Open Letter: S/Mime Support on the Apple iPhone (or the lack thereof) Christian Donner, June 23, 2009June 30, 2009 Dear Mr. Jobs, Over the past year, my colleages at work have been relentless about showing off their new iPhones, the cool features that it has, the slick user interface, and the awesome design of the device itself. Initially, their attempts of making me feel inferior about owning a Windows Mobile device were unsuccessful. There were too many important features missing from your phone. I would point out to them, for instance, that I need my phone’s Bluetooth implementation to support the Wireless Stereo Headset protocol. I love to listen to web radio on the train with my Plantronics Pulsar 590A Headset. With the latest updates to your phone, most of my defensive arguments have been invalidated, though. Your iPhone now supports all important Bluetooth protocols, and the ever increasing wealth of applications that is available for download really makes the Microsoft platform look pretty lame in comparison to yours. However, there is one last important feature that the iPhone just does not have: support for S/Mime attachments and email certificates. When I send my colleagues a signed email, they cannot open it! How cool is that? This really boosts my ego, and I can’t help sniggering every time I press that old Send button in Outlook. My pledge to you: please do not add S/MIME support to the iPhone anytime soon! Under no circumstances! What am I going to do otherwise? I would have to get an iPhone for myself, and abandon the last bastion of Windows Mobile supporters in this office. Sincerely, Christian Donner Related Posts:OpenVPNMy USPS Certified Mail Experience ExplainedTyreWiz not working after battery changeEnphase Envoy Local AccessAmazon threatens customer of 26 years Mobile Devices Smartphone email securityemail signatureencryptioniPhoneS/MIME
Funny. I’m at the other end of the stick. When I receive a signed email from my dear IT geeks I play the “Can’t read it” game with them until they either go mad or finally ask what device I am using. When I then say “jesusfone” I can hear them fall off their chairs. Priceless, every time.
Good point! Please Apple support SMIME on the iPhone. This is an essential feature for every serious user out there. I want to drop my blackberry but I need SMIME to move to the iphone.
Is this only an issue sending from the phone or from outlook as well? Outlook and most mail clients can send plain text in addition to the signed text so things that don’t support s/mime like Gmail are still able to read the message. I’m wondering if the real problem is the smart phone is sending only the signed hash and not the plain text.
I would like smime to please everyone go to http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html and ask for smime