Is Apple becoming the new technology leader over Microsoft? I guess that is like comparing, well, Apples and Oranges, but the world of Apple is invading all of our lives more and more everyday. I'm not saying that is a bad thing at all to have Apple push Microsoft out of the way a bit. This is more of an observation.

I am not a huge Apple devote, but I am feeling the Appleness coming in to my world. The other day my Apple update software popped up and asked it if could install Safari. What the heck is up with that? I do have iTunes but I'm not sure what that has to do with getting Safari pushed to me because. Sounds a bit like a Microsoft tactic to me, but then again it worked and I did download it. Looks like pretty cool software, but still, can apple push anything to my PC as long as I have something else Apple on it?

Another Appleness adventure in my world is that my office adopted its first Apple computer. We picked up an Apple Mac Mini to check and start learning since more and more of our clients are picking up Apple's and asking us for support. If you have never seen a Mac Mini you should check it out. It is about the size of an external hard drive (6 inches by 6 inches, by 3 inches or thereabouts), very quite, and peppy. We have it plugged in to our videoconferencing flat screen and it looks amazing on the screen and is so small you do not even notice it. way better than a clunky PC.

Our technology management platform now works with Mac's so we can help our client's Mac users and manage them just like we do with Windows devices. Of course it took us quite a while just to figure out how to eject the CD from our Mac Mini's drive and do other simple things, but we finally figured it out. The amazing thing was that we pretty much plugged it in and while searching for the network setting to configure it, by the time we found the area it was already configured and downloading updates. Pretty cool.

Now if I could just figure out how to install a program on the thing I might actually start using it for myself.

Not yet, but it is coming, and not exactly like a Blackberry. It should working like any other Windows mobile device using the Exchange server Active Sync though which ain't too bad. At least you will get pretty much real time syncing and access to your e-mail, calendar, and contacts, as well as, a bit of built in security.

This will not be as nearly as robust as the Blackberry Server setup, but the advantage of Exchange Active Sync is that it is included in the server and does not use Rim's servers in the middle. If you have a Blackberry you probably know about the recent Rim server outages which kept a lot of Blackberry users from syncing.

More details can be found here or by doing a Google search for iPhone Exchange
http://www.cio.com/article/193400/

Most IT departments have not needed to deal with the iPhone since it could not sync with the corporate email system. The best you could do was get pop3 working; that is if your IT department had pop3 working on the server and on your account. I'm sure many a bribe of free lunch was made for some users to get their email working on their iPhone since they were released.

Get ready to start supporting the iPhone if you are already supporting Windows mobile devices....

Daylight Savings Time. In my world it does not save much daylight, makes it difficult to get out of bed those mornings when it is dark again, and also causes some technology headaches. I made a comment last week that I've seen more recent technology disruptions caused by last years DST change that I did with the Y2K scare. Last year when the change went in to affect, everyone went out and did some DST update on their computers, servers, Blackberry's, and anything that may be affected. What we are seeing is that with our new clients, many of the systems were never updated and with our existing clients some systems that couldn't be updated are now pitching a fit.

• Outlook Calendar - There is a DST patch for Windows and Outlook, but it seems to have mixed results. Old recurring appointments seem to be the biggest items affected. Not optimal, but the best results come from deleting the old recurring meeting and recreating it.
• Blackberry's - You should push out the DST patch to all devices to help eliminate the calendar appointments from being off an hour. If the Outlook calendar recurring appointment issue is also happening, things can get real messy fast.
• Older systems - If you can do the DST update, then give it a try. But be prepared for some future strange behaviour around the DST time change and be careful if you make any changes since it cause some server crashing.

And then there was our system that wouldn't open due to the leap year - but don't get me started on that....