More on iPhone versus IT

David Morgenstern quotes Gartner Research Vice President Steve Kleynhans in saying that:

to these new customers, the current IT experience “stands for the inhibitor of technology,” Kleynhans said. He observed that there is a basic conflict growing between the pushing clients and the IT traffic cops.

and really the rest of the article reads like a rehash of my rebuttal from last week.

Am I in the wrong job? I guess I should either be an eWeek columnist or a Vice President for Gartner Research.

And the iPhone itself. Having watched the guided tour I’m more than convinced I’m going to need one. Email is my lifeblood and I hate Blackberry email passionately. Morgansterns article claims that iPhone only having support for POP/IMAP is inelegant. Bollocks to that – requiring proprietary MAPI or other closed API services is inelegant. I want my email on my phone. I want it on my iPhone. I want to be able to roll my own webmail site using Squirrelmail or something like it.

As for the apps – I don’t give a monkeys really. I’d kill for SSH access and I’d love for it to have secure AFP as well but I’d cope if it could handle WebDAV – and arguably it can considering it has Safari. We’re going for a ubiquitous network coverage model here and sure, the technology and the deployment are a little behind the times but that’s going to come eventually.  

I want all these things because at this moment I’m stuck behind an incredibly restrictive firewall and I want to be able to check mail and surf my personal sites during breaks. I want to be able to grab files off my home or office servers when stuck behind this firewall. Having a wireless data connection other than WiFi is just what the doctor ordered. Maybe they should built it into the Mac (though linking my Sony Ericsson K800i to my Mac was simplicity itself for the use of the GPRS network).

The release this week of the iPhone just adds fuel to my desire to see it here in the UK. I’m continuing to count the minutes. And by the time it gets here, it’s going to be a much more mature product.