letting Apple know how we feel cannot hurt at all, it can only help grease the wheels so to speak.

I want Notes on my iPhone, so I'll slap some grease on tracks myself.

-Grey

4 - "IBM didn't price the licensing aggressively enough to get Apple to bite"

I'm intrigued that you think this is about IBM having to sell a license to Apple rather than the other way around. I honestly don't know which it is, or if it is some combination or other approach, but I highly doubt this is just Apple shopping around for good deals on licensing for integration.

5 - @4 - Well, Apple. licensed ActiveSync from Microsoft, did they not, which made things easy for them. So why should they have to do all the heavy-lifting to integrate with Domino? Particularly when Domino is more common in larger corporates that will be slower to adopt the iPhone. They went down the Exchange route first because (a) Microsoft made it easy, cheap and quick to do, and (b) the vast majority of small businesses (where the execs are already buying iphones for their kids, if not themselves) run Exchange. It really is IBM's job to be proactive here. Blaming the current situation on Lotus Notes users for not asking Apple for Domino integation is disingenuous, when IBM holds all the keys (the Traveler APIs can't be that bad, surely?) to making this happen.

6 - Ed, it's just a theory. We KNOW that Apple licensed the ActiveSync tech from MS. When you license another technology, you usually pay. Who knows, Apple could have approached MS and they could have said that they could have the licensing for free. Thus exclusivity.

Now since you are "intrigued" why I would think that Apple would have to pay MS, you may be inferring that IBM would have to pay Apple to get on that boat. In that case, IBM has possibly been too cheap to pay the toll.

So now, we have more choices:

1. Traveler is too complicated
2. IBM priced licensing too high
3. IBM was too cheap to pay Apple to get on the iPhone
4. MS beat IBM to the punch and gave/sold ActiveSync to Apple and got exclusivity

So in the instance of #4, it definitely could be MS that is preventing IBM from making headway, but you would think that IBM could have gone toe-to-toe here. Apple and MS don't have a great relationship. Hell, on stage at the keynote they called it ActiveStink at one point.

If I'm so obviously offbase, please enlighten me here.

Thing is, you asked us to contact Apple, I have. Let's see if it makes any difference.

-Grey

7 - As far as I know, thus far, the discussion hasn't been a financial one in either direction, thus my post. Personal instinct says #4 is more likely. But now I'm going to go find out (unfortunately, the "real" answer is unlikely to be blog commentable).

8 - Ed, I understand, and I realize that you are probably as disappointed by this as we are (probably more so as you get to hear the bitching.)

I think the big mistake was that Lotus announced support for the iPhone in January and that made everyone think full-on support, not a web app. Then when two big keynotes go by and neither even make a passing mention of Lotus, that makes most of us go "what the hell?"

The main reason I thought most of this was monetary was because Apple specifically said they "licensed" the tech. Normally that means they paid for it, but knowing MS, they probably did give it away for exclusivity.

You know I love Notes and Domino, and the reason this is really under my skin so much is not because I can't get Notes on the iphone. It's because the whole world was just told Exchange is enterprise email, and Exchange alone.

That makes it harder for me to fend off end-users clamoring for Exchange. It also makes it harder for me to really convince Mac users at my business to use the Notes client. They use MacMail or Entourage, and everything syncs with the iPhone. Not wirelessly mind you, but it does work. They don't want to give that up for that they perceive is a loss of features.

I just want the tools to defend againt the haters, and unfortunately the haters seem to be getting more ammo than me



-Grey

9 - Long time Notes/Domino Admin - CTO Keeps hinting that "well, iphone works with exchange'... and now the Finance guys here have personal iphones and want to check their email... someone's got to start thinking about how decisions made impact the perception of those paying the bills... those folks might not care about how much it costs to move to another platform if they get their personal devices to work. A harsh, but realistic observation of what's happening in one front....

10 - Hey Grey,

Not sure if this is a useful vector (nod to Ed,) but there is an iPhone feedback form on Apple's site: { Link }

Couldn't hurt to include it with the feedback methods mentioned above, I suppose.

-- Grant

11 - nevermind...