Chris Pepin

While I wasn't able to attend Apple's worldwide developers conference in person, I followed the conference remotely with great interest.   In recent years, IBM has moved away from a homogeneous computing environment and to a more flexible model with greater choice and flexibility for employees including Apple products.   For example, IBM employees have the ability to leverage personally owned devices, including Apple Macintosh and iPhone/iPod Touch devices for business purposes.   IBM Software Group has a number of products in targeted to the OS/X platform including Lotus Notes, Lotus Sametime, Lotus Symphony, iNotes and the upcoming Lotus Traveler 8.5.1 with ActiveSync support for iPhone/iPod Touch.   The following are the key announcements that I took away from the Apple conference:

• iPhone - An evolutionary 3G S model with double the memory, a faster processor, video support and improved battery life.  The 8GB 3G price is slashed to $99.   Inside IBM, the iPhone is an extremely popular device and is used to access mail, calendar and contacts (iNotes and Lotus Traveler), Lotus Connections, Lotus Sametime 8.5.  In addition, IBM is developing custom iPhone applications to access IBM backend systems.  
• MacBook Pro - The entire line is upgraded with new evolutionary features and lower prices.   In recent years, IBM has seen growth in the number of Macs that its employees use for business purposes and this trend is expected to continue with Apple's new MacBooks.
• Snow Leopard - Apple's upgrade to OS/X is due out in September and has a number of evolutionary features.  The upgrade price is $29 and a family pack upgrade will be available for $49.   I'd like to see Microsoft follow suit with aggressive pricing for Windows 7 as well as offer a family pack.

The new iPhone come out of Friday and I hope to receive mine next week and I will post my impressions on this blog.