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Can my iPhone handle a day-to-day graphic arts workflow?
September 11, 2007

Question: Can I replace my Blackberry with an iPhone and integrate it into my day-to-day graphic arts workflow?

— An unidentified reader

Answered by Ron Roszkiewcz:
Many business users attracted to the sleek elegance and novelty of the new iPhone are trying to find ways to justify upgrading from their smart phone or Blackberry. While the iPhone may have just reached the 1M mark in sales, there is still resistance in corporate IT departments to making an exception to it because of its inadequacies. It’s still a closed system based on the Mac OS and Apple is reluctant to release Mac OSX developer’s tools to develop native applications that may compromise the security of the device or reduce its reliability. Instead they will rely on web-based development. This means Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) and leveraging Safari, the supplied iPhone version of the Macintosh web browser. Allowing development using Web 2.0 technology is safer and will probably supply all of the connectivity mobile users need to interact with the mother ship. What it will probably not do is expand the iPhone’s use as a laptop replacement and we will have to rely on a mix of Ajax and web apps to manage files and our work life. What Apple and third-party developers do seem to be committed to are developing applications that allow synchronization between personal information management tools on the desktop and on the iPhone.

Below is a sampling of built-in and third-party workflow enabling solutions for some of the key areas important to mobile workers:

Virtual Private Networks (VPN) – VPNs are important for users who want to connect to their company network to either access files on their desktop machines, reboot a server, or troubleshoot a network problem. Apple supports VPN.

Push E-mail – access to e-mail on the road is expected. Logging onto a browser and pulling mail from Gmail is slow. iPhone supports post office protocol (POP) and internet messaging access protocol (IMAP) and will sync with Outlook and Apple Mail. This means that alerts from soft-proofing applications or workflow management solutions can be pushed to the iPhone. One sticking point for enterprises is that iPhone does not currently support LDAP servers.

Calendar and Scheduling - Automatic synchronization of calendar entries is possible on iPhone using applications such as SpanningSync and Vitalist. This synchronization takes place between iCal (Mac), Outlook (Windows) and Google Calendar.

Mileage Tracker –iphonemiles is a first generation application to keep track of business related mileage.

Document Viewing - iPhone utilizes Leopard's (Apple’s next generation operating system) Quick Look functionality to view Microsoft Word and Excel Files. Of course these can also be viewed in Google via Safari. iPhone supports PDF, .doc. htm(l), xls and xlsx among others.

Instant Messaging – iPhoneChat provides a way to use your existing AOL Instant Messaging account for IMming on the road.

Soft-proofing & Web Conferencing –users who have access to a browser-based simple web conferencing view will be able to see what is going on in Safari.

Still missing is support for video out. Although Steve Jobs did demonstrate video out during his rollout presentation, it does not seem to be available yet as an accessory. Printing is also a problem. WiFi printing has always been a problem for PDAs and there doesn’t seem to be a way to print a PDF attachment from the iPhone yet. There do seem to be a number of ways to get a presentation onto the phone as a series of image files or as a QuickTime movie.
At the moment ATT/Cingular is Apple’s only US partner for this phone and there are no unlocked versions available. There are successful hacks appearing such as iPhoneSIMfree that unlock locked phones so they can be used with other carriers. The legal implications of doing this with the Apple iPhone have not been resolved.
With the price dropping to $399 for the one version of phone remaining, the iPhone is becoming competitive by smart phone standards. An Apple store credit for the earliest adopter will take a bit of the sting out of the $200 price drop. Patience does seem to be the prudent path as Apple finds some ways to support other carriers with 3G support and solutions to problem found in version 1.0.

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Posted by Mark Vruno on September 11, 2007 | Comments (0)