Ryan Faas - page 20

It seems pretty likely that the invitation to Apple’s iPad 3 event includes a shot of the new model.

The display is particularly sharp and smooth – just like the anticipated retina display for the device.

The spacing of the icon’s on the iPad 3 pictured on the invite clearly indicate that it’s in portrait orientation rather than landscape.  But there’s no sign of a home button, a design change that Apple has been allegedly been toying with for some time.

In addition to iCloud, there are a number of other cloud services available to Mac and iOS users. Dropbox, Box.net, and Google Docs all come to mind immediately and each offers its own set of features. Another option that isn’t discussed so much by Apple users is Microsoft’s SkyDrive.

Although SkyDrive has offered a basic iOS app and web access from Macs and iOS devices, the functionality has been a bit limited. Newly leaked details of an OS X SkyDrive app, however, indicate that Microsoft may be planning to compete against iCloud on Apple’s home turf.

RIM, which is not showing much in the way of new products or technologies at this week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, sought to dispel the idea that its failures over the past year had created tensions between the itself and BlackBerry developers.

The words, meant to be reassuring to developers and users, had a rather hollow ring to them considering that the company has seen major mobile developers retreating from its existing OS and its new platforms based around QNX. The move comes as RIM is seeking to court developers for its PlayBook tablet and future BlackBerry 10 devices. It also comes following the loss of several high profile enterprise BlackBerry customers, something that is sure to be on the minds of mobile developers when choosing platforms to support.

Dell attempted today to rebrand itself as an end-to-end enterprise IT vendor amid slowing consumer PC sales. The company appears to be following in the footsteps of IBM, which sold its PC business to Lenovo, and HP, which came close to selling off its personal systems division last summer.

Dell won’t be getting out of the PC business completely, at least not yet. The company will continue to produce its XPS line of computers, which it cites as a success. It will, however, move away from less profitable markets including PC peripherals.

If you’ve read the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson, you may remember that Apple’s board was initially very hesitant to give Jobs a green light about creating Apple’s retail stores. A decade later, the stores have been an amazing success with hundreds of outlets around the world. They have also become the most profitable retail outlets in America.

Research company RetailSails ranked the country’s top retailers using the common retail metric of annual sales per square foot. Apple nabbed the top spot with sales averaging $5,647 per foot – nearly double high-end jeweler Tiffany and Co., which came in a distant second.

There have been a lot of ideas suggested for what Apple could do with its nearly $100 billion in cash. Some have been serious suggestions like companies that Apple could buy while others are a little more absurd but illustrate just how much money Apple’s got.

Today, Warren Buffett revealed to viewers of CNBC’s Squawk Box that Steve Jobs wasn’t sure what to do with all the money Apple began raking in over recent years and asked for advice. He ultimately ignored that advice in his typical fashion while telling others that Buffett agreed with his decision for Apple to just sit on its money.

A recent study of finance chiefs at over 200 companies revealed that one in six expect the job of CIO to be gone within five years. More than twice that many (40%) expected that IT will eventually be folded into the finance department. This highlights the impact of trends like BYOD, the consumerization of IT, and the growing importance of cloud services.

As IT departments struggle to deal with an ever-increasing influx of iPhones, iPads, Android devices, and other “consumer” technologies, this raises big questions. Would handing management of IT over to a CFO with limited technical experience help or hinder Apple’s position as a business vendor? Would that drive BYOD programs or inhibit them? Would this ultimately be beneficial to most employees at a company?

Although Android has an overall lead over iOS in smartphone marketshare, there are IT departments that remain hesitant on the platform. Unlike the iPad and iPhone, which are beginning to be seen to be as business tools rather than consumer-oriented entertainment devices, most Android phones have yet to prove that they offer a business feature that can’t be found on other platforms. Samsung’s newly announced Galaxy Beam smartphone may be the first Android phone to solidly offer something powerful and unique for business users.

The Galaxy Beam is Samsung’s new handset that includes a 15-lumen pico projector. Although Samsung’s press release for the phone offering a lot of personal entertainment uses, this is a device that has clear business potential.

Let’s face it, RIM has been suffering from a serious personality conflict. The company is trying to cling to its enterprise business while also making its brand more attractive as a consumer alternative to iOS and Android.

Nowhere has this been more obvious than in the company’s PlayBook tablet. RIM initially pitched the PlayBook as being all about consuming content like movies and other media. At the same time, RIM was also trying to sell it as a business device when paired with a BlackBerry even though it lacked core enterprise apps (including email) that could run on the device when it wasn’t tethered to a BlackBerry – a fact that led to RIM hyping the PlayBook’s email app (introduced this week in PlayBook OS 2) as an exciting new feature.

RIM may be caught in this consumer/business identity struggle, but Netflix made it clear today that it doesn’t see RIM as a consumer company – or at least not as a viable one.

Last month, OnLive launched its free cloud-based Windows desktop app for the iPad. OnLive Desktop provides iPad users with a cloud-based Windows 7 desktop that comes complete with the standard Microsoft Office apps (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) and 2GB of storage. This week, the cloud-gaming company expanded the features and storage available to OnLive Desktop users via new subscription plans – one of the most notable being that OnLive Desktop can now play Flash videos and content.

The company will also be adding a more full featured “Pro” plan that will let users install additional Windows applications and an enterprise service that would allow companies to configure and manage virtual Windows desktops on the iPad’s of employees.

Healthcare was one of the first fields to adopt the iPad after it launched two years ago. As with other fields, the initial use of the iPad in healthcare came from doctors and other professionals buying their own iPads and bringing them into their practices or along with them on rounds – a move that predated most of today’s BYOD planning.

A recent study of mobile technology in healthcare clearly shows that the iPad is the number one device used by doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers with significantly greater use than Android or BlackBerry devices or even the iPhone.

A new report from Forrester makes it clear that IT departments and the users that they support are not on the same page when it comes to employees using their own devices in the workplace. In fact, according to Forrester’s survey of both IT staffers and knowledge workers illustrates that IT may be largely out of touch with how many users are bringing their own iPads, iPhones, and other mobile devices and how many devices each employee is bringing to the workplace.

This adds an interesting counterpoint to the study that we profiled early today that indicated that by and large IT departments are beginning to embrace BYOD and other parts of the consumerization of IT trend.

When it comes to the consumerization of IT, there general perception is that IT professionals are very resistant to allowing the use of so-called consumer technology like the iPhone and iPad along with various personal cloud services. While it is true that many IT departments are hesitant about some aspects of this movement, they aren’t as fully resistant to consumer technology in the workplace as media reports would make you believe.

In fact, the results of a recent study looking at the use of personal computing technologies in the enterprise indicate that many IT departments are actively embracing the iPhone and iPad and the entire consumerization trend. The study, being reported by Business Computing World in the UK, included more than 600 senior executives around the world and turned up some surprising results – including how much money goes into managing employee-owned devices.

Apple hasn’t made the Mac App Store the only source for Mac software, but the company is nudging both developers and users in the store’s direction. That’s fine for consumers, but it may create problems for businesses that need to buy software in bulk and distribute it to a large number of Macs.

Securing business data on employee-owned devices like the iPhone and iPad is one of the biggest challenges for IT departments when it comes to operating bring your own device (BYOD) programs. The mobile device management (MDM) approach taken by most companies is an excellent starting point because it aims to make devices themselves more secure. Unfortunately, it also tends to impose limits on what workers can do with an iPhone or iPad that they bought and paid for out of their own pockets.

Another approach to the challenge is to carve out a specific niche of secure storage on each employee-owned devices. Good Technology has always offered this mechanism for securing business emails and related technologies like shared contacts and calendars. This week, Good took that concept and made it available to iOS developers in a product called Good Dynamics.

Mobile devices are now so common in the workplace that we’ve reached a tipping point where providing mobile options for many desktop apps has become a requirement for businesses. That’s the findings of a new survey from Symantec on mobile device use in business.

The survey, initially reported by InfoWorld, identified that not only are the numbers of mobile devices increasing, but also that the tasks they perform are increasing. A dramatic number of companies are now seeing core business tasks being completed on mobile devices. That’s driving the need for companies to develop comprehensive mobile apps for access to corporate information systems.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has been invited to participate in a roundtable discussion at the National Comprehensive Cancer Network’s (NCCN) annual conference on clinical practice guidelines and quality cancer care. The topic of the discussion is Cancer and Corporate America: Business As Usual. At the moment it isn’t clear if Cook will attend (NCCN lists both speakers that have confirmed their attendance as well as those that have not).

The invitation raises some questions about why the organization chose to invite Cook. One obvious answer centers around the role that Cook played in managing Apple while Steve Jobs was fighting the pancreatic cancer that eventually led to his death last year. While that is certainly plausible, there could be other reasons behind NCCN’s invitation.

Screens is one of many VNC apps available for the iPad and iPhone. Screens 2.0, which was released today, takes the concept of remote controlling a Mac or PC to another level. The update offers some very nifty features to the two year old app including integration with iCloud Siri, and AirPlay.

Screens isn’t one of the cheapest VNC solutions for iOS – it has a price tag of $19.99. The software backs up its somewhat steep cost by delivering a great user experience.

RIM has released the first major update to its PlayBook tablet. The update includes some of the core features that didn’t initially ship with the PlayBook last year – including a native email app. The company is also launching the first version of its new management suite for BlackBerry and PlayBook devices, which will also manage iPhones and iPads as well as Android devices in a later release.

Reading RIM’s press release really adds to the sense that company is out of touch with reality and its customers, particularly its business customers.

It looks like Microsoft will be brining Office to the iPad, something that’s been the subject of speculation for a while. Although a photo showing Office on the iPad has surfaced, there are a lot of big questions surrounding it. When will it ship? How much will it cost? Which features will Microsoft incorporate from the desktop version of Office? How will it compare to Office on Windows 8 or Windows on Arm (WOA) tablets?

Then there’s another big question – does it even matter that Microsoft is creating an iPad version of Office?

Apple’s announcement of Mountain Lion breaks with the past in a few ways including by announcing with out a major Apple event. One of the other changes is the news the Apple is moving OS X to a yearly release cycle like iOS. That may be a great way to introduce new features for consumers, but it’s likely to create problems for organizations that have a large number of Macs.

Schools and colleges are still among the organizations that have large Mac populations and have always been a key market for Apple. A yearly release schedule stands to impact them more than any other type of organization and that impact isn’t likely to be a positive one.

One of the features that immediately caught my eye about Mountain Lion was AirPlay Mirroring. As I noted yesterday, this offers a powerful presentation tool for business users as well as a great classroom addition for teachers and trainers.

Of course, it’s also a great entertainment solution and one that has some dramatic advantages over AirPlay Mirroring on the iPad 2 and iPhone 4S. Those advantages are likely to set the stage for a showdown between Apple and the entertainment industry.

Microsoft’s Active Directory is a core component in virtually every enterprise network. When I looked at Centrify’s DirectControl for Mobile, I singled out its deep integration with Active Directory as a major feature and a leg up over some of the other mobile device management (MDM) suites on the market. That’s because Active Directory is an essential piece of technology infrastructure in the vast majority of businesses.

Despite being a Microsoft solution (and a feature of Windows Server), Active Directory is a technology that all Apple IT professionals should understand and have some skills in using. With the Xserve gone and OS X Server headed to more limited uses since the release of Lion last summer, Active Directory is becoming a de facto standard for Macs and iOS devices as much as it is for Windows PCs.

Mountain Lion’s GateKeeper feature is designed to improve Mac security by harnessing the power of the Mac App Store and through a new developer program in which Apple will offer Developer IDs to members of its Mac Developer Program. Those IDs will let developers digitally sign their applications so that Mountain Lion Macs can verify an app’s authenticity and security before running it.

While this may seem like a new approach and an extension of the Mac App Store model, it’s actually based on technology that has been part of OS X since the release of Leopard.

GateKeeper is one of the big new features in Mountain Lion. It’s designed to protect against malware by limiting what kinds of software gets installed on your Mac. GateKeeper offers Mac users three levels of security: Mac App Store purchases (which have been fully vetted by Apple), Developer ID apps purchased outside the Mac App Store that are digitally signed so your Mac can verify their authenticity via Apple, and apps from all other sources.

The GateKeeper model looks great from the perspective of an individual user or family – easy to understand and use while being fairly effective at leveraging Apple’s developer program as a security solution. How it will stack up in business and enterprise environments, where mass deployment are commonplace, may be a different story.