Sony Ericsson 3G phone and the Apple relationship
No relevations here, but reassuring none the less.
<a href="http://www.sonyericsson.com/cebit/"; target="_blank">Click</a> to go to the Sony Erricson CEBIT minisite.
They revealed the T610 at CeBit, which is the T68i GSM successor (and a decent phone it looks too), but the real beef is that they have announced their first 3G/UMTS phone, the Z1010.
Apart from the fact that it has enough kit in it to make any geek cry (two cameras, two screens, MP3 player, Memorystick Duo, long range bluetooth, oh and 3G, so big bandwith), and it looks so much better than the hideous Samsung Matrix phone (what were they thinking?), the description specifically mentions transfer of data and images to and from PC *and Mac* by USB, IR and BlueTooth.
Now, it's a only a small thing but even with the Apple/Sony Ericsson relationship, it's rare they mention Mac connectivity in their literature, so it's reassuring that Mac users will be considered from the beginning - and that the Apple/Sony Ericsson relationship is still healthy, despite rumors of SE breaking away from their MPEG4 video streaming project with Apple.
I guess there are two ways of looking at this. The typical way is to read much more into it than is probable and say "Apple will rebrand it as the iPhone". <img src="graemlins/bugeye.gif" border="0" alt="[Skeptical]" />
Occums razor anyone?
OK, closer to the truth may be "Steve Jobs has seen it and wants Apple at the front of the queue for demos", but it's moct likely that Mac connectivity is just part of the design brief. Why read more into it?
It's also likely that the guys who built the minisite and the marketing team that wrote the copy are Mac users themselves and so they just wanted to not feel left out!
Now don't get too excited, 3G networks are just appearing and look like they need a fair bit of maturing. God knows how long that will take in the states, at least here in Europe we have less geography to cover and a more mature 2G/2.5G mobile phone culture and infrastructure (largely down to the geography argument - and having Finland/Sweden closer <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" /> )
And as for handsets, The Sony Ericsson P800 has been waiting for almost a year to be launched, so the Z1010 isn't likely to appear at a shop near you any time soon. Even a truly neat-o demo at WWDC would seem unlikely as it would raise expectations a long way before people will be able to get their hands on this tech (Even if the phone is in a demo-able form).
But, it's highly unlikely that they'd allow false info on the site, so I guess the Mac definitely figures in SE's upcoming phones. At least there's one phone manufacturer out there who plans on staying Mac friendly in the future.
And what a future!
<a href="http://www.sonyericsson.com/cebit/"; target="_blank">Click</a> to go to the Sony Erricson CEBIT minisite.
They revealed the T610 at CeBit, which is the T68i GSM successor (and a decent phone it looks too), but the real beef is that they have announced their first 3G/UMTS phone, the Z1010.
Apart from the fact that it has enough kit in it to make any geek cry (two cameras, two screens, MP3 player, Memorystick Duo, long range bluetooth, oh and 3G, so big bandwith), and it looks so much better than the hideous Samsung Matrix phone (what were they thinking?), the description specifically mentions transfer of data and images to and from PC *and Mac* by USB, IR and BlueTooth.
Now, it's a only a small thing but even with the Apple/Sony Ericsson relationship, it's rare they mention Mac connectivity in their literature, so it's reassuring that Mac users will be considered from the beginning - and that the Apple/Sony Ericsson relationship is still healthy, despite rumors of SE breaking away from their MPEG4 video streaming project with Apple.
I guess there are two ways of looking at this. The typical way is to read much more into it than is probable and say "Apple will rebrand it as the iPhone". <img src="graemlins/bugeye.gif" border="0" alt="[Skeptical]" />
Occums razor anyone?
OK, closer to the truth may be "Steve Jobs has seen it and wants Apple at the front of the queue for demos", but it's moct likely that Mac connectivity is just part of the design brief. Why read more into it?
It's also likely that the guys who built the minisite and the marketing team that wrote the copy are Mac users themselves and so they just wanted to not feel left out!
Now don't get too excited, 3G networks are just appearing and look like they need a fair bit of maturing. God knows how long that will take in the states, at least here in Europe we have less geography to cover and a more mature 2G/2.5G mobile phone culture and infrastructure (largely down to the geography argument - and having Finland/Sweden closer <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" /> )
And as for handsets, The Sony Ericsson P800 has been waiting for almost a year to be launched, so the Z1010 isn't likely to appear at a shop near you any time soon. Even a truly neat-o demo at WWDC would seem unlikely as it would raise expectations a long way before people will be able to get their hands on this tech (Even if the phone is in a demo-able form).
But, it's highly unlikely that they'd allow false info on the site, so I guess the Mac definitely figures in SE's upcoming phones. At least there's one phone manufacturer out there who plans on staying Mac friendly in the future.
And what a future!
Comments
Occam's shaving a different beard by the way. Same face though.
<strong>The SE / Apple relationship is very healthy, don't you worry about that.</strong><hr></blockquote>
hehe...
good to hear that, it's the sort of open ended (or is that "guarded"?) post that keeps us posting optimistically for weeks. <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" />
Just read the T610 thread here and good to see much more well connected people than me showing SE powerpoint slides with Macs in them!
The pic in that thread of the Z1010 "in the field" so to speak does make it look bigger than your average samsung flip mobile (and than I imagined), but look at the spec of the Z1010, and it doesn't look any larger than the NEC 3G handsets that are appearing here in the UK.
I guess until 3G really gets going you'll be carrying two phone chipsets in one casing (GSM and UMTS), so the fact that most 3G phones look smaller than a nokia 7650 is quite an achievment.
The thought of pricing makes me shiver though...
<strong>The SE / Apple relationship is very healthy, don't you worry about that.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
If so, where is iSync's P800 compatibility?
<strong>
If so, where is iSync's P800 compatibility?</strong><hr></blockquote>
iSync will be updated soon. I guess we'll have it then.
Soon come.
I promise you, this is cast-iron hypothesis, and you have nothing to worry about.
<strong>There are functioning builds of iSync that work with the P800 (and a bunch of other phones too). There are functioning builds of the P800 firmware that enable Bluetooth to connect properly. There are mobile phones syncing OTA with a .Mac SyncML server.
Soon come.
I promise you, this is cast-iron hypothesis, and you have nothing to worry about.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I knew about the new builds that synch with all kinds of SyncML compatible phones - they were synching a Siemens S55 on a TV show the other day.
But what really bothers me is that neither SE nor Apple in spite of their expressed comittment are able to support their products out of the box. It would seem considerabely harder to build a completely new app for MS Windows than to write some drivers for iSync. And I think it is a shame that Mac users have to search obscure internet sites for modem scripts rather than having official support.
<strong>I promise you, this is cast-iron hypothesis, and you have nothing to worry about.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Harald: A "cast-iron hypothesis"?
[quote]Originally posted by RolandG:
<strong>But what really bothers me is that neither SE nor Apple in spite of their expressed comittment are able to support their products out of the box. . . . I think it is a shame that Mac users have to search obscure internet sites for modem scripts rather than having official support.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I wholeheartedly agree, RolandG. It's a complete joke that Apple and SE can't write and publish a bunch of frickin' driver updates. IMO, this delay can only be an intentional, planned (anti-) marketing (non-) move. There has to be something in the pipeline from SE and Apple that is holding up support. It sounds like Harald might be able to venture a random guess at what could possibly be causing the delay.
Escher
[ 03-11-2003: Message edited by: Escher ]</p>