Mac and smartphones: Can we just get along, soon?
Monday 24 August 2009 - Filed under Life Outside Work
Smartphones are selling like hotcakes and in a couple of years time from now virtually all mobile phones will be smartphones at least throughout the developed world. It seems odd, then, that the various smartphones and Mac OS X don’t seem to get along very well with each other. When it comes to synchronising stuff (calendar, contacts, photos, etc), and more importantly, transferring general files (say, Office documents, PDFs, and zipped archives) between the device and the Mac, there is no widely recognised standard solution provided and supported by Mac OS X other than the proprietary iTunes support for the iPhone/iPod touch. Or is it that the smartphone manufacturers think Mac users and smartphone-worthy business users are mutually exclusive?
I believe I speak for a lot of Mac users when I say that all we want to do is be able to move stuff freely between the device and the Mac so that the gigabytes of storage that comes with or is added to the device doesn’t go to waste. But both Apple and the various smartphone manufacturers make this annoyingly difficult if at all possible. Let me categorise my observations:
- iPhone: First up, Apple’s own iPhone (and iPod touch) – Mac OS X does provide fantastic native synchronisation support for these devices through iTunes, but only with certain types of media files such as music, photos, and videos that can be played on the iPhone/iPod. It is not possible to use the device as portable USB storage for general files. There are two workarounds: do it wirelessly (slow and only works for small files) or jailbreak the device (a practice not endorsed by Apple; more headache than it’s worth). Does this mean 32GB of storage have to be all music and podcasts? Frustrating.
- Windows Mobile: Smartphones that run the Windows Mobile OS work fantastically with Windows-based computers via ActiveSync. But there is no ActiveSync for Mac. There are a couple of generic third-party apps that I would not want to pay for, and there is no software solution officially supported by either Apple or Microsoft. Two workarounds: Use Bluetooth (again, shaky wireless performance and reliability), or create a Windows virtual machine and run ActiveSync in that. But seriously – firing up a virtual machine just to be able to transfer files is overkill, burdensome, and downright stupid.
- BlackBerry: BlackBerry currently does not support Mac. RIM has been telling Mac users to use a third-party application that has made a lot of people gripe. A few weeks ago, the company announced that BlackBerry Desktop Software for Mac is finally coming in September 2009. But what took the king of business smartphones so long to get to this stage? People’s responses to that announcement reveal their long-standing frustration.
- Nokia (Symbian): Nokia does offer Mac software for download, albeit still in beta, i.e. “a work in progress… For this reason, Nokia does not give any guarantees or warranties concerning its use, and our customer care is not able to assist you should you encounter any problems during its installation or use.” Well, it’s difficult to understand why the dominant player that sells almost half of the world’s smartphones is still making baby steps when it comes to supporting a significant segment of their user base. Besides, the range of Nokia smartphones doesn’t score highly on the sexiness scale – perhaps with the exception of the prohibitively expensive N97.
- WebOS, Palm OS, Android, and other ghettos: I don’t know much, but haven’t heard anything about Mac support on these devices.
All in all, Mac users of 2009 are still a minority group in the business world. Will Snow Leopard begin to bring disruptive changes when it debuts – possibly as early as 28 August – with native support for Microsoft Exchange?
2009-08-24 » JK