After years of being spoiled with a TV in my office (a benefit when working with big media) I spent the last two years unable to keep up except for frequent scoreboard checks.
So it was nice to read that this year they will be streaming for free on iOS devices, of which I have several. Â It looks like I will have an opportunity to run some realistic bandwidth tests on our internet connection.
So the iTunes, App Store ecosystem is now fully upon us and like many businesses we have company issued iPads that everyone uses. Â The problem becomes managing apps (aka software) across these devices.
Here is the relevant selection from the Apple TOS:
(i) You may download and use an application from the Mac App Store (“Mac App Store Productâ€) for personal, non-commercial use on any Apple-branded products running Mac OS X (“Mac Computerâ€) that you own or control.
(ii) If you are a commercial enterprise or educational institution, you may download a Mac App Store Product for use either (a) by a single individual on each of the Mac Computer(s) that you own or control, or (b) by multiple individuals on a single shared Mac Computer that you own or control. For example, a single employee may use a Mac App Store Product on both the employee’s desktop Mac Computer and laptop Mac Computer, or multiple students may serially use the Product on a single Mac Computer located at a resource center or library.
(iii) Use may require sign-in with the Apple ID used to download the Mac App Store Product from the Mac App Store. Mac App Store Products can be updated through the Mac App Store only.
Apple requires you to have an iTunes account, which are personal, and their terms of service clearly state that a commercial property has to purchase a license when multiple individuals are using multiple devices. Â Makes sense – I need a license for each iPad. Â My problem is how to now manage those from a corporate perspective. Â Each user has to purchase using their existing iTunes account in order to make it easy to manage (technically you can install an app under a different account, but then updates, etc. are complicated). Â And this will get even more troublesome with the App Store.
Now the employees are purchasing the software and have the legal ownership rather than the company. Â So we purchase iPad apps and Mac apps for an employee and they head home and can legally install on a home machine[s] – so far so good. Â This adds value as now they can legally use the software on their home machines.
But what happens when someone leaves? Â Now this company purchased software has left with the employee and there is no way to transfer to a new individual. Â This isn’t a big deal with a few low price apps for an iPad, but what happens when you spend more for Apple software (and imagine if Adobe distributes via the App Store) or other third party software? Â As a business I have no means to recover the licenses.
I really hope Apple is working on this – I would love to start using the new App Store to manage purchases and software, but I need a corporate account to centrally manage. Â One that lets me purchase more than one copy of an app for each user or one umbrella account that can be linked to existing accounts and would track company purchases separately.
Let’s get to it Apple, make this work for businesses as well as you have for individuals.
So it seems I have another bug/issue with the iPad. I haven’t been able to find a solution online but at least found a few other references to a similar problem.
When you attach some images to an email and send them there seems to be an issue with some and they won’t appear on the Apple iOS mail client. What was strange is that on the iPhone it would appear and of course on the iMac it was fine. So hopefully with the new version coming next month this will be fixed. The images were ordinary and GIF (not 89′s).
Another related issue is that when you attach a high quality image the act of rendering seems to reduce the quality and when you zoom in you can see the artifacts. You can see also by using Dropbox instead of attaching the file. On the iMac it looks great and on the iPad it doesn’t.
This can be frustrating when you want to review mockups while on the go.
Hoping that the new release fixes this so I can get a little more productivity out of the iPad. I think what is most strange is that I can’t narrow it down to what causes the issues. Some issues are fine, others are impacted.
Today at the office a colleague asked me about an issue with his iPad. He had made sure he downloaded his email before leaving the office the previous night and then headed out. Once he was away from a connection he started viewing the email – in this case a few included screen shots for an upcoming design change.
Of course since this is just the WiFi iPad he wasn’t able to view the images. While the email was downloaded, the attachments and inline images were not so they appeared as a broken image. This is where it gets interesting.
Once back at home he connected to his home WiFi and started opening the email again to review the images. They still appeared as broken images. No amount of closing the Mail app or reloading the Inbox would seem to force the Mail client to reload the mail. He gave up and just decided he would review them the next morning.
So as he recalled this behavior to me I did a few quick tests and could easily reproduce the behavior. Once I had opened a message with inline images with no connection and then connected to WiFi I could not view them. The only way I could find (and a trip to the local Genius bar confirmed) to have it reload was to restart the iPad.
This seems a bit aggressive to cache and not even check when a connection is activated and I am hoping that the upcoming iPad iOS 4 release will correct. At least then we should be able to close out the Mail app and maybe force it to reload.
A couple of employees from the CNN.com crew plan to drive from California to Georgia on biodiesel fuel.
We’ll be testing GPS navigation gear and other cool gadgets to see how they work during a real road trip. But because it’s a road trip, we’ll also be camping and enjoying some of the most spectacular sites in the Southwest and Southeastern United States. And we’ll be asking CNN.com users to suggest destinations and to vote on where we travel.
Cody and Brian have both been here for years and it will be interesting to follow their journey across the country in Cody’s 1978 International Harvester Scout.
So much like last year when the day after the launch you could stroll in to the Apple Store with no wait and still get an iPhone it looks like this year you can too. I checked the availability onlne and the Lenox Square store still shows all three models in stock.
I don’t think I am heading out to upgrade just yet, but it is nice to see that you didn’t have to wait in line for 12 hours unless you just had to have it on Friday.
Most of the Atlanta stores still have them in stock, although some are sold out of specific models (the black 16GB typically). As a side note it seems they take down the availability as the stores begin to open since now the link for the GA stores doesn’t include the info.
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