This blog post is probably out of date. If you want to set up Exchange ActiveSync, you should instead consult one my guides:
	iPhone Exchange ActiveSync Setup		iPad Exchange ActiveSync Setup
	iPhone ActiveSync Troubleshooting		iPad ActiveSync Troubleshooting

It’s finally here!  The iPhone now has most of the functions of the BlackBerry – over-the-air push and sync of Exchange email, contacts, and calendars!  Apple let the 2.0 OS out of the bag earlier today, and intrepid souls (and me) have taken the plunge and installed it.

While most people, including me, headed to the (also active) App Store to try out the native games, I quickly turned the other way – towards the new Microsoft Exchange integration.

Read on for my first impressions and instructions on getting it up and running.

For the most up-to-date information, see my iPhone Exchange ActiveSync Guide!

This post is part of my series focused on integrating the iPhone with Microsoft Exchange using ActiveSync:

• iPhone OS 3.0 information:
  1. First Look: iPhone 3.0 And Exchange ActiveSync Integration
  2. How To Subscribe To Internet Calendars In iPhone OS 3.0
  3. How To Access LDAP Directories In iPhone OS 3.0
  4. iPhone 3.0 Exchange ActiveSync: Better But Not Perfect
• How To Set Up iPhone Exchange ActiveSync
1. A Few iPhone Exchange ActiveSync Gotchas
2. Can the iPhone Sync With Multiple Exchange Servers?

By the way, the apps are great!  Sega’s Super Monkey Ball is touchy, but I think I’ll get the hang of it.  And my 4 year old loves Jirbo Match!  Too bad the Red Sox weren’t playing or my test of MLB At Bat would have been much more exciting!

Up and Running With Exchange

Seriously, why are you still reading? Head over to The iPhone Exchange ActiveSync Guide for current/useful information!

Here’s the quick how-to for getting Exchange up and running on your iPhone.  Note that this works on any iPhone with the version 2.0 software – the iPhone 3G comes with this out of the box, but original phones will need to be upgraded.  Update: You do not need to buy the Enterprise Data plan from AT&T in order for this to function – it will work with any plan, and even works on the iPod Touch! Update: The process is pretty much the same with iPhone OS 3.0!

We will set up the mail account first, then enable sync for Calendar and Contacts.

1. Install iTunes 7.7 and upgrade your phone to iPhone OS 2.0 if necessary
2. If you already have your Exchange server running with IMAP, disable the account in Mail Settings.  I left mine set up – no telling when or if I’ll need to revert!
3. Set up a new mail account, selecting Exchange as in the photo above.
   
4. Enter your email address (e.g. “billg@microsoft.com”) in the Email box.
5. Enter your Exchange domain and username (e.g. “msexec\billg.microsoft”) in the Username box and watch the text magically shrink to fit.
6. Enter your password (e.g. “OuttaHere!”) in the Password box and marvel at the nifty new “show the last letter entered” feature.
7. The iPhone will now try to automatically discover your Exchange server.  If you don’t have Exchange 2007 with Autodiscovery turned on, it will fail and warn you that it couldn’t validate your account.  You will have to manually enter your server name in the window.  Make sure you enter your ActiveSync server name, not the OWA server (as in Entourage) or the real Exchange server (as in Outlook).
8. Now tap the home button and go into Mail.  You should see your new account appear, and it should show your folders and email messages within a few moments.  Congratulations!  Email is now set up!
   

Next we will enable sync for Contacts and Calendars.

Note:  You can’t sync Contacts and Calendars from both Exchange and iTunes! You must choose one or the other! And the iPhone will delete your old entries when you enable this! Update: You can do both desktop and over-the-air calendars in iPhone OS 3.0!

Ok, enough shouting, on with the show!

1. Once you’re sure email is working, go back into the Exchange Account Settings tab (shown above) and tap Contacts to “ON”.
   
2. The iPhone will warn you about deleting your existing entries, just like I just did!  If you’re sure, tap “Sync”.
   
3. Now the iPhone will enable Sync.  Do not go running up to the Calendar or (new!) Contacts App and expect to see everything there immediately.  It took my phone about 5 minutes to populate these, and I was worried when I saw nothing there at first.
4. Do the same for Calendar and you’re all set.  Wait a few and you will have pretty much full over-the-air Email, Contacts, and Calendar integration!

Initial Impressions

Prepare to be confused by the new Calendar and Contacts apps.  They now include categories, and you can find yourself scratching your head at seeing no entries when you’re in the wrong category.  I left my calendar in “Home” and there were no entries.

I had to tap “Calendars” at the top to return to the screen at right and select “All”.  This could be really nice – I could organize multiple calendars here for work and home.  But it’ll take some getting used to.  Update: Don’t bother with multiple calendars! Update: Multiple calendars rock in iPhone OS 3.0!

Note that calendar entries are color-coded in the calendar, too, which is a nice touch.  I don’t remember any similar functionality on my BlackBerry, but it could be that I just never discovered it.  It took me about five years to figure out how to see missed calls, after all!

The same problem appears with the Contacts application.  Here again, we have groups of contacts, and what you see is dependent on which group you’re currently “in”.  I’ll have to work out how to manage these using Outlook or Entourage.

Thankfully, Apple finally includes a Contacts application on the home screen in OS 2.0.  It was always frustrating to have to go into the Phone app just to look at someone’s info!

The App Store is good, but a little perplexing.  There are about 500 applications up for sale right now, and not all are worthwhile.  There are three “flashlight” apps, for example, all at different prices.  I think the App Store will be quite a mess once all 25,000 or so applications have been added!  It’s already hard to locate anything.

Apple released just two native apps:  A $5 Texas Hold’em game, and a free remote control app for iTunes.  The latter is pretty nifty – it seems to use Bonjour in reverse to present itself to iTunes instances running on the network.  The iPhone shows up in the sidebar and you have to enter a PIN to activate it.  This would be much cooler with an AirTunes device – maybe I’ll have to snap up one of the old 802.11g AirPort Expresses currently offered at MacMall for $59!

There are some other worthwhile apps, too.  MLB At Bat is great – live game updates and video clips of major plays.  I think I’ll be using this a lot!  Definitely worth $5 to me.

I already mentioned a couple of games, but I was more interested in trying out the social networking applications.  AOL released a free version of Instant Messenger, but I’m not sure if it (yet) supports Apple’s always-on push service.  There’s a FaceBook app, too, but it doesn’t look much better than the web version.

This brings me to a major concern about the App Store.  Why make a native app to do something the web does just as well?  I can see where an offline book or map reader would be handy, but why MySpace?  There are lots of Bibles in there already, but where is the off-line/on-line version of Wikipedia that I had hoped for?

Google added a search app, covering both the web and local content on the phone.  But where’s Google Talk?  Shockingly, after literally sharing the stage with Google at the iPhone’s introduction, Yahoo! is entirely absent from the App Store.  Microsoft isn’t there, either.

But there were some nice surprises.  Yelp, Pandora, and Paypal all have free clients that look useful.  Time will tell which of these apps really get used!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2008. | How To Set Up iPhone Exchange ActiveSync
This post was categorized as Apple, Personal, Terabyte home. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

I avoided all of these things for years before finally succumbing to LinkedIn.  It seemed like everyone in my (professional, over-30) “network” was on it, and was sending me invites all the time, so I decided to jump in and join just that one network.  LinkedIn was, and remains, just “ok”.  I like that it is focused professionally and that many of my colleagues are in it.  I really don’t like that it’s not really integrated with anything – your network lives on LinkedIn and never gets out much.  And I hate the spammy messages and Ponzi scheme aspect of collecting contacts and luring others in.  But it remains ok.

Then there was Plaxo.  If you disliked the messages from LinkedIn, you hated the ones from Plaxo, especially their embedded “business card” signatures with JavaScript, images, and god knows what else…  I finally joined Plaxo because it purports to keep your Outlook address book in shape for you.  But I’m furious that what it really does is “re-duplicate” all of your contacts, messing up your address book until you have to sign up for their premium service just to get the de-duplication feature.  And don’t get me started about when I switched jobs and it spammed everyone in my address book without my consent!  And Plaxo just re-launched with a more Facebook-y interface called Pulse, which is pretty but mostly empty and highly useless.  I’m considering quitting Plaxo…

Then there are the social social sites.  I “joined” MySpace so I could keep up with one of my favorite bands, but I’ve never really used it.  It’s just so creepy and ugly – a race to see who can come up with the worst home page reminiscent of the way-back days of the world wide web.  I refuse to use it, except to delete the continual spam mail from would-be women friends in Russia…  Come on, Tom, can’t MySpace do something about that?

Next up?  Facebook!  Aah yes, home of 10,000 useless ways to “poke” someone you already know.  And home to exactly 38 people that I kinda know. It was interesting playing with the customization features, and seeing the crowded but much less ugly home pages.  But it’s not for old folks like me, I guess.

So why am I writing this today?  Well, if you’re my friend (and if you’re reading this, you probably are) then you might have just received some more social-spam from me this morning.  And I wanted to apologize.  See, I just tried out Spock, a people search engine that looked kind of keen.  It mines other sites to try to come up with uniform information about people from all those other social networks – a network of networks.  It asked me to add in my connections, so I let it search my address book (which, thanks to Plaxo, is about as crufty and full of surprises as my kids’ toy box) and then told me that 135 contacts were “already on Spock”, so I could “add them to my trust network”.  Sure, I stupidly, thought adding them to my trust network sounds OK!  After clicking “Add to trust network”, it asked if I wanted to email everyone else, and I said no.  Now I am not sure what Spock did to request trust, and I have no way to take it back.

But there was something nagging me at the end of this little interaction with Spock, making me think I might just have spammed everyone yet again.  Maybe I’m just mistrustful or jaded, but I guess I’ve just gotten to the point of assuming that all social networking sites are Ponzi schemes to bring eyeballs to ads by sending out email “on my behalf”.

I’m sick of it.  I’m opting out of the next social network I get invited to, and I suggest you do the same.  I’m thinking of pulling out of Plaxo, Facebook, and MySpace.  And the next site I trust that spams my friends will get the boot, too.  Hear me, social networks?  Quit it or I quit.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2007. | “Social” Sites: Quit It or I Quit!
This post was categorized as Personal. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.