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  • Spanks for the Memories

    • 8 out of 10
    • Asylum Street Spankers
    • The Asylum Street Spankers are...well...The Spankers. Hailing from Austin, where I saw them live dozens of times, the band played entirely acousti

  • Kind of Blue

    • 10 out of 10
    • Miles Davis
    • The jazz album to end all jazz albums. Miles Davis and John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderly and the list goes on. The who's who of who's who in jazz have assembled for this monumental record. Get this
  • Go Away White

    • 10 out of 10
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  • De Nova

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    • Wow! Perhaps my 5-star rating is simply because the Redwalls are not only new and fresh (none of them older than 22!), or perhaps its because -- despite their ages -- they are able to totally capture
  • Bowie at Beeb: Best of BBC Radio 68-72

    • 10 out of 10
    • David Bowie
    • The companion CD to a BBC television concert, BBC Radio Theatre has some of the best renditions of many of Bowie's best songs throughout his career. "I'm Afraid of Americans" is substantial

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Editorial

Comparing Apples to BlackBerries

The Apple iPhone has not been positioned as a corporate e-mail powerhouse. Even so, in a "Day in the Life" story, at Information Week, the author put an Apple iPhone through it’s paces as a substitute for his BlackBerry when doing e-mail. No one should be surprised at the result.

The author described his typical work practices and then commented on his experience using each phone. But the premise is flawed. To set off comparing a BlackBerry, a very good corporate e-mail device, to an iPhone is like setting off to see how well a Lexus RX-350 would do in the mountains of Colorado, off road.

"We all know this is the BlackBerry’s forte. These little machines from Waterloo rock at email. My BlackBerry delivered email from my various accounts immediately, and notified me with a little blinking red light," the writer said.

He then went on to describe in detail the problems he had with the iPhone: "The email client is just darned slow. Loading emails is painful. They always snapped right open on my BlackBerry. You can’t breeze through emails on the iPhone. Of course, it looks much better on the iPhone. Form beats function here. But that’s not necessarily a good thing. The list of woes is long."

No one should be surprised at the rest of the "analysis." Then, to add a little bit of pseudo-credibility, there was a single line paragraph for emphasis.

"So what’s the verdict?"

The verdict is that the "comparison" never should have been written in the first place. It was ill-conceived and just stood to confirm corporate notions that the iPhone is not fit for big business. But we already knew that. It almost seemed as if the theme for the article was to confirm the notion that business users and IT managers shouldn’t get excited about the iPhone. Excitement over a new product is bad. Mind numbing work, however, is good.

In time, the iPhone will gain capability. To add that capability at launch would alarm the intended audience. Let’s come back in 18 months and compare the two devices to see how each has evolved.

For now, we’ll see a lot of these faux-comparisons, aimed at creating fodder for IT managers who are alarmed at something new and challenging from Apple. Ordinary people and small business men and women who buy the iPhone for what it is, and not what it currently is not, will just ignore such articles.

So should we all.

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