Apple’s anticipated iSync software was promised in September as a free download to all Jaguar users. iSync was a significant reason why many of my colleagues purchased Mac OS 10.2 – because the new software requires it. iSync is the salvation of those of us who are sick of all the BS that Palm/MS/Handspring/OS X has been putting us through this year. There are several classes of OS X users who eagerly await its release
1. Palm PDA owners – Choice are Palm desktop and MS Entourage. Both fine programs, but took forever to get working in OSX.
2. Handspring owners – Who now have Palm desktop and Entourage sync capabitlity (barely) who felt held for ransom until Handspring wrote a check or something and kicked Palm in the butt to develop some Visor support.
3 Those users who bought the only mobile phone that will work with iSync, Sony Ericsson T68i, in hopes the promise of iSync was as great as the hype and we could dump our poorly supported PDA’s and have one tiny cool device.
Given that most (if not all) of these peopl have .mac accounts and are chomping to see if iSync lives up to its geek promise, every one of them would fork over the hundo to keep their cool .mac address and be able to publish their lives with their .mac site.
But…
Does the thing work? Can it make my sync/cal/mail/address life easier? Is the Apple suite of products a replacement for my Palm sync woes? Will it work with Handspring Visors? Was buying Jaguar a big mistake?
Who knows? – Apple could sell .mac accounts all day long with the ability to sync you PDA to your computer and then to your .mac account, but the only infor you can get about iSync is buried on the Apple site (no links to it anywhere) or if you do a search. It still says September as the delivery date, which means they have four days to deliver.
The date coincides with when my .mac special pricing offer runs out. If iSync works like I’ll take 2 .mac accounts. If it works like OS X v10.0 Ill be glad I let my .mac account go.
I can tell you from using the 30 Aug beta that it works pretty well with the T68i, iPod and iCal, but I have not done any testing with a Palm or .Mac -Ed
[Update 11/08/2002] Amazon.com is selling the Sony Ericsson T68i color, Bluetooth mobile phone for only US$50 for a limited time.
