Last July, InfoWorld chief technologist Tom Yager wrote a review of the iPhone that drew, shall we say, a little flak. After he evaluated the iPhone as a device for enterprise users, Tom gave it a measly score of 4.9... Last July, InfoWorld chief technologist Tom Yager wrote a review of the iPhone that drew, shall we say, a little flak. After he evaluated the iPhone as a device for enterprise users, Tom gave it a measly score of 4.9 out of 10. Vitriolic Apple fans accused Tom of taking bribes from Microsoft (four months later, his decision to award Apple’s Leopard OS a perfect 10 drew accusations he was on Apple’s payroll. We look forward to finding out what other companies are paying him, too). To find out how the iPhone is faring in the business world, we sent Contributing Editor Leon Erlanger on assignment. The result is this week’s big feature story, “Outfitting the iPhone for business.” Leon’s article provides ample justification for Tom’s business-oriented review. “IT is scared out of its wits about the iPhone in the enterprise. It has no firewall, it has no encryption, you can’t wipe the device, and you can’t force people to use a strong password,” Leon says. Not surprising, he adds, because Apple didn’t create the device for the enterprise to begin with. As Leon notes, the iPhone sneaks into the enterprise the same way other questionable devices have crossed the transom in the past: In the pockets of demanding execs and other rogue users. “An exec says: ‘Hey, this is cool. I want to hook this up to e-mail.’ And IT doesn’t know what to do.” IT pros eventually figure out workarounds, although none are satisfying. Meanwhile, everyone assumes Apple’s forthcoming iPhone SDK will plug most of the holes. That’s just a guess — the company’s tight-lipped policy toward developers keeps IT in the dark. On the other hand, there’s nothing mysterious about the lithe, beautiful MacBook Air. Except maybe how they made it so thin. Senior Contributing Editor Paul Venezia reviewed the latest and lightest of the MacBook line, applying his trademark technical rigor. Find out what he had to say in this timely review. Lighter and smaller still will be first smart phone to use Google’s Android platform, set to make a stellar debut at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. It will use an ARM chip, but we don’t know much else at this point, other than it will be an “early prototype.” Last November, Mr. Yager predicted it would be “years” before Android was fully realized in a handset. Was he way off base? Well, soon enough, we’ll find out how early that prototype really is. Technology Industry