Glossary
- iPhone – gives you a mobile phone, an iPod, and the Internet, in your pocket. One sleek device, one button, a touch-screen that changes from phone to iPod to web browser in an eye-blink, the iPhone is a revolution in mobile communications and a ground-breaking product in the tradition of the iPod and the iMac.
- 3G – “third-generation” mobile technology, featuring very fast data transfer (broadband-plus) speeds, to enable mobile web browsing and watching streaming video.
- EDGE – somewhat slower “2.5G” mobile data transfer technology, with lower power consumption and a more mature, compact chipset.
- SIM – Subscriber Identity Module, the little chip-card that you put into your phone to activate it. It contains a number that identifies you to the network.
- Wi-fi: wireless networking, just like laptops use. iPhone has a wi-fi chip so you can surf the web wherever a wi-fi network is available, such as your wireless broadband at home, the hotspots in Starbucks, or the wi-fi cloud that covers the City of London.
- IMAP – Internet Message Access Protocol. An advanced email protocol, supported by iPhone, that allows selective downloading of email. Rather than downloading the entire message, IMAP allows iPhone to show only the subjects of emails on the servers, only downloading the body of a message when you want to read it. Since all email is kept on the server, you can access your email from your iPhone as well as your computer. IMAP is an open protocol, meaning no license fees are required to use it.
- Exchange and Exchange Server- a Microsoft email solution, common in companies, that is used to manage email, calendars etc in a corporate environment. The Exchange email standard is a closed protocol, requiring license fees to be paid to Microsoft to implement it. Thus it is not supported by iPhone. However, Exchange servers can optionally support IMAP, and it is thought that pressure from iPhone users will cause corporate IT departments to configure Exchange servers to support the users.