Ryan Faas - page 10

Apple’s meticulous focus on design and usability is one of the hallmarks of its products. That attention to detail is evident in almost every Apple product, but iOS devices epitomize Apple minimalist approach and its goal of removing any barrier between the user and a great user experience. Unfortunately, not all iOS developers or mobile web developers get to that same level of minimal and effortless design.

There are probably hundreds of small ways that developers can miss the mark when designing iOS apps or creating content designed for mobile devices, but Gartner research director Johan Jacobs notes that most mobile app/experience design failures boil down to ten common mistakes.

May is Mobile Management Month at Cult of Mac, where we will be profiling a different mobile management company every weekday. You can find all previous entries here  and read our Mobile Management manifesto here.

SOTI provides an interesting mix of mobile device and PC management solutions. On the desktop, it offers Windows PC management as well as remote access and screen sharing tools useful to many help desks. From a mobile perspective, it provides a range features including device and app management. Its on-device software and SDK support a range of useful features for iOS devices including two-way chat with users and remote access options. MobiControl SDK also includes a file sync solution for managing content and internal enterprise app data on iPhones and iPads.

Apple has added several whitepapers to its training site. All them address enterprise technologies in Lion. While many of the whitepapers have been available from Apple in the past, two of them appear to be new additions. The first of these details the use of Configuration Profiles to manage Macs running Lion as well as iOS device while the second covers 802.1X networking.

The first new whitepaper, which isn’t dated, is definitely the more interesting of the two.  It discusses Mac management as an extension of mobile device management (MDM). As we reported last week, Apple appears to be positioning Macs running Mountain Lion to be managed in the same manner as iOS devices rather than using its long-standing Managed Preferences architecture that has been built into OS X and OS X Server since their initial releases over a decade ago.

While most new stories covering Internet piracy talk in terms of the entertainment industries and major associations like the MPAA and RIAA, software piracy is often part of the discussion and debate as well. While entertainment companies collectively call for extreme legal measures like SOPA and ACTA, software companies also battle piracy outside the legal arena by using extreme anti-pirating measures built into their products (and their accompanying license agreements). Microsoft is probably best example of a company that goes to great lengths to limit pirating of its products.

With digital piracy being a major issue in many countries over the past several months, the Business Software Association added user surveys to its annual piracy study. The results show that, despite measures from software makers, existing anti-piracy laws, and pending legislation, more than half of all Internet users admit to pirating at least one piece of software.

Netflix announced an updated version of its iOS app on Thursday for customers in the U.S. and Canada. The update is centered around improving the overall user experience while streaming movies and TV shows to an iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch. One important improvement beyond that, however, is the ability to control mobile data use and avoid expensive overage fees.

Healthcare has been a natural fit for the iPad and, to a slightly smaller extent, the iPhone. iOS devices can provide interaction with electronic records and other patient information as well as offer access to reference guides, medical images like X-rays, and even remote diagnoses via FaceTime.

A new program being tested in California’s Marin County aims to bring some of those abilities to paramedics in the field. The program, which equips paramedic teams with iPhones via a specialized QR reader app, is a joint venture with Silicon Valley startup Lifesquare. Its aim is to allow paramedics instant access to patient information using QR codes stickers.

We’ve profiled a range of companies and products during our Mobile Management Month event. One of the things that seems to stand out to some readers is the number of companies that offer mobile management as part of a larger set of enterprise and IT solutions. Integrated solutions are nothing new to IT. The cultural shift of mobile devices and BYOD programs, however, have many organizations wondering whether to go with an integrated  or branch out into new territory and use a range of deployment, management, and monitoring tools for desktop systems as well as mobile devices like the iPhone and iPad.

One of the challenges that the BYOD and consumerization trends are creating for IT departments is employee use of public and/or personal cloud services. We’ve covered some of the big challenges this presents in terms of data security and ownership as well as the potential business continuity problems stemming from multiple versions of documents stored across different cloud services by multiple employees.

IT concerns may be more common and well-known, but there are cloud-related issues that employees need to consider as well – particularly if they use a work email address to register for a service, access a service from work, or use a service to store or transfer work-related files.

As technology and always-connected devices become more pervasive in our daily lives, companies, think-tanks, government agencies, non-profits, and other organizations have access tremendous new pools of information about virtually anything on the planet. The challenge of such a “big data” world is how to aggregate that information, analyse it, make substantive conclusions, and then package in a useful form.

Making sense of data and communicating the results in a concise and effective manner is such a big challenge that many organizations will pay research firms and think-tanks to analyse and package data form them – often as static snapshots  with pages of text and charts and accompanying PowerPoint files.

The ability to access real-time data in a useful way is one of the things that makes MeLLmo’s iPad app Roambi a great business intelligence tool. Today, however, the company announced that it’s taking Roambi a step further and allowing companies to turn the Roambi’s dynamic and interactive data dashboards into full-fledged iOS apps in their own right and market them in the App Store.

May is Mobile Management Month at Cult of Mac, where we will be profiling a different mobile management company every weekday. You can find all previous entries here  and read our Mobile Management manifesto here.

FileWave is a new entrant into the mobile management space but a longtime player in many business and enterprise environments. FileWave offer multi-platform file and application deployment and licensing management for all desktop systems across an organization. The company has a very impressive track record for both IT-managed and self-service provisioning and deployment that has made it a solid enterprise solution for companies with Macs, Windows PCs, and Linux desktops. More recently, the company has begun offering iOS device management functionality. For Apple-oriented businesses, the combination of desktop and mobile device application management makes FileWave a choice well worth considering.

Microsoft is a company known for creating strict, labyrinthine, costly terms in its commercial and end-user licensing. With Windows 8 seen as a make-or-break product for Microsoft, the company has already been adding licensing terms intended to strengthen its hand in the mobile market. As we reported earlier this year, Microsoft’s enterprise licensing for Windows 8 has provisions to coerce businesses into buying ARM-based Windows RT tablets while punishing those that deploy iPads with more costly terms.

Ratcheting things up a notch, Microsoft’s general counsel Tim Fielden announced new details about the company’s end-user license agreements. Although not mentioning specific products or services, Fielden posted on a Microsoft blog that many new agreements will prohibit users from initiating a class action lawsuit against the company.

RIM has made a lot of headlines lately. Most of them have involved an ongoing exodus of executives leaving the company for greener pastures and/or reports of massive layoffs as the company tried to restructure itself under the leadership of new CEO Thorsten Heins.

There’s one bright spot of publicity for RIM this week, however. J. Crew CEO and Apple board member Millard Drexler uses a BlackBerry Bold 9900 – a fact noted after a CNBC piece about operations at J. Crew.

Is this good news for RIM? Yes and no. It shows that not every major company has abandoned the BlackBerry and not every executive has demanded an iPhone (at least not yet). Of course, if Drexler wasn’t a member of Apple’s board of directors, it’s likely that no one would really care what type of smartphone he used.

Mac and iOS business app developer Marketcircle announced the latest of version of Daylite, the company’s business and productivity management app. The new version, released today, is a major upgrade from previous versions. Daylite is an excellent business management tool for OS X and iOS. It focuses on aggregating all manner of company data, monitoring processes, and helping ensure that business users follow up on leads and opportunities. The new release focuses on increasing performance, workflow, and integration with iOS devices.

After the insanely fast sellout of tickets for Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, which kicks off in a couple of weeks, we profiled a range of other events for Mac and iOS developers and for IT professionals who support and/or manage Apple’s desktop and mobile platforms.

While these events are great for developers and IT pros, they focus on the underlying technologies of OS X and iOS more than on how companies and other organizations can implement and leverage Macs, iPhones, and iPads in various businesses and industries. For that, there’s the i.Business Expo, a series of events focused on using Apple technologies to both improve business workflows and for customer/client engagement.

The biggest challenge for many business when dealing with the consumerization of IT and BYOD trends is often cultural. IT needs to cede control of devices, app choices, and where/when employees and executives actually interact with corporate data. That’s a cultural shift for IT. There’s an equal cultural shift that needs to happen when it comes to users and executives who must take at least partial responsibility for keeping their iPhones, iPads, or other devices secure along with the business data on them.

This requires user education and solid communication between users and IT. To be truly effective, security policies need to be endorsed by senior management and adoption and understanding of them needs to follow from the top down through the organization.

Unfortunately, that isn’t what’s happening in many businesses. In fact, the people most likely to ignore or violate such policies are C-level executives, members of the board of directors, and even IT.

One of the hallmarks of Google Docs (and now Google Drive) is that you can use it anywhere. Within reason, any device with a modern web browser can deliver some level of viewing, editing, and collaboration. On iOS devices, however, native Office-style apps like Quickoffice tend to deliver a somewhat better user experience and are capable of opening, editing, and syncing documents with your Google.

There’s a clear value for such capability on an iOS device in that most apps deliver a better experience than Google Docs running in mobile Safari. Is there a similar need on the desktop? Would a native app a better solution than using Chrome or Safari on your Mac? According to Mac/iOS developer Tricky Duck, the answer is yes.

There are a handful of intrinsic beliefs that Apple has as company – most of which came from Steve Jobs. The constant focus on building experiences rather than just products is one of them. Another is that Apple looks forward and not backward when it comes to technology. The company simply acknowledges that to offer its users truly great new experiences (and products), it cannot hold onto (and be held back by) outdated technology.

Apple often gets criticized for pushing its technologies and its users forward, particularly in business and enterprise IT circles. Despite that criticism, Apple may be doing companies (and users) a big favor by not supporting older Macs and OS X releases indefinitely as Microsoft does with Windows XP – and that advantage isn’t just about better products.

An IDC study commissioned by Microsoft discovered that supporting XP now costs companies and schools five times what it would cost them to support Windows 7 – making Apple’s forward-looking policy not only technically advantageous but also significantly less expense in the long run.

Over the course of May, we’ve highlighted a number of different mobile management companies in our Mobile Management Month series. Profiling these companies made me realize how much the mobile management market has expanded to include cloud or SaaS options in addition to on-premise servers installed inside a company’s network.

That’s hardly surprising really – after all cloud models are being applied to almost every type of business computing need.

There are several significant and  attractive advantages to using a cloud service as your approach to mobile management, particularly for small businesses.

Over the past several months, Box has reinvented itself. The company went from being a pretty basic cloud storage solution to true enterprise solution and a hub for storing, viewing, and editing all manner of documents on an iPad or other mobile device. Box’s journey continued this week as the company launched a series of new features for business and enterprise customers.

With its e-textbook initiative, iTunes U, and a range of educational resources, Apple is pitching the iPad as critical element in 21st century schools. Many schools have already begun iPad tests or full-scale deployments. In other schools, however, there’s still a fight over where and how the iPad and other technologies fit into the classroom. A battle erupted between teachers and lawmakers in Idaho earlier this year over new technology requirements in the state’s schools.

So what makes some schools embrace iPads and other new technologies while others resist them? It turns out that the answer may lie in the personal technology preferences of school and district administrators.

May is Mobile Management Month at Cult of Mac, where we will be profiling a different mobile management company every weekday. You can find all previous entries here  and read our Mobile Management manifesto here.

Absolute Manage MDM provides all the major mobile management capabilities. In addition device and app management, Absolute Manage MDM offers a secure on-device file store option called AbsoluteSafe that can be used to deliver files directly to user devices. AbsoluteSafe includes the ability to automate access to files by policies or schedule in addition to on-demand file deployment, removal, or access rights adjustments. The suite integrates with the company’s Absolute desktop client management (Mac and Windows) and deployment suite, together they can provide complete IT and lifecycle management features mobile devices, Macs, PCs, and software.

AT&T has begun shutting down its 2G service in New York to free up spectrum for 3G and 4G customers. The shut down will effect a number of mobile phones that rely on 2G service for voice and data.

If you’re still using an original iPhone that doesn’t support 3G, it isn’t time to worry just yet. At least initially, the AT&T will only be shutting down one of the frequency bands that it uses to provide 2G service. Frequency that is  supported by the original iPhone will be maintained for the foreseeable future.

TSA is the latest U.S. federal agency to make a significant investment in Apple technologies in what may be a move away from RIM’s BlackBerry and Windows PCs. The agency is set to start a pilot program that will run over the next three years and will involve heavy investment in Macs, iPhones, iPads, and even Apple TVs.

According to federal documents (PDF link), the security agency plans to spend $3 million on Apple products and has an amazingly wide range of uses for them in mind. The plans go well beyond the scope of Apple investments made by other U.S. government agencies like the EPA and FAA, which focus primarily on iPhones and/or iPads.

Lead by the iPad, tablets, and other non-phone devices accounted for 20% of mobile ads during the first quarter of 2012. That number is up 5% from the first quarter of last year. The increase reflects a change in the mix of mobile devices that people use to consume content and may have implications for the entire ad industry – mobile and otherwise.

Sprint took a gamble on the iPhone last fall. In exchange for getting the iPhone 4 and 4S on its network, the company agreed to pay $15 billion in subsidies over the next four years. The company acknowledged that it pays 40% more to subsidize the iPhone than it does for Android, BlackBerry, and Windows Phone handsets. To get shareholders on board, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse actually gave up $3.25 million in compensation.

It looks like Sprint’s investment may be paying off in unexpected. A new study by the Yankee Group revealed this week that the iPhone has a halo effect for carriers as well as it does for other Apple products – an effect that dramatically changed public perception of Sprint once it began carried the iPhone.