Right now, if you want to buy a decent phone system, you look at Cisco, Avaya, 3Com, Nortel, or Mitel. Maybe I missed 1 or 2, but the point is, besides being practically the same products, two things seem notably consistent:
1) They are all moving to VoIP
--- Note: IP is right up Apple's alley!
2) None of them seem willing to embrace an open standard to allow for simple CTI (Computer Telephony Integration)
--- Note: Apple embraces open standards
If I buy a brand new state of the art IP phone system, you'd think I'd be able to use XML or some other basic standard in order to, say, click a button in FileMaker to dial up a client on your telephone extension, or, retrieve call display information from your set and automatically lookup the client file. Seems pretty simple, so why isn't anybody doing it (or if they are, why aren't they talking about it??).
I'm telling you, this industry needs a little jumpstart on the innovation front, and who better to introduce it than Apple.
Okay, so maybe asking Apple to develop a full fledged IP phone system is a bit much, but I bet they could do a softphone that would work with others' phone systems (and bluetooth headsets), and AppleScriptable to boot. That would be the bomb.
Just think about it: get that ugly phone off you desk; maintain the same audio quality; and customize all the features the way you like them right into your FileMaker database via an easy language like AppleScript. WOW!!
Well... I can dream.
1) They are all moving to VoIP
--- Note: IP is right up Apple's alley!
2) None of them seem willing to embrace an open standard to allow for simple CTI (Computer Telephony Integration)
--- Note: Apple embraces open standards
If I buy a brand new state of the art IP phone system, you'd think I'd be able to use XML or some other basic standard in order to, say, click a button in FileMaker to dial up a client on your telephone extension, or, retrieve call display information from your set and automatically lookup the client file. Seems pretty simple, so why isn't anybody doing it (or if they are, why aren't they talking about it??).
I'm telling you, this industry needs a little jumpstart on the innovation front, and who better to introduce it than Apple.
Okay, so maybe asking Apple to develop a full fledged IP phone system is a bit much, but I bet they could do a softphone that would work with others' phone systems (and bluetooth headsets), and AppleScriptable to boot. That would be the bomb.
Just think about it: get that ugly phone off you desk; maintain the same audio quality; and customize all the features the way you like them right into your FileMaker database via an easy language like AppleScript. WOW!!
Well... I can dream.
