Mail checks get easier

Apple’s Steve Jobs waltzed around onstage for more than 90 minutes this morning, much of it showing off the soon-to-be-shipping iPhone 4 at the Apple WorldWide Developers’ Conference. While the new phone is 24 percent thinner than the current iPhones, the most impressive business feature comes from the new iPhone OS. Apple has renamed this operating environment iOS, because it runs the iPods, iPads, and the phone.

iOS 4 makes a distinct difference to Apple’s Mail program on the iPhone and the iPad and Touch iPod. Instead of breaking down your mail checking into multiple tries, Mail now consolidates your different accounts into a single “All Inboxes” menu item.

The current state of affairs is frustrating if you use more than one mail account, which is the case for so many small businesspeople. Your personal email goes to a separate account — or at least a separate email address. The new iOS 4 understands that you’ve got multiple personalities for mail.

The iOS 4 will be available to the iPhone and iPod Touch users later this month. The new environment brings things like a $4.99 iMovie, a choice of search engines including Microsoft’s Bing (take that, Google) and a PDF viewer that’s going to make long documents easier to read on Apple’s mobile devices. The Reader will be worked right into the iBooks application.

Oh yeah, and there’s that multitasking thing in the new iOS4, too. Palm hammered Apple on it all of last year until the Palmsters had to sell themselves off to HP. It was not a big enough deal to save the Pre, but Apple’s got the feature now. It’s probably best used with the newest Apple mobile devices, though — for reasons below.

Using iOS 4, there are now folders to organize that mess of apps so many of us have on our Apple mobile devices. But perhaps the best news of all for business phone users involves battery life. The new Apple chip just made things last a lot longer.

The Apple A4 processor made its debut on the iPad this spring, and for us it’s made battery management while surfing the Web a non-issue. Of course Apple’s made the A4 a crucial part of the new iPhone 4. Jobs claims 7 hours of talk time (3G), 6 hours of Web surfing (3G.) And 300 hours of standby.

The multitasking becomes possible because of A4 — which is not inside your 3GS phone, or the 3G, or the Touch. The new iPad’s got the A4, though, and multitasking is headed there, too.

Apple is hitting the Android/Google competition in the most vulnerable spot. Android phones roll kill off their batteries in under a day’s Web use. The ability to take a phone on sales and client calls, use it without regard for performance, and return to base at day’s end without a recharge required in an automobile charger — well, it’s going to take a specialized chip in Android phones to match that. Even with the latest Froyo version of Android’s OS.

FaceTime between Steve and Jony

There’s a front-facing video camera for conferencing over 3G on the new phone, FaceTime video calling. The app only works over WiFi connects for now, something of a black eye for ATT and its 3G network. It works with both front-facing and forward-facing cameras; you can see an Apple demo of it around the 45-second mark of this video on YouTube.

FaceTime was the “one more thing” that has become a trademark of a Jobs keynote. It’s the most forward-leaping feature of the new iOS 4, but it was demonstrated calling top Apple designer Jonathan Ives, as well as a video between family members. Not strictly a business feature, but expect it to be used for more business two-person meetings and face-time. Thus the name, of course. FaceTime requires the new iPhone 4.

The iOS 4 becomes available June 21, and it’s a free upgrade to users of the iPhone all but the oldest iPod Touch devices. (No word on the iPad availability, but expect it to be simultaneous.) The iPhone 4 goes on sale June 24, and ATT will let anyone with a contract that expires during 2010 upgrade their phone.

And that 3GS, still the leading iPhone lineup until the 24th? Starting that day, the device introduced just last year sells for $99 — and you don’t have to buy it at WalMart to get that price.

A slide-by-slide summary of the Jobs keynote at the conference is online at Engadget’s website. CNET has a darn good summary with pictures, too.

Excel poses for its close-up at Macworld

Microsoft has released the 11.5.7 update to its Office suite, aimed at the users of Office 2004. You should download this update to protect your Mac from being hacked by compromised Word, Excel or PowerPoint files. Even the Mac has security flaws, but more common are the hacker entry points through things like Office or Adobe’s Flash. (If you aren’t up to date on the Microsoft security releases, 11.5.7 won’t load up. You can check your status in the Updater Logs folder inside your Microsoft Office 2004 folder. Microsoft also has prior updates available for download, to catch you up.)

Microsoft was one of the few big-name vendors at this year’s Macworld Expo, but it didn’t have new software to roll out this month in conjunction with its show appearance. The Redmond Giant was talking up the forthcoming release of Microsoft Outlook for the Mac. (Talking only, since no demos were presented at the Microsoft booth.) Outlook will be a replacement for Entourage, which still has advocates within the Mac expert community. One advantage of Entourage, noted in a Macworld panel, is its smooth interface with Microsoft Exchange servers, operated at countless companies who handle their own e-mail. Outlook will be inside the Office 2011 suite, and it’s not yet clear if it will be sold standalone. Entourage never was.

Those differences between Entourage and Outlook might have protected the Mac from some Microsoft-based exploits, however. Outlook has such a weak security reputation that it’s called Lookout by the PC community — at least those who’ve been infected by a mail message that wormed its way into the Windows environment on office PCs. Microsoft has closed these holes repeatedly on the PCs, but the tight link between Explorer and Windows remains a point of attack. No such link exists on the Macs.

It appears that Apple isn’t the only vendor who’s chosen an ill-advised name for a recent product though. (iPad will need some extra oomph to sell.) Microsoft will call its new generation of mail program Outlook, “which you’d think was one of the more bankrupt names” in the computer world, according to one panelist on the e-mail client showdown session at Macworld 2010. It’s important to Mac-PC offices that the two products exchange messages easily, to enable switchers as well as interoffice mail using the .PST message format.