You're kidding, right?
If not, then it appears you're the only person spreading FUD here.
He was merely referring to the NOC (part of the equation) as the security risk, not Canadians.
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RIM's BlackBerry vs iPhone's ActiveSync
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You're kidding, right?
If not, then it appears you're the only person spreading FUD here.
He was merely referring to the NOC (part of the equation) as the security risk, not Canadians.
Ignorant American? The truly ignorant probably don't know who Steve Jobs is and could care less what he has to say.
And yes, everyone on foreign soil who doesn't kneel in the direction of Washington D.C. each morning is a bad guy.
I think the best way to destroy your credibility is to quote that statement as often as possible.
i believe we'll be hearing about this for awhile.
but like they say at the end, the iPhone seems better. we'll see
but like they say at the end, the iPhone seems better. we'll see
Blackberry reliability
Blackberry has had 99.95% uptime since April 2007. There have been only two outages -- an eleven hour one last April and the recent three hour one. They may bitch, but the system is extremely reliable.
Blackberry has had 99.95% uptime since April 2007. There have been only two outages -- an eleven hour one last April and the recent three hour one. They may bitch, but the system is extremely reliable.
For what it does, Blackberry is an excellent device. It is quite secure and functional with BES. The major drawback to Blackberries is that it is all rather drab and limited. I don't think RIM has it in them to innovate/update to maximize what a portable push device can do. 
using Exchange server is pretty clever given that all BES are built upon an existing Exchange server so the changeover would be pretty painless.
using Exchange server is pretty clever given that all BES are built upon an existing Exchange server so the changeover would be pretty painless.re: push emal available w/o Exchange?
I think we'll have to wait and see, but my guess is, this is only about Exchange connectivity right now. There was a recent rumor that Lotus Notes capabilities are being developed for the iPhone too -- but that might wind up being sold as a 3rd. party add-on, supplied by IBM?
So far, "average consumers" lacking a Notes or Exchange server have only been able to do the "push" email, contacts, etc. with the help of a "middle man" cellular service (like Verizon offers for an additional monthly charge with the Motorola Q phone) - where basically, your PC hands off your data to Verizon, and they act like the missing Exchange server, pushing things on over to the smartphone. Either that, or the RIM/Blackberry's method where you use their desktop client to push the info over the Internet to your phone (again requiring you leave your mail program open and running on your desktop computer, so their client can "echo" the info out to your phone).
I think we'll have to wait and see, but my guess is, this is only about Exchange connectivity right now. There was a recent rumor that Lotus Notes capabilities are being developed for the iPhone too -- but that might wind up being sold as a 3rd. party add-on, supplied by IBM?
So far, "average consumers" lacking a Notes or Exchange server have only been able to do the "push" email, contacts, etc. with the help of a "middle man" cellular service (like Verizon offers for an additional monthly charge with the Motorola Q phone) - where basically, your PC hands off your data to Verizon, and they act like the missing Exchange server, pushing things on over to the smartphone. Either that, or the RIM/Blackberry's method where you use their desktop client to push the info over the Internet to your phone (again requiring you leave your mail program open and running on your desktop computer, so their client can "echo" the info out to your phone).
i believe we'll be hearing about this for awhile.
but like they say at the end, the iPhone seems better. we'll see
Active Sync is nice. I am not sure about cheaper, since now all your phones will need a device CAL (legally anyways...
) and I haven't delt with a BES server (and licensing) in the past 4 years. I mean it is great now all we have to do is open 6 ports (990, 999, 5721, 5678, 5679, 26675) versus 1 port (52311). And you can't gaurantee what IPs will be connecting to those 6 ports either.
Don't sweat it, the ones that really know who the bad guys are are trying to get out of the country... and head up north
Either way... I smell a reality distortion field at Apple. I do hope that the iPhone's enterprise features are successful because that means a real smart phone that also works and looks good (and is a sweet iPod) for us power users. But I hope that Apple doesn't leave those security issues open once the features are available.
The last thing that needs to happen is putting the phone on a better network, and we have a winner of a device.
RIM? Push ? What does all this mean?
Can someone explain to me in layman terms what this whole 'story' is about?
I understand that there are several steps in the RIM approach (whatever RIM is), and that the iPhone via ActiveSync (as opposed to passive, elastic, conjugal, atypical, etc.) circumvents said steps.
But what the heck is this 'push' stuff?
As for the fellow Canadian poster, I had the same initial impression as you did with jobs' example. Needed to re-read it . On the bright side, it is somewhat of a proof that he knows that Canada does exist. So give him some props for that
Can someone explain to me in layman terms what this whole 'story' is about?
I understand that there are several steps in the RIM approach (whatever RIM is), and that the iPhone via ActiveSync (as opposed to passive, elastic, conjugal, atypical, etc.) circumvents said steps.
But what the heck is this 'push' stuff?
As for the fellow Canadian poster, I had the same initial impression as you did with jobs' example. Needed to re-read it
. On the bright side, it is somewhat of a proof that he knows that Canada does exist. So give him some props for that 
One issue that hasn't been covered here is HOW ActiveSync actually works.
It's nice to see the pretty arrow pointing from iPhone <----> Exchange and think that's very simple, but the reality is that it's not.
RIM paid huge bank for the rights to use true push technology. Remember that large lawsuit against RIM for patent infringement and the $600+ million payout to NTP for a perpetual license?
Microsoft didn't pay out any money to NTP for that same patent. So what did they do to enable ActiveSync to do "push"? I should also note that ActiveSync clients prior to the "push" craze could and still can do time based sync'ng (+5 min, +10 min, etc).
When you first sync your ActiveSync client to Exchange, Exchange caches out the devices identity. When a message arrives for the user, Exchange sends an SMS message to the device telling it to sync up to the mother ship. The device does a sync and just like magic your mail is there.
While the user receives his/her mail virtually instantly, the SMS hit can be large as you better have unlimited SMS if you get a lot of email.
It's nice to see the pretty arrow pointing from iPhone <----> Exchange and think that's very simple, but the reality is that it's not.
RIM paid huge bank for the rights to use true push technology. Remember that large lawsuit against RIM for patent infringement and the $600+ million payout to NTP for a perpetual license?
Microsoft didn't pay out any money to NTP for that same patent. So what did they do to enable ActiveSync to do "push"? I should also note that ActiveSync clients prior to the "push" craze could and still can do time based sync'ng (+5 min, +10 min, etc).
When you first sync your ActiveSync client to Exchange, Exchange caches out the devices identity. When a message arrives for the user, Exchange sends an SMS message to the device telling it to sync up to the mother ship. The device does a sync and just like magic your mail is there.
While the user receives his/her mail virtually instantly, the SMS hit can be large as you better have unlimited SMS if you get a lot of email.
Well Let me see. BB has a single point of failure. Plus you have to pay a monthly charge to use the BB service. Currently the company i work for uses BB it cost us 5000 $ US to buy the BES server software. this was only 25 Licenses. I have to purchase a 100 dollar license every time i add a new person to the BES. And on top of the normal Voice plan I have to pay 40 Dollars for the BB data plan.
It cost a lot of money to implement BB. this does not include upgrade fees when ever a new version of the BES comes out. Also it does not account for Device purchase.
It cost a lot of money to implement BB. this does not include upgrade fees when ever a new version of the BES comes out. Also it does not account for Device purchase.
seems to me that one constantly watched central hub is more reliable than any given individual company's exchange server...I know my company's servers regularly fowl up or snag on something inane, and if an IT person isn't in the building at the time, (over the weekend, for example) it is going to be a while before things get sorted out.
The company blackberries keep working, though. That wouldn't happen using apple's system.
this past weekend, our spam and porn filter got an update and somehow decided that all .zip files were bad, and that google.com was a banned chat site. Nothing stopping something like that from inadvertently downing our little activesync uplink if that's what people were using for their BBs...
incidentally, the guy saying that corporate types are dropping their BBs in the trash and getting iphones on their own...only 2 people in my entire office have an iphone. One of them has an iphone AND a BB, and uses the iphone for personal calls. Even this summer when he gets the new features, he won't move his BB line to his iphone because IT isn't going to impliment iphone support for one guy, and he wants to keep work and personal separate.
and without some sort of corporate discounts, our company isn't going to buy people iphones instead of BBs.
apple has already indicated they aren't keen on discounting the iphone because it is apparently too valuable to "give away."
if they really want to woo the corporations, they're going to have to make it financially worthwhile. having an iphone isn't going to increase an executive's productivity. It just might encourage them to waste time with "fun" stuff.
i'd say it's an uphill battle for Apple in this market. They've done well, but corporations are a tough nut to crack. just ask the Macintosh.
The company blackberries keep working, though. That wouldn't happen using apple's system.
this past weekend, our spam and porn filter got an update and somehow decided that all .zip files were bad, and that google.com was a banned chat site. Nothing stopping something like that from inadvertently downing our little activesync uplink if that's what people were using for their BBs...
incidentally, the guy saying that corporate types are dropping their BBs in the trash and getting iphones on their own...only 2 people in my entire office have an iphone. One of them has an iphone AND a BB, and uses the iphone for personal calls. Even this summer when he gets the new features, he won't move his BB line to his iphone because IT isn't going to impliment iphone support for one guy, and he wants to keep work and personal separate.
and without some sort of corporate discounts, our company isn't going to buy people iphones instead of BBs.
apple has already indicated they aren't keen on discounting the iphone because it is apparently too valuable to "give away."
if they really want to woo the corporations, they're going to have to make it financially worthwhile. having an iphone isn't going to increase an executive's productivity. It just might encourage them to waste time with "fun" stuff.
i'd say it's an uphill battle for Apple in this market. They've done well, but corporations are a tough nut to crack. just ask the Macintosh.
The SMS sent to your phone does not count against your normal SMS, actually you never see such SMS in you phone. They are directly delivered to the application using it. They are also encrypted.
I know this for a fact because prior to using Blackberry we use express mail which uses the same method.
And you don't think MS is ready to screw people on licensing fees as well?
EDIT: wow that came across kinda smug... What I was trying to say is MS is sorta cheaper (in the you don't need another server kinda way), but they always get you in the licenses. It seems like you may have to have a client and a device license, and if you have an Enterprise Server there is also a license for that as well.
Well that makes a lot more sense and something I was always a little urked about. Thanks for the information.
Apple is using the latest (and as of Exchange 2007, the only) supported new method which is the DirectPush variant.
Basically, the client device makes a secure (HTTPS) connection to the server. If there is any new event (calendar/contact/mail) then data is sent across the wire. If no data has been sent for the heartbeat interval (typically 30 minutes), then a simple ping message goes across to keep it alive. Otherwise the connection lies dormant, which on most devices means it isn't sucking battery life etc unless it is in the midst of exchanging data.
This DirectPush method does not use any SMS messages and should not be involved with the other patent issue you brought up. Of course, should they decide to sue Microsoft, Microsoft would go to bat to make sure DirectPush stays alive (as it is used by all their current Windows Mobile devices as well)
J
jmadlena
Guest
I don't know why people seem to think that Phil and Steve's comment is about Canada at all. They were merely saying that any single point of failure is a bad thing. Nothing to do with national security here.
I don't think that Jobs meant to exaggerate anything. He is sincerely xenophobic and afraid of anything not from home. I'm not even sure he ever went overseas. He does, however, love to have Euros in his bank account.
I find this hard to believe. Just so you know if exchange is not working then you wont get mail. BB still works as a phone but if exchange is down then BB will not give you e-mail because guess what?? The exchange box is not there to give mail to the BES for delivery. You obviously do not understand that Active Sync depends on exchange as much as BB does.
To the contrary in the BB world there are more point of failure compared to Active Sync.
How accurate is this?
This is very interesting.
Can I then send a similar SMS message from my phone to multiple iPhones and do that quickly to cause them to resync multiple times?
If what you stated is accurate, this can become a problem as SMS usualy flies in the clear and it is not authenticated either.
This sounds like a security issue if you are correct, an unknown entity could cause all client phones to coonstantly try to sync, draining their battery, using all the bandwidth and preventing exchange from working. If there is a single exchange server it would be taking into the ground causing all internal exchange users and external exchange users to not receive service. Basically a Denial Of Service (DoS).
This would be worst than the Blackberry outages as you could cause it to happen any time and as long as you like.
Please reply.
NO. Microsoft sucks on servers. I had to do support on a windoze 2003 file server and i had to babysit that thing all the time. Then it got so hosed that it wouldn't even share files, even though all the settings were right. I was SOOO happy to consolidate that on to a new Sun server running Solaris 10. WAY better. I forget that Sun box is even there some of the time because it never has problems. the only issue I've had is that Sun shipped a really crappy broadcom ethernet driver that caused issues with Samba. However, the latest Solaris driver from Broadcom works just fine.
Exactly, I love my iphone but for Apple folks to sit here and say that the RIM BES is not reliable is just crazy.
Come June, I doubt you will see any BB in the waste bins because of the exchange additions