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Originally Posted by BrianC22
I searched the forums for the topic and came up with some old results, but I have some specific questions that weren't covered.
1. I have a mac at home, and a PC at work. I would primarily sync at home, so I will need my device to be compatible with a mac. How does the iPhone sync with a Mac? Can you set up a blackberry with Microsoft Exchange Server on a Mac?
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The iPhone syncs with the Mac the same way an iPod does. You activate your iPhone via iTunes. You sync email, calendar, address book, etc through iTunes. You even do your updates for the iPhone via the iTunes client.
If you use Apple's Address Book, iCal, and mail.app, this is a snap. And if you use .Mac or another IMAP client, then mail sent from the iPhone will appear as mail sent in the sent folder in your mail.app clients as well. In this sense, it works a lot like Exchange / BlackBerry works. But without Push, which I'll explain later.
The second part of your question; can you setup Exchange to work with your Mac? You can indeed. You can use either Entourage that is bundled with Office 2004 or Office 2008. With the 2008 version, the Home and Student version DOES NOT have support for Exchange. You will need to buy the standard version.
Things can get a little tricky with 2008. At this point in time, there isn't a god sync solution for BIS accounts with Exchange / Entourage 2008. The Mac application, "The Missing Sync" is designed to sync addresses with Apple's Address Book. Entourage itself can also sync with Apple's Address Book app. So in theory, you sync from Entourage to Address Book, on through to Missing Sync and onto your BlackBerry. My attempts at this created many many duplicates.
If on the other hand you are using BES, then there is no need to sync via a wire or sync software because BES will sync your addresses, calendar, and email OTA (Over The Air) and automatically. BES / Exchange work best with the BlackBerry and weather you have a Mac or PC, the results are the same as the BlackBerry gets its Exchange information without the PC or Mac.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BrianC22
2. I've also read that when a blackberry user with Exchange changes a calendar event or some contact information on his/her PC, the changes automatically appear on the BlackBerry. Are there any new changes that allow the iPhone and the Mac to sync this way?
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The Mac / BlackBerry enjoy this OTA sync via BES only. Otherwise you must sync manually with Sync software.
The iPhone / Mac does not do this entirely, but it depends on what you use. I use .Mac as an IMAP client, and so mail sent from my iPhone will find it's way into my sent folder on .Mac without me ever touching a Mac. The iPhone and the .Mac account stay in sync. But the Address Book, and iCal need to sync with iTunes.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BrianC22
3. Has Google made any changes to the way Gmail works on the iPhone? Are there plans to add more features that would be useful for business/productivity?
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I don't personally use Google with the iPhone, but you can read about how Google interacts with the iPhone from an in depth article written by Paul Thurrott over the Windows Super Site.
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http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/iphone_08.asp#113
Quote:
Originally Posted by BrianC22
4. Will Facebook/Youtube/other services work on the 8800?
Thanks in advance for your responses
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BlackBerry has a great FaceBook application. It does work with the 8800. The iPhone FaceBook app is visually better, but doesn't include the ability to upload photos. The BB FaceBook app will allow this. Since you don't have a camera in the 8800 I don't know if photo uploading from the phone matters to you anyway.
YouTube
Clearly the iPhone is far better with YouTube. The WiFi connected iPhone works incredibly well with YouTube.
In the 3rd party software section of this site, there is an application that allows you to watch a low grade version of YouTube on the BlackBerry. Any attempt to watch a higher grade would not work.
Alex