• First it was Eric Iles and his abandonment of Palm WebOS.
• Then it was Shane Pitman to quit his crack addiction and give up the Blackberry.
• Next came Frank Owen and his betrayal of his longtime Windows Mobile.
• And now, it's my turn. I'm giving up my long time lust for the iPhone platform and making the migration to Android.

Ever since the iPhone supported Exchange, I've been a huge supporter. I've spent two good years on the iOS with my iPhone 3G. My job bought it for me back in 2008 and I got it shortly after launch. It was a solid phone with a lot of good things to say about it.

I evangelized to everyone I knew about how they should get an iPhone, how it's the best smartphone around. I got a 3GS for my wife, I've told countless other family members to get one. In most ways, when it was introduced, it was the best thing around. But things have changed. When the iPhone 4 was announced, I followed the WWDC keynote with great anticipation. I ooh'd and aah'd at all the advances in design and software. When pre-orders started, our company bought 11 to start, and we waited until last week when they finally arrived (early) from AT&T. I rushed across campus to rip open the box and activate my new toy (err) tool. There it was, the iPhone 4, before most anyone else on the planet had their hands on one. I took pictures, I tweeted about how amazing it looked, how the screen was fantastic (it is) and how fast it was compared to my 3G.

Taking it home that night, I started to notice something was a little off with my phone. In Kansas City, AT&T really is the top carrier, and with my 3G, reception was never an issue. I can think of only one place in the city where coverage is any type of issue, and it's not an area I frequent. So with the iPhone 4, the fact that I was only holding 4 bars at maximum, and typically 3, seemed a bit odd. Later, I realized I was on EDGE service with hardly a bar to see, for most of my time before I jumped on my home wireless.

As I started reading the news on various gadget blogs, I quickly realized I was suffering from the antenna problems that were plaguing almost ever other early adopter. I dropped a few calls that weekend, including one to my father who seem'd to have lost my mother, but I could make due. The view from most of the people within the Apple world was that it was firmware related, and would be quickly fixed. Then Steve Jobs opened his mouth. "You're holding it wrong." ... or something to that affect. Excuse me?

Beyond that, one of my co-workers (our telecom manager, of all people) got an iPhone with a totally non-functional home button. The only way she could close apps, is to reboot the phone. Since the Apple stores and AT&T were slammed that week, and the SIM cards are a totally different size, she was stuck with a broken phone until today when she was able to get a new one. I've also seen issues with the new camera, taking pictures of solid color backgrounds (especially in florescent lighting), where a green ghost appears in the middle of the image.

Many I've talked to online (although non of my co-workers) cannot sync their iOS 4 devices to Exchange. My bosses phone started making a horrible clicking noise (what inside this thing moves?) yesterday although it seemed to be a one time event. I could go on and on, but just read Engadget, Gizmodo, or any other gadget blog for the daily iPhone/iOS bug. Not to mention, simply holding the device in my hands for a couple days already allowed my wedding ring to put a scratch in the back glass so deep you can feel it with your finger.

My point is. Any one of these single events, may be something small and not worth getting upset about. Combine them together, and you have a product that is far from 4th generation and an operating system that already is flawed. Now, I've been around IT long enough to know major software releases have bugs, and that major hardware refreshes require driver and firmware updates to correct issues. But maybe I'd come to expect more from Apple, with their integrated platform, to expect something that would be near flawless by version 4. While I don't expect perfection in anything man-made, I found myself deeply disappointed in the device and the operating system. Enough so that I've made the switch to Android.

Yesterday I announced on Twitter and Facebook that I'd be leaving the job I've been at for over 4 years now. As a result, I'm turning in my iPhone 4 and going rouge. My new weapon of choice? Nexus One Ordered it from Google this morning, unlocked and out of contract, for AT&T bands. It has shipped, and arrives tomorrow. While I know there are other more interesting phones out there, and some like the Droid X soon to come, I will reserve my explanation for choosing the Nexus One for my next update ... after I've made the switch and fully integrated later this week. But this decision has some ramifications.

Up until last week, I was all set to pull the trigger on the purchase of a Apple computer, something I'd never done before. I had a bright and shiny new iMac all picked out, and was waiting for some news on the job front to come through before giving Apple my credit card info for my own iPhone 4 and that iMac. But now, given my recent burn by Mr. Jobs, I believe I will be rethinking that decision.

Maybe one of those new AMD 6-core processors or a Intel i7, running something other than Mac OS X, is in my future as a home desktop replacement?

The number of businesses still using Internet Explorer 6 is painful to see. Coupled with the fact that all of them are on Windows XP or Windows 2000, it turns from pain into terror, especially when it comes to security. For a lot of system administrators, the reasons to stay outweigh the reasons to upgrade. Websites that break, plugins that won't load, old software that isn't updated anymore.Trust me, I've been there.

However, a lot of it boils down to lazy and poor practices of system administration. Yes, you're lazy and you're bad at your job. Internet Explorer 6 was released in 2001. Yes, 2001, most of us don't even drive cars that old, let alone unleash people on the "information superhighway" with a browser that old. It was designed at a time when security was not the issue it is today. It was designed to work on operating systems like Windows 98 and Windows ME. Would you let people use Windows ME on your network? No! So why are you letting them use a browser that was built for it?!

"But it's not our fault, we don't write the bad software, or the non-compliant websites."

You're right, you don't. But you have the responsibility and the power to keep your network, and the rest of the Internet safe. The replacement for IE6 has been out now for just under 4 years. Actually, the replacement for it's replacement has been out almost a year. Meaning all you lazy administrators had two chances to migrate your systems over to an updated browser. Yes, you're lazy. If you have applications that "require" Internet Explorer 6, the decision should have been made to dump them or upgrade them long ago.

A line in the sand should have been drawn that said you were not willing to support such an old and insecure piece of software. Why is this such a big deal? Because security threats targeting users of Internet Explorer 6 continue to threaten the security of the Internet, and of your own network. Just this week, Microsoft admitted that IE6 was one of the vectors used to attack companies like Google. Why is Google still using Internet Explorer 6? Or I guess a better question is, why is Google even using Internet Explorer at all, when they develop Chrome?

Either way, it's disappointing to see that a company like Google, who tends to be on the bleeding edge of updates, is doing something stupid like running a almost decade old browser. The most recent threat, has no effect on users of Internet Explorer 7 or 8, even on Windows XP. Actually, Jonathan Ness over at MSRC Engineering put together a nice little chart explaining what browsers and operating systems are at risk with the latest attack vector.

The short of it, if you're still running Windows 2000 on workstations, you should be fired. If you're running Windows XP and Internet Explorer 6, you should march into your CIO's office on Monday and demand that you at least figure out how to migrate to Internet Explorer 7 ASAP, meanwhile worry that your network isn't the next one to be attacked by these unpatched exploits. If you're running Internet Explorer 7, you should turn DEP on to prevent future threats, or see if migrating to Internet Explorer 8 is possible. But really, for the small group who has already migrated to Windows Vista or Windows 7, enjoy your weekend. To all my fellow sysadmins out there: Stop being lazy, and start securing your networks.

If you couldn't get a chance to watch the Microsoft CES pre-show keynote last night, you didn't miss much. If you were actually at the event, I feel sorry for you, it must have been hard to stay awake.

After starting late due to power issues (which fried one of the Microsoft demo units on stage) the keynote got off to a rather boring start with Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, giving various statistics about how well recently released products like Windows 7 and Bing are doing. For the first half hour, the audio stream for the webcast was so bad, it kept cutting out and then required constant volume adjustment. Note to Microsoft, hire a decent sound engineer next time.

If you'd like to watch the keynote for yourself, you can see the saved version on the Microsoft website.

It was all pretty much downhill from there. The much discussed "Courier" tablet that many in the tech press was excited they would announce never came, and there were no details about Windows Mobile 7... at all. Only "we'll have more about mobile at Mobile World Congress." So overall, the keynote failed to deliver much of anything that we didn't know or have not seen already. But, here is a breakdown of what was covered:

• Microsoft has three goals in 2010: screens everywhere (meaning more PC and other devices), cloud services and natural UI.
• Since it's launch, Microsoft has sold over 39 million Xbox 360s. No data was provided on how many of those are replacement units after the first one suffered from a RRoD (red ring of death) -- in addition, there are currently 500 million games for the console, generating retail spending of over $20 billion.
• Xbox Live membership is now at over 20 million people.
• Project Natal, the natural motion capture interface for the Xbox 360, will be available for the holiday season of 2010.
• One interesting bit of news, is that HP and Microsoft will be teaming up to make Bing the default search engine and MSN the default homepage on their newly sold systems. Although it would seem that the agreement is something like "don't change the Internet Explorer defaults to Google."
• In the world of car multimedia: Ford will be rolling out updates for the next version of their Sync platform that include HD radio tuners that feature iTunes tagging. Blue&Me has now been sold in 1 million FIAT cars and KIA announced their UVO system rolling out in late 2010. Both Blue&Me and UVO are based on the same Windows Automotive embedded technologies as Ford Sync.
• While Windows Mobile 6.5 came out last year, it has generally been received with tepid enthusiasm. Ballmer refused to talk about Windows Mobile 7 last night, which is seen as the last ditch effort to save the platform. We shouldn't have very long to wait for more information though, as MWC is February 15-18 and Ballmer promised to have more during that time.
• What Ballmer did focus a lot on was Windows 7, which he said (and I would agree) is "faster, leaner, less busy... simpler to complete common tasks" - while we learned most of this during the launch back in October, it's still interesting that there were 3,000 engineers, 50,000 partners, 8 million beta testers for Windows 7.
• According to Ballmer, NPD says PC sales jumped 50% at the Windows 7 launch, and Black Friday was up 64% over last year. Gardner also says that in 2010 there will be a 12% PC growth over 2008. While Microsoft believes that has a lot to do with Windows 7, and they may be partially right, it should probably also be considered that the economy in late 2009 wasn't quite as bad as the "OMG! PANIC!" economy of late 2008, and that consumer spending was stronger last year overall.

"The range of PCs with Windows 7 is virtually limitless ... it has broadest ecosystem of developers in the world ... over 4 million Windows applications, 800,000 of them unique to Windows 7 just since the beta was released"

After Ballmer came Ryan Asdourian, Senior Product Manager for Windows, who came out to highlight all the different devices that run Windows 7. Sort of a "hey Apple, look we have cool and sexy hardware too!" A couple of the ones I liked were the Dell Adamo XPS notebook, which isn't new, but it always great to look at.

Asdourian highlighted the fact that the notebook is thinner then a poker chip and also wakes up from sleep mode faster then you can open the lid. Another system I wouldn't mind getting my hands on was the HP Envy 15, which features a DirectX 11 video card with 1GB of memory. Not bad for a notebook. Watching Ballmer on stage with Asdourian was almost painful though.

Seeing poor Ryan get teased and attacked by his boss in a failed attempt at humor. It was uncomfortable to watch, and makes me wonder what it's would be like to have to deal with him on a regular basis. One of the things that I did see some significant benefit to was the new collaboration feature of Windows Live Skydrive and Office 2010. In it, files that are stored and shared out of Skydrive can be opened by multiple users, and changes merged back into one document. The example that Asdourian used was students working on a PowerPoint presentation, in that each student could be simotaniously working on the same file, without having to share one computer. I can see this being useful at work, where all of our students already have Skydrive accounts though Live@edu.

Next Microsoft turned it's keynote focus to uniting software with the cloud, which is an approach I tend to be a fan of. My view, and also that of Microsoft, seems to be that the best approach for software going forward is having locally installed applications that communicate back into the cloud to instantly receive data. This is in contrast to Google's approach to the cloud which tends to be "put everything there and use a web browser to get it" ... which works for some applications and users, but not all, especially when access to an Internet connection is slow or non-existent.

Microsoft also announced last night that their Mediaroom 2.0 software will be available for IPTV operators to start testing next month. Mediaroom is the world's most deployed IPTV platform, powering such operators as AT&T U-Verse. The new version will allow providers to offer on-demand TV service to Windows 7 based PCs using Windows Media Center as well as on the Xbox 360. They can also offer on-demand programming to any web-browser on the PC or Mac, as well as compatible smartphones in the near future. Mediaroom 2.0 will also add support for Silverlight and IIS Smooth Streaming. Again, if you'd like to watch the entire keynote, you can do so over on the Microsoft site, but I wouldn't suggest it.

As more information comes out of CES that is Microsoft related (or if I see something interesting that comes from someone else) you can be sure to read about it here later this week.