Out with Treos, in with iPhones

TechRepublic ^ | Monday, June 29, 2009 | Scott Lowe

[Star Traveler]

Out with Treos, in with iPhones
Monday, June 29th, 2009
by Scott Lowe

Over the weekend, my family and I visited Louisville, Kentucky for TechRepublic’s tenth birthday and had a blast! The TechRepublic crew, as always, was a fun and friendly bunch.  While I was there, I mentioned to Jason Hiner that Westminster College was moving away from Windows Mobile-based Treos in favor of iPhones for mobile devices.  He tweeted this to the world (the guy has like 8 billion followers), so I thought I’d follow up on that conversation with a little bit of the background information.

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Obviously, Windows Mobile has been around a long time, as have Treos, under a couple of different names.  Personally, I will admit that I love Treos and have owned quite a number of them, including older Palm OS-based models, plus the Treo 750 and even the Treo Pro, which is a fantastic device.

Shortly after my arrival as the CIO of Westminster College, we started to distribute mobile devices to a number of people, including the executive team, our fundraising department and admissions counselors.  It’s well understood that keeping these folks in touch with their staff or base is critical in this era of high-touch expectation.

We originally standardized on the Treo 750 as the mobile device of choice.  At the time, the iPhone (the original “2G” unit) was, in my opinion, a bit of a joke, particularly as it related to any kind of enterprise communication.  Without the ability to truly integrate with Exchange, the device was simply a toy.  On the other hand, the Treo 750 provided a seamless Exchange experience and was also a capable phone and text messaging device.  For us, text messaging is an important part of our outreach; remember, our customers are in their teens.

By the way, I did try the original iPhone.  At the time, I couldn’t say enough bad things about the device. I didn’t like the keyboard, but the lack of real Exchange integration was what made it a non-starter.  So, I continued on with my Treo 750, eventually replacing it with a Treo Pro, a major step forward for Palm.

Fast forward

Then, Apple released version 2 of the iPhone OS in 2008 and the line between toy and tool started to blur a bit.  Further, more and more apps were making their way into the App Store and rave reviews were being written about the newly released iPhone 3G hardware.

Also around this time, one of my annoying co-workers (ok, he’s actually my extremely talented and competent Deputy CIO) talked me into giving the new iPhone 3G a shot.  This time around, the device had Exchange integration and, even though the keyboard was still painful, the other upsides of the device were becoming very apparent.  The App Store was continuing to grow by leaps and bounds for one thing.  But, what was most intriguing was the overall user experience.

Admittedly, I was probably not that fair in my “iPhone 2G”  test as I was biased toward the Treo 750/Pro device, so I tried to be more objective when I tested the iPhone 3G.  After enough badgering from my Deputy CIO, I gave in and ordered a 3G on a trial basis.  I switched my Treo Pro service over to the iPhone and gave it a 30 day test.  This was back in late 2008.  I still have that iPhone 3G and, to borrow a line from a famous dead person, I’ll give up my iPhone when you take it from my cold, dead hands!   I’ve gotten used to the soft keyboard.  I beta tested the 3.0 software from an early stage, so I’ve been able to enjoy the landscape keyboard for quite some time and it’s a definite improvement.  But, the switchover story doesn’t end there.

The rest of the crew

Remember, we deployed quite a number of Treo 750s to a lot of people on campus, including the president.  Well, after I fell in love with my iPhone, I started lobbying the president to give up his Treo in favor of an iPhone as well.  From a budgetary perspective, the switch ended up not costing anything and with a 30 day test period, we had nothing to lose.  He liked his Treo well enough, but was willing to give the iPhone a try.

Once he got it into his hands, that was the end of the story.  He, too, fell in love with the device for a simple reason: Usability.  Sure, Windows Mobile isn’t that hard to use, but from a user perspective, the iPhone is refined simplicity.  Pretty much everything makes sense and important apps, like the stock checker, are front and center and well-designed, making them, maybe not fun, but enjoyable to use.  That’s where I think the difference comes in.  With my Treo, the device was a tool, and not a lot more.  The iPhone though, draws you in and makes you want to use it and explore new possibilities.  That might sound corny, but it’s true for us.

As contracts come up, we’re replacing Treos across the board with iPhones.  Quite frankly, even if we were to stick with Treos, we’d have to replace those anyway since they’re not holding up well to the use and abuse at the hands of the people using them (no kidding, either… Treos have started dropping like flies around campus), so one way or the other, we’re buying a new device.  Our direction now is to drop all remaining Treos as contracts come up; we’ll be an all iPhone organization within a year.

When you really think about it, Apple has, to a point, taken a page from Microsoft’s play book when it comes to the iPhone.  With an emphasis on allowing others to easily develop, deploy and sell applications, Apple has turned the iPhone into a true platform.  Sure, they still have obvious issues to work out, such as how apps are really approved for the App Store, but the iPhone has been a developer’s dream.

For everything new we do, we’re focused on the iPhone.  For example, we recently had a need to be able to accept credit cards from anywhere while people were on the road.  Well, there’s an app for that.  Literally, it took five minutes to get up and running since we already had the necessary merchant account and processor.  All we had to do was download and configure an app.  Instant credit card terminal.

It’s really neat to see people get excited over what the iPhone can do.  For me, I want to do everything I can to capture this kind of excitement.  It helps people think about what can be done with technology in different ways.  I’ve seen a lot of the people to whom we’ve deployed the devices using them for all kinds of stuff, including Facebook, Twitter and more.  Now, these may not sound like business applications, but for a college intent of finding the best students out there, rest assured that these sites are incredibly important to us.  While they’re completely accessible using the Treo, the iPhone brings simplicity, usability and efficiency to the forefront.

For us, it’s probably obvious that ease of use and integration with Exchange were paramount considerations in our iPhone decision.  However, security also plays a role.  We do take it seriously and I will be the first to admit that an iPhone is still not as secure as, say, a BlackBerry.  The iPhone’s ActiveSync feature does include remote wipe capability, though, which will wipe the device back to factory defaults.  If you want to see remote wipe in action, watch this video.  We’re not running a bunch of enterprise applications on the iPhone right now, so this is all we need.

Obviously, every organization has different needs.  Many require features found only on BlackBerrys or on Windows Mobile devices.  And, the iPhone is still far from perfect, but with the release of the 3.0 software, a lot of the problems are now tied to AT&T, which still doesn’t allow tethering capability or the sending of MMS messages.

As for the iPhone itself, it does still have some of its own shortcomings, such as not being able to sync more than one email folder at a time, but Apple has fixed some major issues; for example, you can now invite attendees to a meeting from the iPhone.  So, progress from Apple is slow, but there is progress!

While I was at the TechRepublic community event, Jason Hiner and Rick Vanover talked me into using Twitter.  Want to follow me and know when new posts are added to IT Leadership and Servers & Storage?  Look for me on Twitter http://twitter.com/scottdlowe.

[Star Traveler]

Scott Lowe has spent 15 years in the IT world and is currently the Chief Information Officer for Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. Scott is also a regular contributor to TechRepublic and has authored one book, Home Networking: The Missing Manual (O’Reilly) and coauthored the Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Administrator’s Companion (MS Press).

[Star Traveler]

See why one CIO is migrating all Treos to iPhones
Posted by Jason Hiner @ 9:43 am

I’ve known Scott Lowe for almost a decade, long before he became a CIO. He is not the kind of IT leader who is susceptible to hype or following what the crowd is doing. So when he told me last week that the iPhone had not only won him over, but that his IT department was in the process of converting his entire organization from Treos to iPhones, I was pretty surprised.

If CIOs like Scott Lowe are doing this, then it’s a pretty good indicator that the iPhone is becoming a very viable and tempting option for a lot of companies out there. Keep in mind that Scott (right) works in the education sector and his organization is an SMB, but it’s still a good story about how the iPhone is starting to win over IT folks. And, fortunately, Scott has now written up the whole story and posted it on TechRepublic.

Here’s a quote from Scott’s article:

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“As contracts come up, we’re replacing Treos across the board with iPhones. Quite frankly, even if we were to stick with Treos, we’d have to replace those anyway since they’re not holding up well to the use and abuse at the hands of the people using them (no kidding, either… Treos have started dropping like flies around campus), so one way or the other, we’re buying a new device. Our direction now is to drop all remaining Treos as contracts come up; we’ll be an all iPhone organization within a year.”

—

I found that Scott’s evaluation and experience with the iPhone was very similar to my own. We both considered the first generation iPhone to be little more than a concept car that looked really cool but had very little usefulness, especially in business (see my 2007 article “Sanity check: How much will the iPhone impact IT and business users?“).

Scott started to become interested in the second generation iPhone because of the strong Microsoft Exchange integration. I still wasn’t convinced yet, mostly because of AT&T and the iPhone’s on-screen keyboard (see my 2008 article “Sanity check: The five reasons I wouldn’t use an iPhone are down to one“).

By the time the third generation iPhone was released on June 19, Scott was already starting to move his entire organization toward iPhones, while I was finally won over by the combination of the iPhone’s Exchange groupware features and the breadth and quality of the third party applications (see my 2009 piece “Palm Pre vs. iPhone 3GS: The choice I made and why“).

from http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=20565

[Star Traveler]

Something about iPhone...

[Star Traveler]

yoo-hoo... :-)

[Star Traveler]

Ummm..., pinging the rabid anti-Mac crowd... LOL...

[Wooly]

Given what is in the pipeline by all the major manufactures and carriers, Android (for all it's positives and negatives) will be squeezing out both Windows Mobile and IPhone OS.
It is not about which one is the best mobile OS, it is about the fact that Android will mean that except for the Business level Blackberries and Palms, the low-end phones that are given away with contracts will be smart phones. The carriers only look at how much they can make and at this time iPhones and other business level phones cost a bunch compared to the Nokia/LG/Samsung/Motos/ that are given to subscribers. Android gives them a cheap phone that they can get into a lot more subscribers hands to make money.

[Wooly]

I didn’t much care for the Treo that I tried.

[Psycho_Bunny]

This sort of mirrors how I felt about - and ended up with - the iPhone. The 1st Gen was a really cool toy but I skipped it for not being a practical tool. Once it had a good Exchange connector I picked one up to see what it was like and learned to love it really quickly.

And now, the 3Gs is simply unbeatable.

There's still inconceivably stupid aspects to it like, why would you put all that effort into making the iPhone a music device and not include a per-band adjustable EQ? That's idiotic. What's with the crappy headphones? - They're almost insulting to include with the device. Why are users locked out of so many basic settings?

The list of annoyances is pretty long.

But in the end - unlike the Apple PC which cannot be objectively labeled better than any good PC, the iPhone owns its market.

[flowerplough]

didn’t much care for the Treo that I tried.

Treo, or trio? I'd probably try the latter, but never had any interest whatsoever in the former.

[Star Traveler]

You know..., other manufacturers seem to want to “milk the market” and let a particular manufactured product go as long as it can, before offering up improvements. But, with Apple, they just *keep at it* and keep improving, no matter what.

AND..., many of those improvements with the iPhone are passed right on back to the original iPhone users, because those improvements are in “software” and thus the User Interface is changed and improved for those original iPhones, too.

I don’t think a lot of people (who are not familiar with the iPhone) realize this aspect of it very well...

[Psycho_Bunny]

I can't even begin to tell you how disappointed I am with Android. Labeling its current incarnation a "beta product" is really generous, on my part.

In a few years it's going to probably be a really nice mobile OS but right now, it's 100% FAIL.

[Erik Latranyi]

You know..., other manufacturers seem to want to “milk the market” and let a particular manufactured product go as long as it can, before offering up improvements. But, with Apple, they just *keep at it* and keep improving, no matter what

I agree. The downside is oversaturation where the consumers cannot keep up with the latest technology...so they burn out on it.

However, Apple is moving faster than Microsoft on making their product better and better....perhaps having full control of the OS and hardware is the key to early-stage devices like smartphones.

Once the hardware matures, it may change the game back to Microsoft like it has done for PCs.

But only time will tell.

[Wooly]

It is not about how disappointed that YOU were, since you are knowledgeable of the current smart phones. It is about all of those people out there using the current el cheapo giveaway phones that thanks to the price of Android, it's ability to run on phones with lower resources, will now be bundles to new contracts that feature stuff that only iPhones and other expensive smartphones can use.
What this means is that given the ATT Wireless business model, the iPhone will probably lose it's home. Whereas Blackberries and Palms (Not a fan of both) will return to an almost exclusive business use.

[Psycho_Bunny]

Ya....I didn’t completely process what you were saying: you’re probably totally right.

[Wooly]

Long Night at work> What I am saying is that for the Carriers (ATT, Sprint, Verizon) it is all about the bottom line. New subscribers are not the cash cow they use to be and on the horizon you see laws about contracts being tilted back toward the consumer.
So how do you increase profit, turn all of your phones into smart phones. You cannot do this with IPhones HTC, Palm or Blackberry. Instead you have a phone the size of an IPhone, running android and this becomes your free phone for new subscribers and upgrades.
Android, because it is open source can be manipulated to force people to use pre-paid or pay for use service instead of being able to circumvent the carrier's charge. It also means that the carriers can get in on the app market.

[piperpilot]

I have had a WM phone (HTC Kaiser/AT&T Tilt) for two years and CAN’T WAIT until the is up at the end of the year so I can trade it in for an iPhone. Microsoft hasn’t accomplished anything more than incremental improvements to its OS in years, whereas the iPhone software increases functionality significantly with each iteration. Also, my Tilt has undergone at least two hard resets and daily soft resets because the OS gets buggy and sluggish over time. I never thought I would say that, either. I was solidly in the non-Apple camp until I got an iPod Touch and started using it. No resets. No constant tinkering to keep it operating within an acceptable range of performance. I just works, and works well. I will be saying goodbye to WM and hello to iPhone 3GS at the end of the year and will not shed a tear for doing so.

[Star Traveler]

And that’s what people are discovering — across the board... welcome aboard... :-)

[shineon]

Unless you like fiddling with configurations, menus, and mouse clicks, Apple products are hands down the best choice right now.

I would love to see a commercial that shows hundreds of Windows OS machine flavors booting up. With a timer spinning. (2,620,800,000,000) Total man hours in the last 20 years spent rebooting the Windows OS. It’s enough to cause Global Wetness. (It’s been raining in New England for the last 4 weeks)

Cut to a Mac running. Boot it once.

[Star Traveler]

You said — Cut to a Mac running. Boot it once.

—

And the really sad thing is that I hear Windows runs faster on a Mac... LOL...

[Star Traveler]

Oh gaawwd! For a minute there, I read “my own title” (of this thread I put up) as...

Out with Trees, in with iPhones

—

I thought... Man! The environmentalists are not going to like this at all... :-)

[ and then my eyesight snapped back to reality again...]