Read it. Now.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2563324

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Since today appears to be National Pile on RIM Day, I thought I would add a little fuel to the fire.

I see a lot of people talking about the Playbook, the devices and the terrible mobile device experience that RIM has brought to table in contrast to the sleek, new offerings from the competition. I do not disagree with anything that has been said in that area. It’s sad to see a once-mighty company implode the way they are, but given the leadership of the two CEOs in power there, it’s really not a surprise. I also noted that RIM thinks of their ecosystem in a backwards fashion from Apple: the corporate device usage drives the home device choices.

That’s wrong, but whatever.

One thing that I do not see many people talking about is how RIM’s core business is dying. I’ve often considered my enterprise to be a microcosm of what is likely happening around the world. Blackberry Enterprise Server is dying in just about every corporation I’m familiar with. In our own enterprise, the BES device usage is dropping month by month while the iOS and Android devices are skyrocketing. I can’t give you statistics due to privacy stuff, but I assure you that is the case.

I can also vouch that in our research into BES 5.0 has produced interesting results. It appears that the quality assurance on BES 5.0 when paired up with Exchange 2010 has been poor. I know of at least one major social networking organization that was so frustrated by the experience that they dumped Blackberry Enterprise Servers entirely, took away all of the Blackberry devices and handed out iPhones.

If RIM is relying on their core business to stay relevant, they are in more trouble than people think.

Related articles

• Could the News Get Worse for RIM? (blogs.wsj.com)
• RIM Financial Outlook Dismal, 500,000 Playbooks Shipped (mashable.com)
• RIM says second-quarter forecast lower than expected (macworld.com)
• RIM: The big reset (business.financialpost.com)
• Backslapping As Waterloo Burns: Tough Times Ahead For RIM’s Co-CEOs (paidcontent.org)

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A coworker sent this along.  I’ve had this issue on a few contacts and didn’t really have time to delve into it.

Name removed to protect the innocent and good intentions.  Be very careful with this and make sure you have a backup of all data that you plan to manipulate.

—

item1.X-ABLabel:_$!<EX-AssistantPhone>!$_
item1.X-ABLabel:_$!<EX-BusinessFax>!$_
item1.X-ABLabel:_$!<EX-BusinessHomePage>!$_
item1.X-ABLabel:_$!<EX-BusinessPhone>!$_
item1.X-ABLabel:_$!<EX-EmailAddress1>!$_
item1.X-ABLabel:_$!<EX-Home>!$_
item1.X-ABLabel:_$!<EX-HomePhone>!$_
item1.X-ABLabel:_$!<EX-MobilePhone>!$_
item1.X-ABLabel:_$!<Other>!$_

cat munged.vcf | sed -e 's/EX-//' | sed -e 's/_$!<//' | sed -e 's/>!$_//' > fixed.vcf

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One of the greatest things about WWDC is the fabulous music they play before each and every session to keep the devs jazzed up.  There was a thread about collecting the songs that were played before each session because Apple wasn’t posting a playlist.  Fortunately, thanks to the iPhone, devs were walking into the sessions with Shazzam running and collecting information on any songs that weren’t recognizable and posting it to the thread.

Well, that thread has now developed into an iMix.  If you were at WWDC 2009 and want to purchase some of the songs you heard before the session, your wishes have been granted.

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If you find that there’s an address book card out there that isn’t syncing with MobileMe, your iPhone, or another Mac… check to see if there is an ampersand in the failing record anywhere.  Apparently once a card hits MobileMe, it doesn’t like the ampersand in the vcard and chokes on it.  If MobileMe chokes on it, all of your devices will be unable to find the new card.

Just another tip from yours truly.

I’m in New Orleans this week, working project stuff for the day job.  Lots of fun here.  More later.

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• Syncing to an iPhone on MobileMe [Mossberg's Mailbox] (mailbox.allthingsd.com)
• Borange.com – Turning Your iPhone Into A Social Planner (killerstartups.com)

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Apple finally announced the WWDC 2009 dates and they couldn’t have targeted a better week.

It looks like I will become a representative for my agency on the Calconnect standards organization.  They happen to be having a meeting at Oracle in Redwood Shores, CA the week prior to WWDC.  With the wife’s permission, this means two weeks in the wide and crazy world of San Francisco.

I must admit I’m not a huge fan of the San Francisco scene.  Sometimes I feel like I’m too old to really appreciate all the life and culture that goes on out there.  But maybe have a day or two out there by myself with little to do can turn that around.  We shall see.

It seems like I’m getting more traffic to this site, so I’m wondering – do any of you want to see any WWDC-related coverage here, or do you plan on relying on the big boys for that?  If so, maybe I can find some of the little-known stuff to report on.

Let me know.  Even if you don’t care

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• Apple likely to show off new iPhone June 8 (iphonebuzz.com)
• WWDC ’09 Details Posted (tuaw.com)
• Apple announces WWDC 2009 dates; iPhone, Snow Leopard countdowns begin (engadget.com)
• Apple’s 2009 WWDC Signals Countdown To Next-Gen iPhone (iphonesavior.com)
• WWDC rumors abound after Apple schedules conference (macworld.com)

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Did anyone catch the memo?  The one that said Apple is done with Macworld after this year because they want to announce products on their own timeline?  Yeah that one.  I thought you saw that one.

People seem to have forgotten it already.  There’s rampant speculation all over the net about products that Phil Schiller will be announcing during the keynote next week.  Hey, I’ll be there (I’ve got a guaranteed seat for the keynote, yay!) but I’m not expecting anything Earth-shattering.  I’m actually expecting not much of anything except some horn tooting and market share numbers.

But should they choose to introduce new products, I won’t complain.

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• Macworld Expo Downgraded To Moderately Boring
• Apple Announces Its Last Year at Macworld (Steve Dowling/Apple)
• Jobs, Apple out of Macworld Expo

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Even juicier, STS-126 is going on right now. While we were going through the MCC, we could see that the astronauts were in the middle of a spacewalk. They had been at it for about three hours when we walked around and examined all the folks at work.

It was just an incredible experience. The geek in me has truly been touched. We were allowed to take non-flash photos. All I had on me was my iPhone and never have I felt like I wanted to beg Steve Jobs for a better camera. Argh!

Anyway… cell phones aren’t allowed, so I put the iPhone in airplane mode and started taking pics. These aren’t all of the pics, but some of the better ones. Most of them are blurry (THANKS STEVE) and off-color, but salvageable with some work I GUESS… STEVE.

Here’s some of them. I’ll post a full album when I get home and have access to MobileMe. I only have iLife ’06 on this Macbook.

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• Shuttle Endeavour’s Heat Shield in Good Shape

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The net is abuzz tonight as MobileMe users recieve more notices that MobileMe still isn’t what Apple had hoped it would be, so it’s offering 60 days more for free.

Paul Thurrott has already played the part of the cynic and provided a rather insightful metaphor, but I’m going to come down on the positive side and say that MobileMe has been a wonderful experience for me.  Not only has it been wonderful, it’s turned my iPhone into something I can only describe as a thing of glory.

Combining home data sync over MobileMe with work data sync over ActiveSync, all on the same device, has been absolutely wonderful.  I realize, however, that the experience on Windows just isn’t that fab.  That’s okie with me though, Windows users need to be using Apple products on Apple products anyway.

Kinda like Microsoft products work best on Microsoft products.  It’s just common sense.

At least I think it is.

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Most of reactions can be filed under kneejerk, but since that will be the smallest word on the tag cloud (cough cough), let’s analyze this a little bit.

Apple is preemptively warning consumers that some of the publicly available hacks for the iPhone may have caused “damage” of some kind that will either be repaired or turned into an open bleeding wound. The point is not so much that Apple is warning that you may have an iBrick, which is what most people are sticking with. Rather, people feel the point is that Apple is announcing they “intend” to brick you.

Look – the mere fact that Apple is speaking up about this and warning of possible dire consequences proves two things at the very minimum: 1) They have been testing a few of the unlock methods and know there are consequences to the next firmware update and 2) They understand the consumer’s desire to unlock the iPhone and hack away at it, which is why they’re warning you.

Based on this warning, I think many people are getting the mistaken impression that Apple intends to whack your iPhone. I believe this to be false. I would maintain that if Apple was going to intentionally disable this functionality, they would stay quiet about the aftereffects and merely issue the update – then let the customers know how screwed they are when they bring the iPhone in to the shop. Instead, Apple is preemptively warning consumers because they seem to GiveADamn.

Would you rather they just update your firmware and you find out the hard way?

I just don’t understand the mindset of people who call this a customer-unfriendly attitude. Well, actually, I do, but the reason I understand that isn’t kind and… well… I’m going to take someone else’s mother’s advice and not say anything since it’s nothin’ good to say.

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