Craig Moffet on AT&T’s negative press concerning the lack of MMS and tethering feature support so far:

Apple has radically tilted the strategic playing field away from the network operator in favor of the device manufacturer. Remarkably, Apple has so thoroughly stolen the customer relationship – who would argue that Apple iPhone customers’ first affinity is to the device rather than to the network – that the network is not only irrelevant, it is rather a source of derision.

I think you’d be hard pressed to find someone who actually switched to AT&T because their service or rate plans were actually a draw from another carrier. You expect the service to be about the same across any carrier and you make your choice based on either a rate plan or a device you want. I’m one of the people who switched to AT&T solely for the iPhone when the 3G came out. There was never anything about AT&T that made me want to use them and I was perfectly content using an unlocked device on T-Mobile until there was actually a limitation on speed because of my carrier.

Kudos to Apple to actually pushing out a phone that tries to make AT&T improve their network and feature set on a reasonable schedule. As it is, we’re still well behind the rest of the world.

Via Tech Trader Daily.

So now that the JesusPhone iPhone has been deemed Enterprise worthy around the world with its Exchange support businesses are jumping at the opportunity to move employees on to the platform. Or should I flip that around to say employees are breathing down the neck of IT departments so they can finally get an iPhone?  Either way works.

Apple has actually provided a configuration utility named, oddly enough, the iPhone Configuration (Web – if you use the web version) Utility that you can download for free. There is a native application for OS X and a web-based one for Windows or OS X systems. As far as I can tell, they all have the same feature set. Here’s a quick little tour…

The main screen resembles the iTunes interface for syncing iPods and iPhones. You can also sign your profiles with a certificate, otherwise they’ll appear to be from an untrusted source to the end-user.

The passcode page lets you configure some lockout and pin policies.

Wi-Fi lets you configure wireless network profiles. It’s actually extremely flexible in how much you can configure.

The VPN page lets you configure either PPTP, L2TP or an IPSec Cisco VPN connection.

The Email tab will allow configuration of an IMAP or POP account.

The Exchange tab lets you configure a few settings to bypass any Autodiscover lookup.

The credentials tab lets you import certificates on to the iPhone. You can add a self-signed certificate here (hello SBS users!) to import on the device. You could alternatively point the user at a web address with the certificate file and mobile Safari would prompt them to install the certificate.

Lastly, you can set up the APN address, username and password if you’re really ambitious. I’d suggest leaving this setting alone.

Granted, this has probably been going on for awhile now, but since I tend to use my Apple products on the Mac at home it’s the first time I’m seeing it. The software update I was offered this morning includes Safari being checked by default even though I have never had Safari on my PC. I’m usually a fan of Apple stuff, but this just sucks. If I want the freakin’ browser I’ll download it myself, thanks. I expect an update to be for the products I currently have, not some other product I’ve never installed. I know it’s the Microsoft way, but does Apple have to fall into this crap too?! Very disappointing.