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Apple Allows Lotus On iPhone (After Banning Competitor)
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Wed Oct 01, 2008 08:44 AM
from the stay-classy-apple dept.
from the stay-classy-apple dept.
ImNotAtWork writes "Apple is allowing IBM's Lotus
to be installed on iPhones. Recently it killed a developer-submitted program that was deemed competitive with Apple's product."
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Apple: Apple Bans iPhone App For Competing With Mail.app 464 comments
recoiledsnake writes "Another submission has been rejected from the iPhone App Store, this time for 'duplicating the functionality of the iPhone Mail application.' The author claims that his application allows the user to log into their multiple web email accounts and that Apple seems to be confusing Gmail and Mail.app. This comes on the heels of Apple rejecting an application for competing with iTunes and rejecting other silly but harmless apps as being of 'limited utility.'"
ComputerWorld has an update to the rejected Podcaster app mentioned above. It seems the developer has used Apple's "Ad Hoc" service to begin distributing the software despite the fact that they blocked it from the App Store.
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Withdraw this article before it's too late! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Withdraw this article before it's too late! (Score:5, Informative)
Seconded. I imagine that apple did, in fact, ban this from the 'real' application store, but this is a webapp - a monstrosity of HTML, Javascript, and AJAX. It's just a webpage, and Apple doesn't give two shits. And even if they did, they couldn't do anything about it.
HIGHLY MISLEADING ARTICLE!
Parent
Re:Withdraw this article before it's too late! (Score:4, Insightful)
Pointless. This is likely a self-hosted webapp (on your corporate Lotus server), which means their list would need to include lotus.jpmorgan.com, etc... that would be a Big Fucking Mistake. They might not care about the enmity of users, but they sure care about their business users who could just as easily go back to Windows Mobile.
Parent
Well this summery makes no sense (Score:4, Informative)
+1 for actually reading the article before posting (Score:5, Informative)
Did the poster even read this article before posting it? It clearly says that it's a web based application that will run through the Safari browser. Nothing gets installed on the iPhone. Try reading it next time before posting, that way the headline you choose might make sense.
Parent is NOT a troll... (Score:5, Insightful)
I cannot understand the reason why the parent is a troll. The "application" in this case is a web application, not a native installed application.
The post, states clearly:
"Apple is allowing IBM's Lotus to be installed on iPhones. Recently it killed a developer submitted program that was deemed competitive with Apple's product."
Which is wrong. I cannot see that the parent is a "troll". IT could even be argued the actual Slashdot post is a troll (patent lie, followed by a heated "angle" to start a flamewar)
Parent
IBM not on the AppStore, just a webapp. (Score:5, Informative)
The IBM system is just a web app i.e. a web page with AJAX, viewed via Safari on the iphone. Of course Apple can't ban it, anymore than they can ban you from visiting gmail with an iphone.
The whole AppStore NDA issue is important, and worthy of discussion, but can we at least avoid FUD ridden straw men like this one.
Lotus is a brand, not a product (Score:5, Insightful)
Lotus is a brand, not a product. As far as I know, the product IBM Lotus is releasing for the iPhone is iNotes, the webmail interface to a Lotus Domino mail server. This isn't a Notes client for the iPhone.
But it is IBM, not a no name competitor (Score:4, Funny)
Also whoever thinks Lotus notes has a better UI than any mail app, is insane in my opinion. People use Lotus notes because they have to by corporate policy. When they add it to their i-phones, it is not going to replace the use of mailapp by no means, with the exception of 3 masochistic i-phone owners. Whereas the addition of a better functioning maill front end, might force Apple to revisit theor own mail app, which means money out of Steve the conman's pocket. It is intolerable...
"Recently [Apple] killed a developer" (Score:3, Funny)
I'm definitely switching to Linux now...
WTF Slashdot?!?!!? (Score:3)
Seems funny that this "story" is being presented the way that it is. Lotus Notes on an iPhone is a web app through the browser, this has absolutely nothing to do with the App Store, as is implied by the twit writing the story about the article. Apple has nothing to do with allowing or disallowing Lotus Notes to run since it's not an app in the app store.
More fucking hate...
You would still need a VPN tunneler (Score:3, Informative)
Notes is a great platform for corporate apps. But any corp worth their salt is running their remote users through a VPN tunnel of some kind. So you'd need to run that tunnel or VPN dialer or tokenized app on the iPhone as well.
Re:And the reason is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Or maybe it's because it's not a product being sold in the iPhone App Store, it's just a web application they point Safari at.
Parent
Re:And the reason is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Gah. That's what I get for believing a Slashdot summary. :^P
Parent
Re:And the reason is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Hence, it's entirely out of Apple's control, hence this is entirely non-news (just incase anyone was curious what the significance of this is).
Parent
Re:And the reason is... (Score:4, Insightful)
A single bug in Safari for iPhone can prevent it from running and all Apple has to say is "oops". As it doesn't even allow other browsers like Opera, you will be in big trouble.
iPhone is not a business device as long as it is run by a fascistic policy. I pity the businesses who buys Apple's claims with 2-3 poster child apps and I _run_ everything on OS X/XServe.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And you honestly expect every business to write something as vital and complex as a Notes/GroupWise/Citadel/... client on their own, when they can just buy another hanset (like a BlackBerry) that handles them out of the box? Especially for such a petty reason as "duplicating built-in functionality"?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
So you think IBM which is in size of a country would get same treatment as that poor freeware coder?
Re:And the reason is... (Score:4, Insightful)
There is no grounds for comparing the app that was banned (essentially a Gmail front end as an app) and "allowing" iNotes ultralite that is actually a web page on your Notes/Domino server. This is just bad journalism on behalf of NY Times and seconded here.
Also - apple "allows" gmail web front end on iphone just exactly the same way it "allows" iNotes ultralite.
Parent
Re:And the reason is... (Score:4, Funny)
There is no grounds for comparing the app that was banned (essentially a Gmail front end as an app) and "allowing" iNotes ultralite that is actually a web page on your Notes/Domino server. This is just bad journalism on behalf of NY Times and seconded here.
Also - apple "allows" gmail web front end on iphone just exactly the same way it "allows" iNotes ultralite.
Did you hear? I just found out that they are also allowing slashdot and digg! This is great!
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:And the reason is... (Score:5, Interesting)
it could also be that Lotus sucks, so Apple's app has no real competition. (yes, i HAVE to use lotus at work)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I think its incredible that they wont let people download their own email client. The vendor of the phone shouldnt even have this power. Email clients are basic functionality. Installing your own doesnt hurt Apple in any way. Typical Apple: run by short-sighted MBAs. Im so glad I didnt give in to the iphone madness. WM isnt sexy but it runs everything.
That's not what I've read... (Score:5, Informative)
That's not what I read at Ed Brill's site...
What I read was lots of iPhone fanboys screaming that there was no enterprise sync with Domino/Notes, and that this would single-handedly kill the product as Corporate America spent the next month doing nothing but throwing out all phones for iPhones, and all mail systems for Exchange.
(That's why I call them fanboys - their reasoned analysis and reaction identifies them as such to me.)
IBM's response was (and had to be) "Apple didn't approach us about it, and we can't do it on our own as the SDK as shipped doesn't have the appropriate APIs exposed".
Basically, Apple chose to work with Microsoft only when it came to synching with Enterprise systems, and IBM has little control over that.
Now, IBM had _already_ been developing the iNotes Lite system that the NY Times article refers to.
The full iNotes webmail system is pretty good, but it's also a pretty complicated web application which only ran on a couple of supported browsing platforms - all desktop. (For example, until recently, it was actually IE only, with ActiveX components.)
To give people access to the basics no matter what the (modern) browser someone was using, iNotes Lite was developed. (The betas have been shown to work on the Opera browser of a Nintendo Wii, amongst other things.)
So this wasn't even really developed specifically for the iPhone. It's just the first thing that IBM have shipped which can work on an iPhone.
IBM may or may not be working with Apple to get more native integration working on the iPhone. But given how open and public Apple are, we likely wouldn't know until it ships.
But let's be clear - the real blocker is the lack of support from Apple. This isn't specific to IBM - my understanding is that if you wanted to write something that used SyncML to synchronise an iPhone and a Funambol server, you couldn't do it either. The SDK has no documented ways of doing access to the mail/calender/to-do application storage that would allow integration, so unless you can work with Apple directly you're stuck.
What's really interesting is that IBM's marketing is now spinning it as "The iPhone wasn't secure, this is".
That could be IBM giving up on Apple and just going with what they've got. Or it could be IBM toning their public reaction down from "Apple are crap and don't want to work with us" because they are working with Apple now.
Only time will tell.
I feel pretty sorry for IBM on this whole affair. The sheer hype around the iPhone makes this somehow a major story, when in the grand scheme of things - even within the computing world - it's actually rather a non-event...
Parent