iPhone to support MS Exchange

Apple on Thursday unveiled a list of upcoming features, including support for Microsoft Exchange e-mail server, that Apple hopes will convince corporations to adopt the iPhone as the device of choice for mobile workers, reports InformationWeek.

During a news conference at the computer maker's Cupertino, California, headquarters, Apple chief executive Steve Jobs promised that the iPhone in its upcoming software update in June would contain "the long list of important features that enterprise customers have told us they need to really drive iPhone use".

The list included the ability to push e-mail and calendar items from servers to the iPhone, synchronise contact lists, and enforce security policies. In addition, the iPhone would support Cisco's client for secure connections to an IP-base virtual private network, and would have technology that a company could use to remotely wipe out data on a lost or stolen iPhone.

Following its brief campaign to support the doomed HD DVD format, Microsoft has now apparently entered into talks with Sony to bring Blu-ray disc technology to the Xbox 360, says Gamespot.

That once-unthinkable scenario was outlined today in a report in the British economic daily, the Financial Times, two months after Xbox group marketing manager Albert Penello reopened the door to the possibility.

"It should be consumer choice; and if that's the way they vote, that's something we'll have to consider," Penello told the Reuters news service during the 2008 Consumer Electronics Show in January.

A cross-continent war of words erupted yesterday between the makers of the popular BlackBerry and the hip iPhone, fuelling an increasingly bitter battle between Research In Motion and Apple for control of the smart phone market, reports Globe and Mail.

In California, Apple boss Steve Jobs suggested to a US audience that Research In Motion's BlackBerry is a potential security threat because all e-mails are routed through RIM's network operations centre (NOC) in its home town of Waterloo, Ontario.

"Every e-mail message that's sent to a RIM device, or from a RIM device, goes through a NOC up in Canada," Jobs said, according to a report by Bloomberg news service. "That provides a single point of failure, but also provides a very interesting security situation."

Microsoft offered its first public demonstration of Internet Explorer 8 on Wednesday, a prospect that had general manager Dean Hachamovitch struggling to figure out what to cover, reports CNET News.com.

"I'm so excited that I had to figure out how to focus," he told the crowd. The marketing folks naturally suggested he point to three major advances, but Hatchamovitch disagreed. "These are developers," he said he told the marketers. "They can count higher than three."

So, instead, he said he would talk about eight features: CSS 2.1 support, CSS Certification, performance, start of HTML 5 support, new developer tools, activities, Web slices and one he hasn't named yet.