Exchanging Exchange

Since last summer when the iPhone began supporting Microsoft Exchange I have had my phone connected to my work server. Until lately the only bad thing I felt this did was enforce an irritating security policy on the phone, requiring a six-digit passcode on unlock.

Lately the entire "connection" thing has begun to chafe. Being involved in multiple projects, interacting with, ahem, "interesting" personalities on a frequent basis has increased my email traffic pretty significantly. This has led to my phone dinging with email pretty much around the clock: in the car to work, at work, at the gym, eating lunch, on the car ride home, in the evening--and it is virtually impossible to ignore.

So the irritation grows, with the little nuggets festering in the back of my head all of the time. And it isn't worth it. So this weekend I plan to firmly disconnect from the Exchange server.

Technical note of interest: this activity requires me to format my iPhone. The security policies persist on the phone even if the server account is deleted. Irritating, but likely a cleansing thing to do anyways.

Editor note: the part in red is wrong. Deleting the work Exchange server then allowed the passcode to be turned off, effectively deleting the security policy.