It’s that time for me again… I need a new cell phone. Mine is 3 years old and shot to hell. Ok, it might be due to the fact it went through many drunken nights of clients entertainment, constant charging on my desk, etc…
It’s not that I didn’t try to make the most of it : I bought a special conduit for iSync, sold with a cable and everything… only to find that :

1. It didn’t comply to the Address Book.app standard. The whole thing on my phone was a mess after one sync : emails in place of telephones, mangled names, charset errors, and the worst part : international dialing codes were gone to god knows where. Whether it’s the phone, iSync or the conduit, I don’t care, this shouldn’t happen for a boxed software bought at the Apple Store.
2. The smallest sync took like FOR-EV-ER. I’m not kidding, it was sort of giving an ETA of 5 mins or so… which turned out to be 20. In the same time, I could have edited the info directly on the phone.
3. The whole process of having to install a special conduit is just ridiculous. Besides, at the “lovely” price of 7,140 yens, it IS a freaking steal for what is supposed to be a “no brainer” process. Aren’t we supposed to be on a Mac ?

Of course I know that the underlying things are more complex than what transpires from the UI of iSync. I understand them, but I still think it’s stupid. What’s the point of promoting a software as “the solution to all sync problems and needs” if it is useless right out of the box?

Now, the whole issue is not tied to only one company. It’s not really Apple’s fault if the phones do not follow standards, it’s not the phone makers’ fault if Apple is too lazy to update iSync with new conduits on regular basis.

So, in the age of Bluetooth goodness, and because of the fact that my current DoCoMo P504i doesn’t hold a charge for a whole day anyway, I decided to investigate Bluetooth-enabled keitai (Japanese for “cell phone”), in hopes that if a common standard was used (SyncML or whatever), I could finally realize my beautiful and illusive dream of having a single, unified address book on my TiBook, my iPod, my .Mac account AND my phone.

It actually looked promising at first. Vodafone, who bought J-Phone last year, is offering a bunch of European-designed cellphones, which of course, support Bluetooth. I was ready to settle for the Nokia 6630, aka 702NK, but fellow hardmac member moose pointed out that Nokia phones are using the SyncML standard, which iSync doesn’t know about. He reckoned that going with a Sony Ericsson phone was the way to go.

So I started to look a bit more closely at the V802SE, which is apparently a slightly hacked V800 made for the Japanese market.

+ Bluetooth : check
+ Decent address book : check
+ Decent weight : check

Then yesterday, I was ready to shell out the cash and get myself one of these bad boys. Just for the sake of being thorough, I googled “802SE AND iSync”. I am glad I did…
Turns out, the phone is modified enough so that it doesn’t work with anything else than the Windows-only software that comes with the phone. (how surprising…)

I stumbled across several forum posts, as well as a Japanese blog that were covering the same topic. So apparently, I’m not the only one pissed off by this whole non-sense.
I mean WTF ?! why would someone bother changing probably one hex value in the firmware to make the damn thing NOT compatible ? What is the purpose ?

Then I remembered that Japan has always “enjoyed” being non-conformant when it comes to telecoms. The PHS, Mova, AU and co. don’t work anywhere else but here; you can’t use your tri-band phone in Japan, the accessories for the same device need to be adapted…. etc., etc. ad nauseum.
So, two things come to my mind; either :

+ Japan is like Microsoft : they like standards, as long as it’s theirs.
+ Or some entity, somewhere intentionally cripples foreign devices so that the Japanese market doesn’t adopt them. Sort of a hidden protectionism.

Now, I’m not saying Japanese **people** enjoy that ! Most of my friends are oblivious to those things and are as shocked and surprised as me when they stumble upon the problem. But there is clearly an untold agreement to avoid worldwide compatibility at all cost; what else could it be ?

I’m pretty sure that out of nowhere, a company will come up with an iSync conduit, and charge me 8,000 yens for it. But this shouldn’t be that way. I would expect that globalisation helped bringing devices that work everywhere. Wouldn’t it be cool ? no matter where you land, your phone works, you’re reachable, you can buy accessories that are compatible, you can use a Windows, Mac, Linux or what-have-you computer to sync the phone.

Am I really that demanding ? I mean, I work in the shipping industry, and inherently, I NEED to be reachable 24/7, no matter where I am; I NEED compatible tools.

Anyways, back to the phone thing, I really do not know what to do. Should I expect Apple to update iSync in the near future ? Should I expect Sony-Ericsson or Nokia to not tweak their phones on a per-market basis ?
Well, **YES** and **YES**.

Do I think it’s nice that because of the gaping hole that Apple has left since the last iSync update, one company is charging me a ridiculous sum of money for something that is of questionnable usability and shouldn’t even be needed ?
**NO**.

Is there something I can do about it ?
**NO**.

More importantly, why doesn’t Apple, who clearly intends to conquer the Japanese market (and so far, seeing how packed the Ginza Store is everyday until closing, they are on the right track), go the extra mile to ensure the Mac plays nice with Japanese devices ? Heck, even the Japanese iSync page doesn’t list Japanese phones, they just point out that you need to buy a special soft to make your keitai work. (and saying “work” is a bit of a stretch).
Call me paranoid (I won’t deny) but I don’t see any other explanation than governement/industry pressures.

So far, I’m still hanging on to my crappy DoCoMo keitai, see how Tiger pans out in terms of sync / bluetooth. But things need to change… we’re in 2005, companies are proudly showing off their ISO badges, and yet, when it comes to implement simple standard protocols, it goes over their head. I just don’t get it.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 3rd, 2005 at 05:40 CET and is filed under Apple talk, Rants & Raves. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.