Andrew Hale: IT Talk & Other Topics

Even though I know I'm at least a couple years from seriously buying a new bike, I'm still always shopping. With the internet as my primary shopping tool, I find myself boiling bikes down to the numbers. On paper, Bonnies, Sportsters and others aren't terribly impressive. However, in their day they were fast as hell. Now, we've got street-legal machines that can do 0 to speeding ticket in a few seconds. The dealers might as well take the license plate brackets off and throw in free tire warmers because these new machines are designed with the nearest track in mind.

I know the title doesn't sound like that of an iPhone review but the iOS experience really is a walled garden of sorts. The reason for this is largely because Apple plays a large role in deciding how their devices should an shouldn't be used. This isn't a new concept. AOL did it in their hay-day. They started their business with revenue-sharing agreements with specific information providers in their subscriber-only space. Facebook does it too, requiring you to login to their site before you can view profiles, play games, etc. This isn't to say that a walled garden approach is particularly bad. In the case of Apple, it's actually pretty good. If you want to do something with your phone that Apple decides shouldn't be done with it, tough cookies. However, for most intents and purposes, the iPhone just works and works great.

Earlier last week, I was asked to setup a new phone for our IT Director. I've setup phones before so I figured it couldn't be too big of a task. I'm definitely not well-versed with Cisco's Unified Communications Manager (aka, UCM) but I knew enough to be dangerous. What I thought was going to be a simple swap turned into something more than I'd bargained for.