Windows Mobile support

[robyn1]

My request for the next version of Mac OSX is for usable support of Windows Mobile devices through iSync, including translation of Pocket Word and Pocket Excel files.

I'm an IT Consultant who has just thrown their Windows machine out the window (Aaaaahhhhh!!) and migrated to a MacBookPro. Other than the intelligence and ease of use, the next thing that struck me was the lack of an interface to Windows Mobile. iSync doesn't recognise Windows Mobile PDAs, and the two proprietary applications both miss features that the other one has. It makes syncing very difficult, when it was almost seamless on Windows.

I'm happy to work with developers to get something integrated that works.

[Viro]

I'm not too sure whether it should be down to Apple to support Windows Mobile devices via iSync, or if it should be MS's responsibility to make sure their devices work on Mac OS X. For a long time, Palm provided the iSync conduit that allowed Palm OS devices to sync seamlessly with OS X. It is only recently that this conduit was included in iSync by default (I think this happened when Tiger was released).

Should Apple be the one who provides support for Windows Mobile devices? Or should it be Microsoft/PDA manufacturers? /discuss

In any case, do check out MissingSync and see if that works for you.

[fryke]

Hm. As for "simple" for the user: It would certainly be great if Apple could just make many more phones syncable through iSync. Contacts, calendars: That _should_ be possible for almost any phone with Bluetooth support.

Then again: Windows Mobile has an almost negligible market share as far as mobile phones are concerned. The Missing Sync clearly is the way to go there. And if that doesn't support one or the other feature, I'd ask _them_ to include support for it.

[Lt Major Burns]

it's been known for ages that apple creates many, if not 90% of the drivers that 'just work'. printers, scanner, cameras, phones, various other usb devices, all of these 'just work', and it's down to apple supporting them, backwards engineering a good driver set so that their OS remains appealing. in the last year, i reckon apples support list for iSync has quadrupled, to the point that the last 4 phones i've had, this time last year, all but one were not supported at all, and now they all are.


another factor is that perhaps, Windows Mobile is heavily protected by MS. we know that microsoft protects it's key technologies, NTFS writing is still not possible, because MS doesn't want you to. the Word .doc format has not been opened since 1997, 10 years ago. Winndows mobile may just be another example of this. if i was MS, i wouldn't be fussed. it's another reason to shell out $200 on a copy of XP SP2 to run in Parallels to get the smooth syncing that windows offers.

sad, but possibly true.

[Viro]

Apple doesn't write many of its drivers. For printers, most of the drivers come from the GIMP print project. Video drivers come from nVidia and ATI (and most likely Intel) but are integrated into the Software Update. The wireless drivers were Broadcom during the G4 years, and they're Intel now.

All in all, Apple does fairly little device driver development. That's not unexpected, after all how much driver development does MS do for Windows anyway?

[fryke]

That's not really what counts. What counts - for the end user - is that Apple includes the drivers, delivers them, and they just work. That's the plan - and Apple's doing quite a good job at that, lately. iSync is a bit of an exception. They should at least include mobile phones in the list of supported devices that are very similar to already supported ones, because those usually "just work" when you add their product number to that list by hand. Or maybe they should create an assistant application for iSync which probes the mobile phone for the services it offers. You could then connect the phone via BT (or USB cable), "iSync Assistant" would ask you a couple of questions like "what supported phone most resembles yours", probe the phone and create an iSync-script for your new mobile phone. I'm quite positive that, for example, *all* newer Series 40 phones react like _any_ newer Series 40 phone. Same for Series 60, Series 80, UIQ etc.

It's certainly a bigger step to support a whole new platform, like Windows Mobile. And as I've said: It's just not as if even 5% of mobile phones out there would use this platform.

[Lt Major Burns]

whereas 90% of PDA's you buy on the highstreet run Wondows Mobile...

To Viro, i was talking more specifically about peripheral driver sets, cameras, phones, storage etc

[Viro]

Well, for the blue tooth issue, what the phone manufacturers should do is standardize on a fixed interface. This is similar to what the cameras do now, when you plug them into the USB port they appear as disk drives and no additional driver is necessary.

How I wish for open standards...