Synchronization Integration
Regardless of what you think of the merits of the various kinds of handheld devices (cell phones, PDAs, portable music players, tablet PCs, etc.), one of the next big trends in all these little devices we have will be interactions between them. They’ll connect, synchronize, share information in that “cloud” we all keep thinking of. At least, that’s the theory. Robert Reimann (author of About Face 2.0, former consultant for Cooper, currently an Interaction Designer for Bose) visited a design class I’m taking today and mentioned this trend as well. I may mention more about the things he said, as the discussion was very interesting.
Well, I’d like it if we could start small. My cell phone has Bluetooth, right? Why is it that Mac OS X with iSync is basically the only way to realistically get phones synchronized with calendars and address books? My Windows-using friends have absolutely no idea why I get excited when a device mentions Bluetooth capabilities. “Bluetooth is dead” was everyone’s mantra before it even made it to market—and now that it’s realistically here for me, why are other companies so slow to adopt it? Logitech even released a Bluetooth mouse which has been much to my liking, but they haven’t even released a firmware update to get it to support Bluetooth 1.2—let alone officially support Mac OS X!
Why do I have to tell my devices to synchronize and connect? Mac OS X could handle attempting to connect to devices when they’re within range automatically—I know it’s possible for software to detect such things. Hopefully with Sync Services this will be more possible. Once devices are automatically detected and connected to, why not automate synchronization? Why do I have to click a button to tell my devices to synchronize? Heck, even my Palm m500 could auto-synchronize when I place it in the dock. The more often things synchronize, the less time it takes to do each one. My understanding is that the iPod works this way with music already. Why shouldn’t my calendars and address books always be the same—on my phone, on my PDA, and on my Mac?
Going beyond that, I now use my PDA and phone and Mac to send SMS messages. Ignoring the issues I have with doing so between my Palm and phone, why is it that Address Book.app makes me open it and press a “connect” button to get SMSes forwarded to my Mac? Why does SMS messaging even have to be built in to Address Book to begin with? I hope Sync Services means that SMS messaging will always automatically be available. I don’t want to have to keep Address Book.app open just so my SMS messages appear on my Mac. Combine this with automatic device detection and connection and now whenever my phone is close to my Mac, my SMS messages appear on my Mac automatically.
These kinds of steps aren’t difficult or large steps to be taken to improve inter-device interaction, but they’re steps I’m surprised Apple hasn’t taken yet. And I’m surprised that other OS vendors are even further behind.
Of course, it doesn’t help when most of the device manufacturers can’t even cooperate and build interoperable implementations all the time (Motorola, I’m looking at you).
[…] And so today starts out with me reading a well-explained piece on what PalmOne Palm has done wrong with their Treo software, HotSync software, and firmware. As someone who’s still trying really hard to like Palm—I have an m500 which is slightly better than a Palm V, except the Palm V was completely metal and the m500 is half crappy-metallic-looking-plastic. I completely agree with the article. […]