Watching someone’s podcast is like getting to know that person. There’s a personal element that doesn’t exist in traditional news sources. And if Cali wants to do an odd show where she just rags on some guy and supports Apple, I say go ahead. It’s like a friend saying “Okay, I just have to vent…” and then going off on something. You forgive the hard-to-justify comments, because you know the place it’s coming from. At least she had the consideration to alert us that this wasn’t the usual Brief.

You might as well spent the whole episode

telling viewers why you are so in debt

to Steve Jobs! SUCK UP!

Get up off your knees, Cali.

You are better than this crap!

I wonder if he still owns shares in Netscape (That very entrench browser that was all the rage)

Speaking of being owned who’s payroll is he on?

I am prob going to switch to ATT to get the iPhone next year, though I am not so sure I want to go to a slower network. I am kinda looking forward to what Android is going to be like, and if it’s on a phone I like better and is cheaper I will prob stay right where I am just with a different phone… Windows Mobile just isnt all that great. Microsoft is not a company that I care for…

I look to Geekbrief for tech news, advice, gadgets etc. It is one thing to have a favorite platform and an entirely different thing to present information to your audience drenched in opinion, bias and sarcasm. That very reason is why I stopped watching Textra with Natalie Del Conte when it was around. I look to you and others like you for news and information about all things tech. Save the unfounded bias, opinion, remarks and smart-assery for another venue.

Get the facts out of the way Blackberry is the single most used product in the corporate enviornment today. Windows mobile is years away of competing for the marketshare. The iPhone is third, but needs to do something alraming to be in the top 2.

That said, Jobs has had his way in the retail segment with MS and clearly has done the right thing with the conception of the iPhone. The problem is not just the iPhone and thier technology, but Apple as a corporation is not business friendly. I run my own small business and I consult to 5 of the top 10 financial institutions in the world. I have an iPhone. The integratin is terrible, the support from Apple has made me a skeptic in my interest of buying an Apple product. AT&T has offered me two different types of phones when I have had issue with the iPhone, but Apple has them handcuffed from a support perspective. Apple actually had an employee tell me that I should have a backup phone for situations when the iPhone has trouble and needs to go back to Apple.

Cali, I think it behooves you to stick to your strong suits and deal in the shiny happy gadget world. The corporate world is not just good tech, but support and integration as well. Apple’s active sync licsense will not close that gap. They have been in to several customers in order to ink a corporate agreement and gotten nowhere because form was more important than function. The lack of cut and paste (an Apple pioneering technology) is an example of how woefully short sited they are as a company. Corporate folks don’t tolerate the kind of BS that Apple has the habit of dealing.

To be clear, I will buy the iPhone 2.0 when it comes out, I will also likely begin to use more of the services that it will provide on the consumer side, but the corporate side is waiting for Steve to wake up and understand their needs rather than the Jedi mind trick Steve trys to play with the public.

As for Krakow, he is an idiot and shouldn’t speak in front of people or in any medium that he is communicating an important message.

Just my thoughts…

Scott

And I used to think this show had a little class. Insipid beer commercials, and now an uninformed, Apple-Sponsored comment on an OS you’ve obviously never tried. You want to claim to give tech “news”? Try something above the tabloids

Podcast deleted out of iTunes.

I’ve be using a PC since the late 80’s and in my career as a game artist I’ve always had to use a PC. I went with PC because that’s what I used at work and wanted to stay compatible. The problems I have are very rare and I don’t need a miracle to recover from it. I need to not open 30 programs at once and max out my system. But that’s beside the point.

I like Apple, I like their designs and style. Like every company even they can miss some features sometime. No matter what I’m using there are always features I think, what it doesn’t do this?

What I don’t get about Apple and it’s fans is is need to insult PC users. To me that’s not thinking different. They insult us but yet want us to buy their stuff. It’s just not good karma.

A computer any computer is just a tool and is only as creative as it’s user. All I want is compatibly so we can all play and work together. I don’t think that’s to much to ask.

The difference between me and Steve Jobs is that I’ve used touch screens long enough to know they’re not the next big thing. Been there done that, watching all the Apple users have a Steve-gasm while he catches up with the curve.

Respectfully, my work pays for my AT&T cell phone. Am sure you know, that most organizations pay for cellphones to support email access offsite. Short of paying my own way and carrying two phones, I can not own an iPhone but would like one.

Don’t know if my situation is statistically significant, but it sucks anyway. If he had not included the Windows Mobile comment he would have had more credibility, but IMHO, he wasn’t so wrong.

Estaban

Always loved your show, with my coffe in the morning it’s perfect !

I’m surprise that for once you broke your own rule about taking of stuff on the air… to quote you on an earliest geekbrief : “…if i don’t love it, i simply don’t talk about it. I prefer having a most positive approach…”.

Seems to me that this one is done from the heart instead of the head.

I don’t know, just throuwing a ball here : is one of your future sponsor is Apple? That could at least explain this podshow.

regards

How can you be “overly” fair?

sorry, i didnt mean the actual OS, because if the iPhone is anything like my iPod Touch it is completely unstable (my iPod Touch freezes up at least every other day, although I do use it almost constantly.) I meant the RIM service. Didn’t push email or something stop working?

Here, this time I have links!

http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/11/rim-affirms-that-blackberry-services-are-down/
http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2007/04/17/blackberry-network-down/
http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2007/04/18/blackberry-email-still-down-withdrawal-setting-in/
http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2007/09/07/rim-experiencing-another-blackberry-outage/

Obviously I haven’t gained any experience on these topics since yesterday, so i’m still ignorant.

I really do wish apple would let me get an iPhone on Sprint though. It might be easier to convince my parents if we didnt have to switch providers.

So will the next episode be 371? or will 371 be your guys’ 124? (Dawn and Drew Show reference)

-@derekbishe

BUT

Your assertion that the Blackberry OS is “crappy” really was silly. I could quote you facts on more market share than the iphone and growing, to boot but I don’t have to do that.

Ask your fellow Apple fanboy Leo Laporte what cell phone he uses NOW over the iPhone? I’ll give you a hint, its the same one I’m using to type this comment from standing at the train staion.

Peace

Carlos

I also think it is great that they have a passion for the devices they use. Keep of the good work guys.

You can read my opinion about the whole thing here http://tonychall.com/?p=8

You have zero knowledge of the fields of business which you speak of, you are just as uninformed as the fool you so derided.

Because of last nights brief I plan on un-subscribing from all of your feeds and never returning.

You had no right to make the comment that the company known as “Pepsi” was better than “Coke”. Every idiot in the world can tell you otherwise. If Pepsi were to place Coke in their cans, their market value would double – NO, TRIPLE overnight!

Maybe you shouldn’t be doing a podcast. I don’t care that YOU like Pepsi, I like Coke and I’ll be damned if anybody tells me to watch something else.

Shame! Shame I say!

PS: Love the show, hate the haters.

Saying that you get 70 emails a day asking you about problems with Win-mo and Rim is just laughable. Win-mo and RIM software might not be as cool looking, or wiz-bang as the IPhone, but in many ways they are more functional, perhaps a little more stable, but certainly perfectly useable.

There is a reason Apple stays out of the Enterprise market. It would absolutely destroy everything that people love about them. I was able to open a database of correspondence from Charles Darwin today that was written 10 years ago (the database, not the actual letters). The database opened perfectly on a Vista machine. Try doing something similar in 10.5. When you completely abandon support and compatibility with anything 4 years old or older, it frees you up to do all that cool stuff everyone thinks is so innovative. That’s why I own a Mac, but being able to find original letters from Charles Darwin is why I NEED windows.

I have used many mobile devices over the years and the iPhone user experience is the best by far, and the research supports that. Sure there are things missing, and you can argue that it doesn’t do anything other phones do, which is true, but its the user interface and experience that defines the iPhone and makes it so desirable. The 2.0 update to iPhone this month should sort out some of the missing element of the phone, and add the business functionality provided to Windows Mobile devices by Active Sync, but done in a very Apple way.

Gary Krakow should not have a title of a tech journalist if this video is an example of his knowledge. The OS X operating system and UI on the iPhone is what makes the iPhone stand out, and it is clearly successful as just about every other manufacturer out there is trying to come up with a similar device, unfortunately the OS and user experience, in my opinion is just not there in other devices, yet.

My iPhone is a pleasure to use after spending 2 years fighting the S60 platform on my old Nokia, and the last time I looked it still hasn’t improved a great deal.

I like Blackberry devices, they work well, but the UI is old looking a tired, kind of like the email client I used 10 years ago, the iPhone gives me a client which looks like mail on my desktop, thats what I want.

I’ll agree with some of the comments about devices in a corporate environment need to be supportable on a large scale, I work in IT, I know the problems. iPhone has been around less than a year, the business functionality is lacking but should be addressed soon, only then and given a year or two on the market will anyone really be able to say if the iPhone can successfully fit into a corporate environment. Generally companies have Blackberry’s or Windows Mobile devices for the simple reason that have been around a few years and are generally the best choices out there up to this point.

Loved this episode Cali!

Craig

This however was far worse. I feel like I could say a number of awful things since this is the internet, but I won’t. But Cali, please: Apple bias and near worship of Mr. Jobs can only carry something so far. At some point factual analysis have to come into play, NOT severely biased, uninformed snark. I don’t know which was worse, your complete disregard of the technology or the presumption that you know what Apple’s business plan is and how Mr. Jobs feels about his products and their future.

I wouldn’t be surprised if you lost a lot of fans or at least respect because of this.

2) I enjoyed your snarkiness, and it had nothing to do with the merits of the respective devices. Both are clearly good products that have their following. The Highlander attitude is just plain wrong. Different people have different needs and the ability to make that choice based on your needs is a great thing. What I find hysterical is the idea that Apple and Steve Jobs NEEDS to do something, and I find it even funnier that people would consider that they might do it. Whatever people may think of Apple products, Apple as a company has a history of increasing shareholder value tremendously since Jobs returned as CEO. My impression of Steve Jobs is that he is a great CEO, and as such is an egomaniac and a control freak. He may not listen to anybody, and he is definitely not going to listen to love chile of Michael Moore and Andy Warhol.

3) FInally, Krakow’s advice is just plain stupid. There are dozens of Window’s Mobile devices out there and nobody would pay a premium for one with an Apple logo on the back. If I owned a blackberry, why would I give it up for a device with the same operating system but a different logo on the back. If there is one thing I know, is that Apple goes to great lengths to differentiate their brand, and is extremely unlikely to take an action to commoditize the brand.

OK. That said, I thought this brief wandered into a realm where Cali lacked the depth to make such sweeping statements about Apple, Blackberry, Steve Jobs, and the enterprise phone market.

I am a harsh critic of technology. But I recently got a Blackberry (as mandated by my employer) and I find it to be a superior device. It’s powerful and intuitive to use. Yes, I’ve had to ask questions, and not everything was obvious out of the box. But after a few days of getting up to speed, I’ve found the Blackbery to be one of the best-designed portable devices I’ve ever used (the iPod being the other).

I have no idea what Apple’s business strategy is. They may not have a burning desire to “own” corporate. But if they DO want to own corporate, they have a long way to go. Blackberry has a significant head start in this market, and corporate is not an area where the Steve Jobs “magic” is going to flip the market overnight. My officemate is the IT manager of our organization, so I’ve seen up close the heavy requirements for corporate computing and mobile devices. The iPhone may be sexy (and make no mistake, it is), but it will take more than that to gain the trust and confidence of IT folks who spend many late nights and weekends supporting these devices.

At any rate, I agree with those who felt this Brief is an unwelcome departure from the GeekBrief we all know and love. To criticize is one thing. To condescend is another–particularly when it seems to me (and apparently many others) that Cali’s grasp of this issue is possibly no greater than the target of her ire.

Let’s get back to the fun briefs, like when Cali was perched on her couch watching her various Macs have a bootup race. That’s the GeekBrief I love!

Scott

Personally I don’t want an iPhone or a mac i don’t like design of them(shunn the nondelivery) it is something about the design above all else.
And yes I am a boring engineering student that is stuck with an iPod because of DRM.

P.S. What happened to brief 371?

P.S. If I did need to pay for my own cell, I would have an iPhone. No question about it.

Apple Fans: You rock Cali what to stick it to that dude.

Tech Fans (who have in the past enjoyed the show for real tech news): Sad to see Cali act just as bad as the guy in the “news” story. Cali your better than this, unless this is the approach your gong to start on GB…if so I’m done.

BTW, I have no problem with your fangrrl attitude… We all know where you stand on things, and I can get passionless reporting that pretends to be unbiased anywhere.

Cali, I would never call you a bitch, and you did not deserve that. I sincerely hope the person who made these comments apologizes. Fred, if you’re reading this, you owe Cali an apology.

I do think your comments were biased, and showed a complete lack of knowledge of the corporate world and enterprise support in general. Yeah, the guy you were critiquing had some poor ideas, but he was right about one thing – Steve Jobs will need to do something different if he wants to target the business market. So far as I’ve seen, everyone who has been in a position to support both Windows, Linux and Apple devices has reported that Windows or Linux are much easier to support. I certainly know this from my own 20+ years in the field.

If you are going to comment in this area, I think you need to bring your education level on enterprise support. Basing your opinion on more emails from WM users? What percentage of your viewers actually have iPhones – may 10%? I’m very happy with my WM device. In addition to using it for voice, email, fax, and occasionally watching Geek Brief, I also tether it to my laptop when I’m in the field to use its internet connection when hotspots aren’t available. I did evaluate the iPhone, and it just wasn’t up to par. You mentioned that you think its dumb to put another brands stuff on your brand, but doesn’t everyone do that all the time? In fact, isn’t MS Activesynch on the iPhone? Isn’t one of the most popular apps on the Mac MS Office? At least half the people I talk to who have Macs also run Windows XP on the same machine (either through multi-boot or Parallels). This guys comments were a little overboard, but so are yours.

To make a sweeping statement that the iPhone is “hardly a serious business phone” is absurd and is an insult to those of us who use it very successfully in our businesses.

As far as Krakow goes… I always get a chuckle out of ‘experts’ who know what people ‘have to do’. It reminds me of the ‘guys’ around the watercooler on Monday mornings, complaining about ‘their team’ and why they can’t win games.

Very funny.

We have folks in our office that want an iPhone because they are neat. We’ve been supporting BB’s for nearly four years and they just finally got easy to support. Maybe after the Exchange support comes, we’ll revisit, but I don’t want to deal with it now. We’re a small office, less than 10 folks with mobile devices other than phones.

FWIW, I have an older iPod and a iPod shuffle, but use my Zune more than either, why? It’s got more storage.

as far as I and many other I respect feel, the iPhone is the best “play phone” ever but hardly a serious business phone.

Not claiming to know anything here, and I recognize that edge isn’t exactly a treat, but doesn’t BB crash a lot? I can’t say anything from experience, I don’t have any of the three, but I just remember hearing about it crash a couple times. That doesn’t sound stable, per se, but I don’t really know anything about it. I’m just talking out my ass.

Ignorantly,
@derekbishe

I can’t claim to be an apple fan boy, having never owned an apple computer. But I can claim to be anti windows. Even making allowances for bad hardware and whatnot I still can’t believe that the way my XP computer works is how computers are supposed to work.

the only problem I found with this brief is that it was too… Brief

Cali, Neal, keep up the good work. But I was wondering, what with those bars on the sides of the video? Also really liking the new (albeit temporary) studio. I like it much more at night. Are you filming in front of a window or something?

Much love from a geekbrief.tv fan,
@derekbishe

I don’t get this episode. Was the whole point just to bash this guy’s comments? I hear stupid comments all the time, but I don’t go out of my way to embarrass other people in public because they made the comment (and I’ve heard some pretty stupid stuff). Yeah he made some stupid suggestions, but he also had some interesting points buried in there. I say live and let live, too many people with varying mindsets to bother with episodes like this.

btw: I do support BB and winmo devices and I also get plenty of questions, most of the time it’s not the device but either the user asking a howto or the backend is having issues. I can imagine you’re getting similar questions (if you’re not then I’d be curious what the questions are) which is a poor excuse for calling pretty solid products crappy. I can understand if the product downright sucks, but I’ve used and actually still use all three products (winmo, BB, iphone) and I find all of them have things I like and dislike, but I can’t honestly call any of them crap.

Last time I checked, it was CALI’S show usually filled with CALI’S opinions on stuff… there was a disclaimer in the show notes… Wow… the word “Dunderheads” comes to mind… I wonder if all those folks send nasty emails to their local TV stations when they see a news report they don’t like?

Please note: this is the only line in which the word apple appears in this comment!

I’m saying it’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard for someone to say “put this competing brand’s stuff on your brand.”

I did say Blackberry and Windows Mobile software is crap because I hear it 70 times a day in email. If you want to do tech support for all the people who ask me to solve their Blackberry and Windows Mobile problems, then I’m happy to forward it to you. I only get a couple of questions about iPhone support a day, so that’s the foundation for my discontent.

Want to trade places?

I also got a new computer recently with Vista. I reformatted the drive and reinstalled Vista. It runs fine and I actually like Vista. And syncing my phone is incredibly easy and it works well for me.

On another vodcast, it was mentioned that both Palm and Blackberry each sold more units than iPhones in Q1. Well, of course….you can get the devices from pretty much any carrier.

If the iPhone were available from other carriers, I’d strongly consider one…..

The one area that Apple crazies like yourself seem to completely depart with reality is the enterprise environment. You literally have NO idea how elegant and easy administering a fleet of tens of thousands of windows based machines is, how seamless running a business on an MS platform is, and how far Apple are away from that.

Keep to your “cool looking” toys, and leave the real important stuff to the rest of the world.

Yes this guy is an idiot, and misinformed, but you have absolutely NO idea what you are talking about so watching your spar with him on this subject is painful.

And you know….this is it. I’m gone. Your blind faith to “neat looking” gadgets isn’t tempered with any appreciation for actual good tech. I can’t take you praising tiny little shitty speakers because they are cute. I’m tired of you thinking of Apple being the pinnacle of good taste and MS being the opposite.

I love my Ipod. I love my Mac Mini. I love the Iphone, but I can’t take such blind fan service.

I heavily disagree with this guy, but I think you could have addressed it with more tact given it was posted here on geekbrief.

Cali, this was funny and I liked it. I didn’t get arrogance from anyone other than Krakow. As soon as version 2.0 is out and Active Sync is working – there will be a huge demand from the users for iPhone. There already is, corporate just has a legitimate excuse for not granting it without ActiveSync. Since their main objection is getting ready to be toast…

I think Apple is a good buy right now, personally….

- Apple has licensed ActvieSync from MS in order to get Exchange integration in iPhone 2
- Exchange can do everything a BlackBerry Enterprise server can do; yes, everything (I’ve managed both).
- The newest version of Palm OS uses ActiveSync; see a pattern?
- RIM recognized that the only way into the corporate world was to work with MS, like it or not, and it worked. Palm realized it and Apple has now realized it. The iPhone will soon be wildly popular in the corporate world and it will be because Steve Jobs isn’t afraid to work with MS (he did it when he was first hired back at Apple. If you remember, MS gave them a few million bucks and committed to MS Office for Mac).

Cali; love the show, but not this one. If you had countered his suggestions with facts instead of snarky comments it might have had more legitimacy.
Looking forward to #373 or will it be #371…

You seemed like a 14 year old Mac/Apple fanboi in the episode, or possibly a Steve Jobs worshiper. That’s not so good. Please don’t develop a nasty attitude.

I love your show. It’s warm, personal, and interesting. This episode was quite different than your others, in a bad way. A public figure should eschew talking poorly about others, no matter the situation. Personal experience tells me this, but there are very popular books that push this as well (7 Habits of Highly Effective People).

Sure, Krakow’s comments were very silly, but be careful how you manage your own reputation when commenting on others.

Keep up the good work!

As to whether Jobs wants into the business segment, who knows? Certainly not that guy.

I think you ought to stop kissing Steve’s behind once in a while.

I’ve bought GPS software that will only work with windows mobile, if i could put WM on the iPhone i’ll buy an iPhone 2.0 with GPS in the first day.

I think if they let us put windows on the Mac will be a good idea if they let us dual boot on the iPhone.

I will pay double the price of an iPhone if it had WM, is no licesing issue here is just pride thing.

Other than that. I will watch again to see if you go back to just sharing the Happy Shiny Tech likes shows in the past.

I don’t know this guy but someone needs to remind him that Steve HAS licensed active sync and he didn’t take his advice … Ooh ooh while we are dishing out retrospective advice here’s a gem for you Steve “that mobile phone fad might be something to look into” :)

@lcaller

The iPhone won’t be taken seriously in business until it supports corporate email servers like MS Exchange (which I thought it did now) and has 3G. It was ridiculous for Apple to release the iPhone without 3G to begin with, but then again businesses are not their target market.

Personally, I’ve never understood the appeal of the iPhone. It isn’t a good iPod, and it is an antiquated phone. The iTouch on the other hand is a great little device. It has the storage capacity to make it a viable iPod, wi-fi capability and doesn’t pretend to be a phone.

If Apple ever wants any real market share they are going to have to start looking at targetting businesses as well as consumers, and this will be a dramatic switch for them. Consumers are only a fraction of the computer and phone purchasers out there. I don’t think this means adopting Windows Mobile (which would just be silly), but it does mean making a number of changes to allow their systems to work better with Windows and Linux infrastructures. Then again, Apple may be happy exactly where they are, concentrating on the consumer market and being limited in total market share. There is real wisdom in sticking with what you’re good at.

I wouldn’t consider myself a huge fanboy but this guy has no clue.

This line builds in intensity every time I hear it.

Cali you were just precious in this episode — I imagine you could sell the outtakes from this episode for major bank…

But seriously — once the Outlook Gateway is released bunches of us here will clamor for iPhone replacements for our business Blackberrys. (“Oh, I don’t have any idea how my Blackberry broke. BTW – can I get an iPhone instead?”)

Honestly, Mr. Krakow is not someone to be taken seriously. He just enjoys relishing in the attention he gets for being a Cranky Pants. ^-^~

How much is the corporate market needed for iPhone’s success?

Zilch!

Sometimes I am just not impressed by the “experts”.