Help Get Apple to Release the FirstClass iPhone App

[Fred Bartels]

Apple has had the FirstClass iPhone app for almost three months and no one at FirstClass is getting any informative feedback about why the app has not been approved and made available on the app store.

If your school uses FirstClass please contact your Apple rep and ask them to look into the situation.

In addition, please ask your FirstClass users to visit this URL (http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunes.html) and let Apple know their frustration with the lack of progress on getting the FirstClass app released.

Thanks for your help!

Fred

[Karl Schaefer]

Fred,
I have asked all of my Apple contacts and submitted a request as well. The delay is frustrating and seems to have no reason. Maybe they are concerned with the millions of users who will swamp them when it is released?

[Hans Mundahl]

Great idea - thanks for posting the link.

[Fred Bartels]

Another approach to get Apple to move on the FirstClass iPhone app.

I sent the following to David Pogue ([e-mail]), who reports on technology for the New York Times. Perhaps if others write him he might do a column on the FC iPhone app.

Hi Mr. Pogue,

I'm writing you about an incredible story involving a software company that makes a communications product used by thousands of schools and their so far unsuccessful experience getting an iPhone app for this product approved by Apple. The company is OpenText and the software product is FirstClass (http://www.firstclass.com/). OpenText submitted a FirstClass iPhone app to Apple around three months ago. Since then they have had no significant communication from Apple about the status of their submission.

FirstClass is a product that has been around for over 25 years and many schools find it invaluable as a tool to facilitate communication between all the members of the school community. Many of us at schools using FirstClass have been eagerly awaiting the iPhone app as a way to further improve communication within our communities. The disrespect Apple has shown toward a company with a long-standing commitment to the education community is raising doubts with many of us about what kind of values are driving Apple. Apple has long claimed to be deeply committed to supporting education. What we've seen with the FirstClass app for the iPhone is a case where their corporate practices are not living up to their proclaimed values. I hope that you will consider writing an article about this issue that may help convince Apple to live up to their professed values.

Thanks,

Fred

-------------------------
Fred Bartels
Director of Information Technology
Rye Country Day School
914-925-4610

[Jamie Atkeson]

Fabulous idea, Fred! Apple's delay has frustrated many of us at Princeton Day School as well. We frequently highlight the benefits and advantages of Apple products to our community, and I expected the integration of our FirstClass network onto devices such as the iTouch and iPhone through a FirstClass Mobile App to essentially wrap things up for Apple in this regard. Unfortunately, the longer Apple waits the more users in our community move toward Blackberries, Palms, and PCs. When Apple gets derailed from the road of progress as in this case, they loose their advantage, their edge, and ultimately, their appeal. While our school community is heavily committed to Apple products, our school does not dictate a technology or platform for our individual users, yet I fear users will begin to vote with their feet as they adopt other devices that better support FirstClass. Why doesn't Apple see that approving a FirstClass Mobile App for the iPhone would secure them an even greater foothold in the education market?

[Robert Kennedy]

I'm going to blog on this. You never know....

Very frustrating to see some of the other apps they have approved and see that FC has been put on the back burner as it were.

Rob

[Antonio Viva]

While I share the frustration of the group, I find myself more puzzled by the strategy FC has employed. Rather than have to go through the process of getting a proprietary app approved, why not make FC more easily integrated with the iPhone as well as other mobile devices. This has been one of my biggest frustrations and criticisms of FC since the Palm conduits stopped syncing my calendar back in 2006! Since then I have have had limited success with Blackberry and moderate success with email on my iPhone. I have since been forced to use iCal, which I like better for my calendaring option.

Seems like the more strategic approach would have been for FC to have made the new release more mobile friendly. Just my 2¢.

[Demetri Orlando]

We had a "doh!" moment here yesterday when we realized that to connect and sync iPhone to Outlook (email, calendars, contacts) all we had to do was point the iPhone towards the web-based interface of our Exchange server rather than trying to connect directly to the server. Doing it this way, it just worked immediately. So I'm in agreement with Antonio here... shouldn't FirstClass just have a web-based interface that works for mobile platforms?

[Kelly M. McDaniel]

DISCLAIMER: I am the gearhead husband of an independent educator.

I'm in software development for a huge company whose name you would recognize. Company policy is that only "company-owned assets" are permitted to connect to the network. One of our top officers has an iPhone as do many of us in R&D. Prior to our acquisition, we set-up web e-mail on Exchange and it's been under the RADAR of the parent company IT department so far. I confirm that the fix described by Demetri is valid. Further, Google provides a sync app that I use to sync my Outlook Exchange calendar with my Google calendar (and my iPhone calendar.)

Matt's conjecture that "... IMAP and other standards based email protocols are horribly broken in the FC environment..." is correct and has long been a go-to excuse whenever my wife would ask for help with FC. It is not unusual for software design & development companies, especially those that are a couple of decades old, to develop in a silo...that is, in accordance with some internal standards that are not necessarily compatible with world standards. 'tis a pity. The user suffers. The FC lock on the edu market is no longer based in proprietary model solutions. It's now based on market/user penetration. FC could easily, and would be well-advised, to join the rest (or at least a lot of the rest) of the world in adopting standards-based implementations.

[Matt Montagne]

Antonio-I completely agree with you here. In our recent (June 2009) transition from Firstclass to Google Apps/mail it became painfully clear that IMAP and other standards based email protocols are horribly broken in the FC environment. Due to the fact that IMAP in FC is broken we were unable to reliably migrate sub-folder content from firstclass mailboxes to the Google environment. I have a hunch that this is the main reason FC is unable to work reliably with the native email, calendaring, and contacts programs on different mobile platforms. It is probably a factor as well in their difficulty in bringing an iPhone app to market.

[Fred Bartels]

The FirstClass Mobile Client for iPhone has been approved by Apple! Finally, but better late than never.

Click the URL below:

http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=3...

[Antonio Viva]

Well folks, the FirstClass Mobile Client for the iPhone is out - download it from the Apple iTunes App Store --> http://bit.ly/tnlWL

A few initial reactions:

Installing/setup was easy. Mailbox is nice and the respond to email outside your own mail domain appears to be fixed. An issue that the IMAP mailbox never seemed to be able to get right.

Conferences work nicely, and the ability to read them is a plus. Search appears to still be ineffective.

HOWEVER, the biggest complaint I have and will continue to have is that the calendar is still NOT available. This has been the longest running issue for me personally for the past 5 years. It's unfortunate to see the calendar missing from this first iteration but I am willing to cut some slack given that some of the other features appear to be working nicely.

[Dan Trockman]

No calendar is a big red flag in my book. They have had a long time to chew on this one. We use FC and have been pushing for this app and have a lot of teachers anxiously awaiting this release. No calendar is a problem.