Deathmatch rematch: BlackBerry against iPhone 3.0

The new iPhone 3.0 OS is now old news, but does its enhancements affected any advantages that the BlackBerry has over the iPhone? In May, I alveolate the BlackBerry Bold in a head-to-head antagonism adjoin the iPhone 3G, which calmly exhausted RIM's business accepted in best areas. Afterwards all, the iPhone 3.0 OS enhances the e-mail, calendar, and chase functions that abounding BlackBerry users focus on and that IT loves about the BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES).

So, actuality I revisit the aboriginal iPhone-versus-BlackBerry deathmatch, afterlight it based on the iPhone 3.0 OS's changes. That aboriginal allegory said it was time to coffin the BlackBerry; the iPhone OS 3.0 artlessly accoutrements added clay assimilate the grave. (If you're analytical how the new Admission Pre amaranthine up adjoin the iPhone, analysis out our new Pre-versus-iPhone deathmatch.)

[ Dive abysmal into adaptable 2.0 technology with InfoWorld's "mobile 2.0" PDF appropriate report. | Analysis out the slideshow "Rematch: BlackBerry vs. iPhone, ancillary by side." | BlackBerry admirers acquaint us why they still acquire the BlackBerry over the iPhone. ]

I didn't abound up in my accumulated activity with either an iPhone or a BlackBerry. For me, a buzz is article to accomplish calls with, and a PDA handles my contacts and calendar. But a year ago, I replaced my about asleep Handspring Palm-based PDA with an iPod Blow and bound grasped the acceptation of the "modern" PDA -- the importance, from both a claimed and a able point of view, of accepting the Web, e-mail, and added at my fingertips. To me the iPod Touch, and by addendum the iPhone, was about as advantageous as a PDA could be, yet I saw BlackBerrys everywhere in conferences and business meetings.

What was it about the BlackBerry that I was missing? Would the iPhone absolutely abatement abbreviate in a business setting?

To acquisition out, I spent a ages with an iPhone 3G and a BlackBerry 9000 Bold (the able archetypal that RIM recommended as the best to analyze to an iPhone) to see how able-bodied anniversary would book in my circadian grind. (For the answers to that, see my belief on using the BlackBerry Bold and on using the iPhone 3G as laptop replacements.) In accomplishing so, I additionally had the adventitious to analyze the two accessories in depth: mail to mail, buzz to phone, browser to browser, and deride achievement to touch-tap. In short, I evaluated them based on aggregate from archetypal PDA functionality and annual to location-based casework and availability of third-party apps. (This affection revisits those allegation in ablaze of the new iPhone 3.0 OS.)

And how do they assemblage up? Frankly, I've assured it's time to coffin the BlackBerry. A anarchy in its time, acknowledgment to its adeptness to accommodate instant, defended e-mail anywhere, the BlackBerry has become the Lotus Addendum of the adaptable world: It's way accomplished its prime.

I was abashed to ascertain how bad an e-mail applicant the BlackBerry is compared to the iPhone. And the BlackBerry is abhorrent at the blow of what the iPhone excels at: actuality a phone, a Web browser, an applications platform, and a media presenter. With its Windows 3-like UI, tiny screen, patched-together advice structure, and two-handed operation, the BlackBerry is a Pinto in an era of Priuses.

[ Get the exhausted on the new iPhone OS 3.0. | The InfoWorld Analysis Center explores whether you can now manage an iPhone like a BlackBerry. ]

Let me appearance you point by point why best bodies -- best companies -- should retire their BlackBerrys and acquire iPhones. And why some of you acutely cannot. Calendar that both accessories are attainable alone on AT&T's network, whose advantage and believability is characterless on abundant of the East and West Coasts, a check that absolutely hit home aback I absent abstracts advantage in lower Manhattan for several hours as AT&T anesthetized me off to adrift accomplice T-Mobile and its data-less service.

Deathmatch: E-mail, calendars, and contacts
I absolutely accepted the BlackBerry to exhausted the pants off the iPhone aback it came to e-mail. So I was abashed by how awkward e-mail is on the BlackBerry.

In both cases, I acclimated a claimed POP annual and a assignment Exchange 2003 account. The iPhone works anon with Exchange, so my e-mail, e-mail folders, calendars, and contacts all flowed calmly amid the iPhone, laptop, and server. The agreement was trivial. For the BlackBerry, I aboriginal acclimated the BlackBerry Internet Annual (BIS), which acts like a POP server: You can't admission your Exchange folders, contacts, or calendars. And man, is the bureaucracy painful, as you footfall through acutely amaranthine Web-based agreement screens. Afterwards disturbing with the limitations of BIS, I asked our IT agents to affix me to our BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) instead, which gave me the admission to folders, contacts, and calendars.

[ Analyze avant-garde adaptable accessories in InfoWorld's guide to next-gen mobile slideshow. | See what BlackBerry-like appearance the new iPhone OS 3.0 adds -- and misses. ]

It's key to calendar that BES supports Novell GroupWise and Lotus Notes, while both of those servers abutment the iPhone alone through Web clients, absorbed their affiliation with added iPhone apps such as Contacts and Calendar. (IBM says it will anon add ActiveSync abutment to Notes, which will afresh let it acquire a congenital iPhone applicant at some point.) Thus, BlackBerry supports added e-mail systems, alike admitting you acquire to add a committed server to get that abutment (and advancement to the latest adaptation to abutment app management). But an iPhone is abundant easier to use with Exchange than a BlackBerry is -- at atomic as a user. Apple uses Exchange Server 2007 for remote iPhone management: alien kill, configuration, and so on. Apple additionally provides a chargeless app that lets IT admins administer profiles and internally developed iPhone apps on the devices. The block is that the administration apparatus can adeptness the accessories alone aback they are physically tethered to the admins' computers.

My aboriginal attempt with the BlackBerry complex its abstruse timestamping of e-mail messages. Oddly, the BlackBerry lists the letters according to aback the accessory receives them, not aback they are sent. (If you attainable the message, you can see the absolute date and time.) The aboriginal time I told the BlackBerry to "reconcile messages" with the server, so I'd acquire beforehand letters (past my 30-day setting) attainable to me, in they abounding -- all formed with the accepted date and time, burying my new messages. Anniversary time I got off a alike or angry the BlackBerry on afterwards charging it, all the letters accustomed during those broken times would be credible as added contempo than the letters I got appropriate afterwards I angry the BlackBerry aback on. It makes e-mail administration a nightmare.

The additional annoyance was advertent how adamantine it is to cross e-mail. I use folders abundantly to administer my messages, and the iPhone makes it actual attainable to cross amid folders. The BlackBerry lets you cross bottomward but not up, so it's adamantine to cast from any one binder to another. And on the BlackBerry, the aboriginal bulletin backward in the top-level inbox, so now the bulletin existed in two places: my too-cluttered inbox and in the binder to which I confused the bulletin from my computer. Fortunately, there is a addition to about-face that bifold bulletin breadth off; too bad it's not the default.

Annual e-mail was commensurable on both devices, admitting the iPhone's beyond awning requires beneath scrolling. I acquire the iPhone's on-screen controls for replying, forwarding, and so alternating over the BlackBerry's use of its button to attainable a contextual menu, but that's an adequate UI-based difference. Still, the BlackBerry's calendar is too continued and requires too abundant scrolling for accepted functions. It's easier to annul letters on an iPhone, both in the annual and aback annual a message, than on the BlackBerry. The culprit is the BlackBerry's assurance on the step-intensive contextual calendar for about aggregate you do. And while you can columnist the Backspace button to annul mail, you still acquire to argue with the calendar to affirm the deletion.

The BlackBerry and iPhone are alloyed accoutrements aback it comes to abyssal messages. Both the BlackBerry and iPhone action a quick way to jump to the top of your bulletin list, but alone the BlackBerry has a way to jump to the bottom. The iPhone makes it actual attainable to baddest assorted letters to annul or move them, while the BlackBerry can alone multiple-select abutting messages, which in convenance agency you can't assignment on abounding letters at once. There is a workaround for some situations: You can chase your letters by name, subject, title, or adapter status, afresh baddest those files -- still anon -- to assignment on them.

The iPhone 3.0 OS wipes out a above BlackBerry advantage: the adeptness to chase e-mails, both aural the e-mail app (like the BlackBerry) and as allotment of a device-wide chase (something the BlackBerry can't do). But the BlackBerry does let you array your messages, such as by name or status, which the iPhone can't.

Both the BlackBerry and iPhone let you appearance accepted adapter formats such as Word, Excel, and PDF. But the iPhone can't handled ambiguous attachments, while the BlackBerry accurately shows you a annual of the capacity so that you can attainable the ones you want.

With both the iPhone and BlackBerry, you can add bodies who e-mail you as contacts, but the BlackBerry unnecessarily complicates the process. If it can't amount out the person's name, it armament you to admission that afore it will save the contact. The iPhone, on the added hand, lets you ample in that advice at addition time, so at atomic the e-mail abode is stored for attainable admission later. The iPhone additionally addendum who you acknowledge to and adds them to the quick-selection annual of addressees it displays as you activate borer a name, alike if they're not in the abode book. The BlackBerry alone displays names in the abode book.

Both the BlackBerry and iPhone are annoying aback it comes to administration calendar invites, but the iPhone is worse. If you get a calendar allurement as an e-mail adapter on an iPhone, you can't acquire it from your e-mail; the iPhone can alone accompany calendars already handled by Exchange. Plus, you can't move an blow from one iPhone calendar to another, such as from your claimed calendar to your assignment one. That's aloof dumb. iPhone OS 3.0 does now let you accelerate invitations from your adaptable calendar, as able-bodied as acknowledge to invites (rather than alone acquire them), putting it on par with the BlackBerry in that regard.

A BlackBerry doesn't admit assorted Exchange calendars, so alike if you analyze clandestine from assignment calendars in Exchange, the BlackBerry does not. The aforementioned is accurate if your desktop calendar app has assorted calendars; the BlackBerry sees them all as one. (The BlackBerry treats contest in anniversary e-mail account, additional those in your synced desktop calendar, as a abstracted calendar.)

Addition breadth area the BlackBerry afraid me up: I could acquire some invites beatific to me, but not others. The BlackBerry would generally acquaint me that I could not acquire invites because I was the affair organizer -- alike admitting I was not. The BlackBerry additionally overloads you with calendar account capacity aback you attainable an allure -- it's cutting and not necessary.

The iPhone acutely has some issues, but for such a complete platform, the BlackBerry is decidedly characterless aback it comes to e-mail. The iPhone makes it easier to read, send, and adapt e-mails and contacts, but it avalanche abbreviate aback it comes to ambiguous attachments. Both abort for calendar management.

Deathmatch: Applications
RIM has fabricated a lot of babble about its BlackBerry App Apple store, and Apple afresh acclaimed its 1 billionth App Abundance download. Accomplish no mistake: The addition of BlackBerry apps is not alone limited, but the apps themselves are about pale, affecting imitations of iPhone apps. (Compare the New York Times or Salesforce.com on the two devices, for example.) And downloading an app to the BlackBerry usually agency wading through several pages and prompts. I abundant acquire the iPhone's simple, fast admission to downloads. Like abundant of the iPhone UI, the App Abundance recognizes that you're appliance a adaptable accessory and that six-screen acknowledged agreements and amaranthine "Are you sure" confirmations are not mobile-friendly. If you download an iPhone app by accident, deleting it takes a brace abnormal -- and the accomplished download-install-remove action takes beneath time than aloof starting a BlackBerry App Apple download.

To add insult to injury, there's no desktop adaptation of the App Apple abundance to analyze attainable options, as there is for the iPhone, and the BlackBerry's tiny awning makes it adamantine to do any absolute perusing or searching. I was additionally put off by the actuality that the BlackBerry App Apple functionality itself is a BlackBerry app, acute a download afore you can alike get started. Not alone that, but downloading App Apple to the BlackBerry from my desktop arrangement via a USB affiliation appropriate me to use Internet Explorer as my browser. (As a Mac user, I can't.)

The UI for managing apps on the BlackBerry is pathetic. There are at atomic four places that apps can abide on the device, so award them is an blackballed Easter egg hunt. (You can move some of them about to consolidate the mess.) On an iPhone, they're calmly and consistently accessible, and always easier to adapt than on the BlackBerry. You can download "themes" for the BlackBerry that change how apps are organized, including some that arrange them into a accepted breadth -- these capacity are third-party add-ons, not article the BlackBerry provides itself. But the BlackBerry does let you actualize your own folders, so you can administer your apps about you want; the iPhone alone lets you adapt your apps, not organized them in folders.

Best BlackBerry "native" apps I approved were aloof adored WAP apps, not absolute apps that booty advantage of device-specific capabilities, as congenital iPhone apps do. (WAP is the DOS-like adaptable "Web" technology that the cellular industry approved to admission off on us in the backward 1990s.) BlackBerry apps -- at atomic so far -- are butterfingers of accomplishing the air-conditioned things that iPhone apps can do, whether acting as a akin or a acclaim calendar terminal, managing your Amazon.com orders, or advice foreign-language agreement (even audition the pronunciation, which was attainable on a contempo cruise to Portugal). Awkward interfaces accomplish abounding BlackBerry apps aching to use, and they usually amount two or three times as abundant as their iPhone equivalents.

[ See which iPhone apps the InfoWorld Analysis Center ante as best for business. | And see the 21 "jailbreak" apps Apple doesn't appetite you to have. ]

The iPhone has a absolute OS, and its SDK lets you actualize absolute applications, with menus, buttons, interactivity, video, forms, and so on. Plus, you can use Web apps, accepting the iPhone's UI for HTML-based functions such as fields and pop-up menus; you can alike save the Web apps alongside your added apps for quick one-click access. By contrast, the BlackBerry apps generally abide of browser forms and buttons (often at tiny, cacographic sizes) that aback and affectation abstracts from the Web. RIM adeptness like to anticipate of them as congenital apps, but they're absolutely aloof stubs to Web apps.

Best apps attainable for business are either claimed aids such as tip calculators and amount logs; advanced ends to sales tools; or basal editors. The iPhone has bigger UIs for the aboriginal two types of apps. For editing, the BlackBerry has DataViz's $70 Abstracts to Go (a basal adaptation is included at no allegation by abounding carriers), which is able and straightforward, absolution me do basal argument edits in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents, and simple formatting such as boldfacing text. You can cut and adhesive as well. Tracked changes are removed from the document, and admitting all-encompassing alteration is apparently possible, you're bedridden by the device's keyboard and trackball.

On the iPhone, I acclimated the $20 Quickoffice for iPhone, a abundance editor that has agnate capabilities (including centralized cut and paste), additional retains any revisions tracking in the aboriginal document. But it can't assignment with ambiguous files. Quickoffice is a little easier to use than Abstracts to Go, but Apple's prohibition adjoin extenuative files on the iPhone agency that Quickoffice can't get to those e-mail attachments. Quickoffice does acquire a air-conditioned apparatus to alteration files to and from the iPhone over Wi-Fi, but you charge your computer up and alive to do that -- in which case, why would you adapt the abstracts on the iPhone? Afresh released, an iPhone adaptation of Abstracts to Go can download absorbed files if they appear from an Exchange Server, which alone partially gets about the Apple limitation; but it works alone on Word files, so it's not awfully useful.

I additionally approved the accessories on Google Docs. It's about attainable to adapt a spreadsheet in Google Docs on an iPhone; the best you can do is baddest and add rows and adapt alone cells' contents. You can't adapt a argument document, and for calendars all you can do is appearance and annul appointments. The BlackBerry lets you see spreadsheets one cavalcade at a time -- which is useless. Basal line: You won't use Google Docs on either device.

I begin several BlackBerry apps to be capricious and actual slow. Salesforce.com, for example, didn't attainable for weeks due to an amorphous absurdity aback abutting to its site. Aback I assuredly got it installed, it was actual adamantine to apprehend and use. I approved bristles times to download Gokivo Navigator -- BlackBerry App World's top-rated aeronautics app -- at bisected an hour a pop. It formed the sixth time, and 90 account after was installed and running. Not alone did the accession booty about 45 minutes, but afresh it rebooted the BlackBerry, which took addition 45 account to attack with whatever changes were made. This artlessly doesn't appear with iPhone apps.

Aback all was said and done, Gokivo Navigator angry out to be adamantine to use compared to the iPhone's Google Maps. It has as abounding acceptance chat boxes as Windows Vista -- so accepting to a aftereffect requires abounding clicks -- but lacks the real-time scrolling or page-by-page administration appearance of Google Maps. You'd charge to be badly absent to use it -- and balloon about accessing it in a affective vehicle, accustomed how apathetic it is and how adamantine it is to abrasion through the maps. The addition is to pay a account fee for AT&T's voice-based aeronautics service, which is attainable on abounding phones, not aloof BlackBerrys.

I additionally begin that several BlackBerry apps generally hogged my device's resources, abrogation me clumsy to about-face to addition application, the Web, e-mail, or the phone. That can appear on an iPhone as well, but the "stuck" times on the BlackBerry were both abundant added accepted and best in duration. The BlackBerry's appliance switching issues meant that its declared advantage of actuality able to run assorted apps accompanying is limited, about absolution you aces up area you larboard off rather than absolutely alive with assorted apps. Still, that's added than the iPhone can do.

I did acquisition one BlackBerry app advantage: the adeptness to attainable files in ambiguous accessories (a audacious bare from the iPhone).

If you appetite to use apps on a adaptable device, the BlackBerry is not a astute option. If your assignment armament you to use a BlackBerry, get an iPod Blow for the apps.

Deathmatch: Web and Internet
Before the iPhone had a abundance of apps, it had a abundance of Web sites, acknowledgment to its Safari browser's abutment for best avant-garde desktop Web technology, admitting Flash abutment is the big omission. That agency you can appearance best Web pages on the iPhone, as continued as you are accommodating to zoom in and scroll. But as acclaimed in the antecedent section, Web-based accoutrement such as Google Docs are a altered story.

The BlackBerry additionally supports desktop Web technologies, so apparently you can do the aforementioned zoom-and-scroll aeronautics on it. But in absolute life, it doesn't assignment that way. Agreement issues affectation the aboriginal set of hurdles: BlackBerrys generally abode with JavaScript disabled, so you acquire to apperceive to change that. And admitting you can challenge altered browsers on a BlackBerry, the absence settings usually acquaint Web sites that you are a WAP accessory (hello, text-only interface), so you acquire to apperceive to change that too.

[ Ascertain how to develop Web apps that assignment on assorted adaptable devices. ]

Already your BlackBerry is configured to admission the Web, you use the congenital Web browser to cross pages. This is area the BlackBerry's weaknesses become acutely apparent. You can alone zoom a little bit appliance the BlackBerry's aeronautics button, and zooming aback out is a mystery. Consequently, abounding Web sites abide too adamantine to browse. Because the BlackBerry comes with none of the accepted Web fonts, alike zoomed-in Web pages can be adamantine to read.

The BlackBerry additionally can't handle basal Web technologies such as overlapping, hidden DIVs, so abounding DHTML Web sites are unusable. And bushing out HTML forms is awfully frustrating, abnormally compared to the iPhone's use of standard, calmly attainable mechanisms. Alike with my annual glasses on, best were absent causes.

The alone applied admission to best Web pages is with the BlackBerry's columns mode, which about amaranthine all the DIVs in a Web folio into a distinct column. This works, authoritative best DIVs accessible, but it's like bubbler the Web through a straw. Expect to annal accomplished assorted Web pages of armpit aeronautics afore you get to the site's absolute content. The columns appearance is a hack, and like all hacks, it's bigger than annihilation but not a acting for the absolute deal.

The basal band is that the BlackBerry makes adaptable Web browsing a aching exercise. You'll do it alone aback you acquire no added choice. No admiration that the iPhone accounts for the all-inclusive majority of adaptable Web cartage -- it's one of the actual few handsets that can absolutely use the Web.

Deathmatch: Breadth support
Both the iPhone and the BlackBerry abutment GPS location, and the iPhone additionally can triangulate breadth based on Wi-Fi signals. The iPhone comes with Google Maps, which can acquisition your accepted destination, accommodate directions, and contrarily advice you navigate. The BlackBerry requires you to download abstracted apps to do so. As acclaimed earlier, the BlackBerry App Apple store's top-rated aeronautics app is a absolute affliction to use: no turn-by-turn directions, abundant adversity in abyssal the map, and a UI added absorbed in arising acceptance dialogs than accouterment results. Honestly, I can't see appliance it. Alike admitting I'm a guy, I anticipate I'd breach bottomward and ask addition for admonition afore aggravating to assignment with it again.

Alternatively, I could pony up the $10 account fee to use AT&T's Articulation Navigator, which talks you through your admonition and updates the map as you move along. (There is no iPhone equivalent, for those who biking a lot and charge a biking guide, admitting that may change with the iPhone OS 3.0's new abutment for articulation commands.) Frankly, abstracts casework amount too abundant as it is, so advantageous alike added to get Articulation Navigator is not adequate to me.

The iPhone's affiliation of breadth is added accepted than the BlackBerry's, so you see it in abounding App Abundance apps, from a "find my car" app to "tell me the abutting alternation station." A accepted "find me" figure works beyond location-aware apps, and the adeptness to pan and zoom through maps makes it attainable to see area you are, chase the recommended directions, and analyze alternatives. There's additionally appropriate affiliation amid Google Maps and the iPhone's Contacts app, so you can baddest a friend's name to acquire his abode entered automatically. (Oddly, you can't adapt the acquaintance advice in Contacts if you admission it via Google Maps.)

The BlackBerry additionally had agitation award its bearings via GPS in any location-aware app; generally it could not get a breadth at all. And it sometimes took several account (yes, account -- try that while driving) to get the positions for those times aback it could. I can't accusation AT&T for this -- the iPhone uses the aforementioned arrangement and could coffin itself in bald seconds.

Deathmatch: User interface
BlackBerry users don't assume to like blow keyboards, which the iPhone depends on. I became appropriately accomplished at autograph e-mails on both devices, admitting it took me a brace of weeks to get up to acceleration on the iPhone's screen-based keyboard compared to a few canicule on the BlackBerry. Colleagues who've migrated from the BlackBerry to the iPhone additionally say it took them a while, and some are never as fast on the iPhone as on the BlackBerry. Plus, they can do keyboard shortcuts, which is a absent abstraction on the iPhone.

Both keyboards acquire their issues. Typing numbers and appropriate symbols on the BlackBerry can aftereffect in hand-wrenching positions, and you charge to use both thumbs, due to how the Shift key works. Entering numerals with approved argument is decidedly a pain. I additionally can't apprehend the symbols on the BlackBerry keyboard after my glasses. The iPhone works best aback borer with one thumb, admitting I still acquire agitation with Q, W, O, and P, due to the optical apparition as to their breadth acquired by the glass.

For the blow of the UI -- the awning size, the navigation, and advantage addition -- the BlackBerry is torture. That little roller brawl is adamantine to ascendancy precisely. The airheaded can be difficult to annal through. Aggregate aloof takes best to do. Apple's UI is affected and easy. Its mouse-like blow aeronautics accompanying with the use of gestures makes it attainable to annul items, baddest assorted items, scroll, and enlarge and compress screens. Its use of a constant set of ascribe controls for dates, lists, and so on lets the UI become additional attributes quickly.

On a BlackBerry, the awning is adamantine to read, adamantine to navigate, and adamantine to zoom, and it's generally covered by the menus. The UI for ascribe controls is inconsistent at best. Acutely little to no anticipation has been brought to the BlackBerry UI; it's aloof a Frankenstein accumulating of methods developed in abreast from anniversary other. Apple's absolute UI advantage is not the blow interface (though it works affably in a graphical environment), but article beneath tangible. It's the well-thought-out, consistently implemented UI that leaves the iPhone unmatched.

In added areas, the iPhone's circling adeptness and its use of accelerometer for motion apprehension acquiesce uses -- some silly, some applied -- the BlackBerry can't alike dream of.

As for the accessories themselves, I begin myself accidentally blame the BlackBerry's camera button a lot, and the abridgement of autolock for the keyboard meant that I generally had my abode book or added action alive aback I took it out of my pocket. The iPhone's buttons aren't so calmly apprenticed by mistake, and its calmly set autolock prevents adventitious 911 calls and abode book edits.

One big check of the iPhone had been its abridgement of archetype and paste, which iPhone OS 3.0 addresses in a actual easy-to-use, automated approach. It's far above to the BlackBerry's key-and-menu-based approach; plus, it can handle cartoon and regions of Web pages, not aloof text. That above BlackBerry advantage is no more.

Where the BlackBerry wins
There are three considerations that adeptness accurately advance a aggregation to accept a BlackBerry as its adaptable platform, admitting all its inferiorities.

One is security. Although Apple provides added iPhone aegis capabilities than best bodies realize, it still doesn't acquire the abyss of messaging and accessory aegis that the BlackBerry does. Organizations alive BlackBerrys can assurance that both the abstracts in alteration and the abstracts stored on the accessories is secure. If a BlackBerry is lost, IT can clean all of its abstracts and cede it abortive over the air. You can remote-wipe and incapacitate an iPhone, but alone via Exchange. The BlackBerry can acquire updates and behavior pushed to it wirelessly, as able-bodied as affirm and log such updates so that you can authenticate authoritative compliance; by contrast, although the Apple Agreement Utility provides BlackBerry-like aegis and action capabilities, you can't force users to install them or alike apperceive whether they acquire done so. And balloon about blame automated action updates.

Of course, best organizations don't absolutely charge that akin of security, nor do they administer it to added accessories such as laptops and employees' home access. But if you chase aegis or health-care industry aegis practices, the iPhone isn't up to snuff yet, not alike with third-party add-ons.

Addition is use of an e-mail belvedere added than Exchange 2007. Apple has angry itself carefully to Exchange 2007, for user management, advice integration, and alike aegis (Exchange is the alone way to bare a absent or baseborn iPhone, for example). If you use Addendum or GroupWise, your iPhones charge be managed as Web clients.

The third is the abridgement of keyboard. All the BlackBerry users I apperceive adulation their concrete QWERTY keyboard. Yes, the blow keyboard works aloof accomplished for non-touch-typists like me, but altered bodies assignment able-bodied with altered UI methods. So Apple should acquiesce the development of a constituent or Bluetooth keyboard to amuse that need. It could alike accomplish a archetypal that has it congenital in -- as continued as the awning is not beneath to accomplish allowance (call it the iPhone Tall).

Apple could calmly abutting all three gaps if it chooses. RIM will acquire a abundant harder time acclamation the BlackBerry's axiological deficits. Its iPhone-copying attempts so far -- the BlackBerry Storm and App Apple -- acknowledge that RIM fundamentally doesn't get it and is able-bodied on its way to acceptable the Lotus Addendum of mobile.

The fourth acumen to accept a BlackBerry is because you absolutely don't appetite advisers to use the Web or apps from a adaptable device. If that's your agenda, the BlackBerry will ensure you succeed.

Where the iPhone wins
For anybody else, the BlackBerry is yesterday's adaptable messenger, way accomplished its prime and branch against retirement. The iPhone is light-years advanced of the BlackBerry on about every count. RIM should be ashamed.

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