Serious Business Apps Arriving For iPhone

This is the sort of serious business integration that Steve Jobs is aiming to accomplish. He is not trying to be the next Blackberry. He is trying to create something new, and enable all the big brains out there is software development-land to have a platform where they can thrive.

Apple and AAPL has been on a ride, and from my perch, there is no slowing it now. AAPL is treading water until the July 17 earnings, and news like this will create the pops in the price that we are all waiting for.

<full disclosure: Long AAPL and AAPL calls>

Has anyone noticed how out of control the stock market is right now? This is a good thing, and a hobby of mine is the stock market.

There is a new site called Apple Investor News that has a ton of information.

Take a look, and comment here on what you think of it.

Macenterprise.org

The main things I find missing from Apple’s Software Update Server are the abilities to push out updates from server to client, and schedule updating for clients, rather than just let them look at the server. This is the script I came up with to remedy this as best as I can given the current situation.

This script installs all available updates, and reboots if necessary and possible. I check for logged in users, ignoring if an admin is logged in, since I don’t really care if I reboot while they’re the only ones logged in- just end users.

Its purpose was to be run as a weekly cron job, and only installing “approved” updates. To accomplish this, I set all the clients to look to my server at port 8089, using

defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate CatalogURL http://<server>:8089/

For machines testing updates, I set their port to 8088. The server runs predominantly on port 8088, but when an update is ready to be deployed, I stick the server on 8089, and let the script do it’s magic.

However, there’s nothing preventing the software update server to be Apple’s, if you want to immediately deploy everything.

Useful

Apple Remote Desktop 2 or later: Configuring remotely via command line kickstart

JAMF Software : Management Software for Macintosh Professionals
The Casper Suite simplifies the life of system administrators with one tool to inventory, image, update, and maintain Macintosh computers. It also reduces the work associated with many aspects of the Macintosh Systems Lifecycle. The Casper Suite enables practices that improve the quality of IT while reducing the time and cost needed to provide support and solutions. In addition to increased efficiency for IT staffs, organizations also achieve a reduction in liability related to license management, SOX compliance, security, and other regulatory concerns.

The central component of the Casper Suite, the JAMF Software Server (JSS), runs seamlessly on Mac OS X Server and takes about a minute to install. All of the other applications within the Suite communicate back to this server using industry standard SSL encryption that allows for a single point of management.

The suite is designed to scale to large organizations in multiple geographic locations. The communication between client computers and the central server is minimal, and the frequency can be completely determined by an administrator. When packages are deployed, AFP or SMB file servers are utilized on the local network, keeping the large traffic on the LAN and off the WAN/Internet.

Awesome.

Hat Tip (www.macwork.com)

Commandsoft
Want a truly affortable SAN? FibreJet enterprise-class storage network gives multiple computers concurrent access to terabytes of storage using just about anyones storage over Fibre Channel. Apple’s Xsan costs $23,383 more than a 6-node FibreJet solution using identical equipment!

Higer-performance Storage Networking
FibreJet is sometimes 500% the performance of Xsan for the equivelent file-copy operation! FibreJet finds a file in 5 seconds compared to taking over 4 minutes with the same operation in Xsan!

Need to do more reading on this. Looks interesting.

Go get them now! They will ship in November.

The Xserve packs phenomenal power and industry-leading capabilities into a high-density, 1U rackmount server that fits easily into any network environment. And this award-winning UNIX-based server just got a 5x ⁽¹⁾ performance boost over the Xserve G5, thanks to quad-core 64-bit Intel Xeon processing. Additional features include up to 2.25TB storage, two eight-lane PCI Express slots, dual onboard Gigabit Ethernet, and a combo drive. With all this, the Xserve provides the stability you need and the performance you want, starting at just $2999.

Today we talk about www.Zimbra.com , a cross-platform email collaboration server that is now able to compete with Microsoft Exchange. In the past, Mac and Linux users could not truly join the Exchange world.

Those days are over, and Zimbra is a compelling solution.

Give a listen.

Topic suggestions are suggested via the suggestion box at birdDogdigital@gmail.com . Suggest away, creative people.

Fire Your Tech Guy.18 – ImageStation.com – Cross platform Photo sharing for iPhoto and Picasa
Fire Your Tech Guy.18 – ImageStation.com – Cross platform Photo sharing for iPhoto and Picasa

Today we talk about www.ImageStation.com from Sony. We mention iPhoto on the Mac, and Picasa on the PC.

Good tip to fire your tech guy.

Full info on the www.bdogd.com blog.

Topic suggestions are suggested via the suggestion box at birdDogdigital@gmail.com. Suggest away, creative people.

All things iPod, iTunes and beyond | iLounge
Citing no sources, Wu claims the Apple phone will have a candy bar form factor, similar to the iPod nano, and will come in three colors. “Clearly, we would like to share more detail as we have conducted extensive work on the product pipeline, but for now, here is what we will convey. The design will be an iPod nano-like candy bar form factor and come in three colors (we are not certain of the exact colors but we suspect black, white, and platinum, similar to Apple’s current color scheme on iPods and Macs),” Wu said in his report.