Oh no, say it ain't so.

Almost useless without Exchange support.

Long awaited....
My Wife will be happy to hear this....
finally, she will stop ogling my iPhone...

hopefully it'll meet the security standards...i have a feeling it won't

Nice start button at the upper left....

I think it's 25$ off, not 25$ per month

Parallels, now that is funny

Best photoshop evar!!!

Actually it should be close to $25 a month, for my Moto V3, before I got the iPhone, I used to get $21.00 off a month, which covered my "extra" features. When I signed up for the iPhone I had to agree to remove all discounts from my business account, hopefully with this I get them back since I am still under the same account with the iPhone, yet all discounts are marked as "Not eligible" : /

Still needs 802.1x support....

Until they have real exchange support AND sync email via OWA, this will be useless!

Lotus Notes too!
[www.informationweek.com]

Fine. Now where the hell's my server upgrade?

That phone is still getting CINGULAR? OH MAN. LUCKY BASTARD. Pysche. This has no affect on me. Im not a corporate suit.

OOOOOOoooo Domino!

Lotus, baby!

Aww. What about government employee discounts?

I wonder if I can switch mine without any penalty(i'm sure at the very least it would restart the 2 years). It's always a pain to hand carry my bill to Accounts Payable and remind the idiot there what it's all about. Then she goes "oh yeah", then I get to hear about how if I had it on the business plan it would be better for them for x amount of reasons. Then she has to get it approved, and I have to initial the thing. Then it still gets paid late half the time.

This is way overdue I say. Now how about letting us put insurance on the damn phone now?

Parallels? That would be both wickedly cool and grotesque at the same time.

This is a known issue the any mac that is running 10.4 or greater and a linksys router. The two companies cannot figure out who is wrong, but the problem can cause the mac to lose connection or the router to completely and repeatedly crash. As far as I have been made aware by both Linksys and Apple, there is no fix other than getting another brand router (other than Buffalo since it's the same hardware anyway).

no exchange, no office, no 3G, no camera free version, no push email, no a bunch of other crap that people care about but not businesses.
That should go over like a lead Zeppelin.
Maybe if your business is a Apple store employee.

Too bad AT&T sucks. Maybe Cingular (like displayed in the photo) can have this addition.

@sgodun: I agree no exchange support really hurts it.

Perhaps they will add it? It says the phone would be the same, but it would just be a firmware change I would think to add Exchange support. I honestly can't imagine businesses adopting it if they have to rely on POP and IMAP for emails.

nice... now it just needs Lotus support (at least minimal contacts/calendar), and I might finally consider looking at this phone...

@Kaiser-Machead: My god that would be weird, but interesting.

Discounts usually depend on your companies deal. I think we get 25% off the voice plan, no data plan discounts on non-iPhones. Hopefully we'll get this discount now.

I wouldn't hold my breath for true exchange activesync or directpush support. The Exchange dev group doen't even think that the mac is big enough to keep a proper outlook in production, the last one being Outlook 2001. Entourage is a separate team. I doubt they would do this for the iPhone. Now, if they gave Apple all the ins and outs of the protocols, maybe they could license this from MS and code it themselves.

The "Exchange" IMAP setup on the iPhone works pretty damn good for what it is. Of course, I have control of the server, so I enabled IMAP for myself. Not syncing the contacts OTA is no biggie, but the calandar, and especially searching the GAL would be nice. If I cared enough I would go back to my HTC mogul, but I really don't.

@BMN: Ummm... hate to tell you, but Cingular is AT&T.

As for this, unless it syncs to Exchange, it's entirely useless.

"a $25 per month corporate discount" implies $25 off per month.

This would be great b/c they took my corporate discount away when I got the iPhone. :(

Parallels is ridiculous, but a Windows RDC client on the iphone/itouch might actually be useful for meetings. The screen would need to be bigger though.

This goes along with earlier reports that apple had licensed ActiveSync from Microsoft. They'll probably charge you $10 bucks for the software after the SDK rolls out.

Considering the SDK is coming out in February you are pretty much guaranteed to get exchange support in the near future...so yeah, cool beans.

@brianhatch: I'd hit that, as fast as my mouse could click "order"

@Y2KGTP:

Not only do we see a Start button with Windows logo, but isn't that background of a grass covered hill and blue sky with clouds a Windows desktop graphic? That plus "Cingular" above the Start button . . . just how Photoshopped is the image??

yep. where is the 802.1X support? University students are disappointed!

@btdown,@HeartBurnKid:

Totally agree. I just had to set one of thee up for the owner of my company (who received it as a gift) and it was royal pain.

Oh IE6, I never doubted you'd find ur way onto the iPhone!

@fastm3driver: iphone has had push email since day 1 from yahoo and guess what its free , it was not working good at the beginning but it is now

Believe it or not, not every large company uses Exchange. I'm hoping my company drops their excuse about no iPhones when the new plan debuts. More than a few of us have asked about it.

sorry to break this to you guys... But these plans? Theyre the same plans as before, just $25 more expensive for corporations to have the privledge of using an iPhone. FAN codes still won't apply to the voice plan on any iPhone lines, its only for corporate accounts, and discount is on a per company basis.

@Barcard: Now team up with OJ and find the real killer.

Too bad the phone functionality sucks and now corporate people will not notice that they have voicemail waiting, or that they've missed a call. And during the meetings, they'll be entertained by barking dogs and quacking ducks instead of a ring that sounds like a cell phone. And no vibrate-then-ring option that lets you be polite in meetings but still gets your attention if you don't feel the vibrate so that you don't miss an important call. All easily fixed, but Apple cares more about selling songs and movies than about making a functional phone.

If Apple would add better Video-out, Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, and a great docking station, then the iPhone would be the Nirvana Smartphone that corporations would gladly pay for.
www.nirvanasmartphone.com

When I called AT&T last June, the rep said that a commercial package would be released in January '08. Looks like they're going forward even if Apple isn't quite ready...

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Wow April Fool's is coming early!

Too bad I still can't log into any of my business sites without Java support. Volume discount does NOT equal a business/corporate compatible phone. I guess if you don't TRY to brainwash then people won't BE brainwashed...

I'm still under a corporate account number, even with my iPhone. But no discount...id like to see the pricing tiers....

"One of BGR's tipsters have indicated that, come January 21, AT&T will be offering the iPhone to its corporate and business customers. All discounts associated with corporate and business accounts will still be valid - although there may be special iPhone data plans of $25 and higher that will require mandatory subscription. Corporate and business customers looking to bring the iPhone into their enterprise environment will have to undergo a special pre-activation process before activating the iPhone through iTunes."

[www.intomobile.com]

There is a company that offers push service for Iphone already. See [vistomobile.com]
Instead of a BES a Blackberry Enterprise Server, they call theirs the VES, Visto Enterprise Server. I'm actually kind of surprised RIM isn't making waves about that.

Interesting theory. I guess we'll see. Whatever the merits of the iPhone are, there's no shortage of demand from the business sector. For many businesses, style is much more important than functionality and their only function care is the ability to call. They're the folks who are moving up from RAZRs and the like - not people stepping down from Blackberrys and HTCs.

I don't think anyone in their right mind considers it an Enterprise e-mail phone - but don't think for a moment that's the primary concern for all business users.

look, someone is already trying to sell the Windows iphone on ebay...

[cgi.ebay.com]

@Transient: I don't know what IT or HR department would approve a $300-$400 phone unless the user actually needed Blackberry-style functionality, but I want to work there.