Geek Speak

Is the iPhone Ready for Prime Time with Lawyers?
~by Troy Henley, CBA Director of Information Technology

The iPhone arrived on the scene with great fanfare and high expectations. It was Steve Job’s latest ground-breaking product destined to put Apple Computer in the record books again. The phone pioneered many new features in a surprisingly thin and lightweight package. With its nearly button-free surface and touch-driven interface, it was very innovative but it lacked the core feature that would turn it into a powerful tool for lawyers. The iPhone does not have the ability to synchronize with Outlook’s data the way that the Blackberry and the Treo do, a feature lawyers have grown to love and many cannot live without. Granted, the iPhone can be configured to synchronize with an email account but that’s all: no contacts synchronization, no calendar synchronization and no task synchronization with Outlook over-the-air. Blackberry and Treo own the market now, that’s all about to change.

Due to pressure from developers and consumer backlash, Apple moved away from its traditional stance of trying to control 3rd party software development and they released a software developer’s toolkit in March. They also promised full Exchange integration that would synchronize your Outlook contacts, calendar and email with the iPhone. To help tout the new direction that the iPhone is headed, Apple pre-released the developer’s toolkit to a couple dozen firms that quickly retooled their best applications to run on the iPhone. An impressive array of programs were demonstrated: from sales force management software to games that utilized the iPhone’s built-in Gforce meters (think of the Nintendo Wii paddles). It showed the power of both the development kit and the iPhone as a computing platform…a dazzling array of applications were produced in only a two week period. That’s just a glimpse of what we’ll see in the months ahead. So until then, Treo and Blackberry own the market….but not for long. Imagine accessing all your office Outlook data on the iPhone and utilizing a synchronized version of your case management software to check case facts, documents or SOL dates on the road. It’s not that far away. Some of the existing iPhone features include: visual voicemail, Bluetooth support, true web surfing with a real web browser and zoom in\out capability. It also supports high speed WiFi internet connectivity so you can jump onto local internet access points just like a laptop and without incurring any expensive data plans traditionally required to surf the web or check email on a cell phone.

"The iPhone is a revolutionary and magical product that is literally five years ahead of any other mobile phone," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "We are all born with the ultimate pointing device, our fingers, and the iPhone uses them to create the most revolutionary user interface since the mouse."

Nerd Note: Even though the iPhone currently supports email, iPhone users have been largely locked out of corporate mail systems, the built-in email client of the iPhone supports Microsoft Exchange via direct IMAP/SMTP connections - a feature often blocked by corporate firewalls due to security concerns.