Apple iPhone doesn't sync with .mac?

The top 2 guys in my organization switched to the iPhone, and now they are trying to figure out how to accomplish windows mobile style tasks on it. Here's what we want to do:

1. Send him new messages when they come in, without using a free service like yahoo
2. Update his calendar when changes are made on his phone
3. Update our servers (or his .mac account, which syncs with our servers) when he adds/changes/removes contacts or calendar events

These are all the basic necessities of a cell phone for managers and supervisors, and we've worked very hard to have their exchange accounts sync with .mac just to find that the iPhone doesn't support .mac synchronization when you are away from your computer.

I could be missing something, but it looks like this is example #372 proving that Apple doesn't want to be a player in the corporate environment. Which is fine, but they need to advertise that they are consumer products so people like my boss won't replace his office equipment with Apple products.

(sorry, I'm a bit frustrated at the moment)

 

I guess your boss doesn't read about a product before he buys it?

iPhone will sync with your laptop (esp macs), and your mac can update .mac as it syncs...

there's no direct iPhone to .mac method

 

Well, iPhone will sync with .mac mail as it's IMAP, and it syncs all other data (calendar, contacts, etc) which I think is also synced across .mac.

But, not on the fly (well, IMAP is) - only when you physically connect it to the computer it syncs with. So long as he docks the phone for a sec to sync the thing when he sits down at the machine where he does desktop calendar work, it should copy all the data over fine. But it's, unfortunately, not going to happen without the physical connection. At least not yet - I'd expect it to happen after a software update at some point, but that's quite unpredictable.

 

Since when do bosses read about products before purchase? (esp. when it has the apple logo on it)

Just kidding, I actually think highly of my boss (and no, he doesn't read the forums!)

I'm still keeping an eye of the iPhone feature list because it looks like it does a lot of what Windows Mobile devices do, only easier, quicker, and shinier. Then there's the 3 or 4 things I rely on that it doesn't do at all (such as wireless sync with corporate mail/calendar/contacts). I imagine it has a lot to do with the goal of keeping it simple, and having a single point of entry for syncing does that very well.

 

Not to mention that they definitely rushed the software to get it out on time. Safari, at least, is less than rock-solid. It frequently crashes the iPod if you've got music playing, and goes down itself pretty often as well. Or, at least, that's the case on mine.

But short of using Outlook Web Access and doing it all through the browser, there's no wireless syncing as of yet. I'd be surprised if it's not a feature in the future, at least for .mac users.