09-09-09. A pretty big deal if you're into numerology. Rock Band, The Beatles edition also came out yesterday to much fanfare. While I do like the Beatles, as a wannabe musician, I struggle to play a fake guitar or bass when I can have as much fun genuinely butchering my favorite songs.
Apple and Steve Jobs (good to see him back) also had a few annoucements yesterday at their "Rock and Roll" event, including new iPods, a new version of iTunes and an update to the iPhoneOS. And then 10 minutes into the event...Apple shows off the first signs of mobile application management.
And that is when I had my . With iTunes 9 and iPhoneOS 3.1.1, you can now control via your PC the order and synchronization of your favorite iPhone applications. Anyone who has used an iPhone has surely lamented the relatively clunky way of organizing apps on different pages. This is certainly a welcome advancement in the platform. So, as I always need to bring things back to enterprise mobility, the new feature got me thinking and asking "Apple - What's taken you so long to do this and when are you going to offer this type of feature to an IT admin?!?!?!?!?!"
The "app management" feature doesn't do much more than what was described above. But this really does beg the question of when an enterprise grade version could/would exist. The "app management" feature reminds me (in a rudimentary way) of some of the functionality one can find in remote connection solutions such as LogMeIn.
So imagine if Apple were to take this feature one step further - meaning:
- You could do the "app management" without connecting the device to a PC. You've started going OTA.
- Then imagine if you could have a console to manage more than one iPhone OTA.
- What if you could then go OTA and do more than just "app management" and start troubleshooting the device remotely (LogMeIn would just LOVE that)
- What if you could then configure settings on the device...OTA
Oh wait - then that would require the ability to have background applications and processes. And we know that Apple has determined in its infinite wisdom that background processes are bad for the consumer.
My sense is, however, that this is the first (baby) step in terms of what we might ultimately find for truly managing iPhones...and that is a good thing for all companies considering the iPhone for their employees.
