(absolutely not a) Pre-MacWorld Leak! New iPhone, iPod Spotted in Hong Kong…

If you can’t wait to see the new gear that Apple will be revealing at the MacWorld Keynote Tuesday morning, I can at least show you two products they probably won’t be announcing…

iPhone Mini

First up is the iPhone Mini, which I found on Apliu Street in Kowloon’s Sham Shui Po district. At about $100 CAD this little number doesn’t have 3G or WiFi, but it does sport an FM radio, apparently powered by Windows Media Player…?

iPod Shuffle with screen

And in the famous Temple Street Night Market I spotted these new iPod Shuffles, with screens! Code-named “MP3″, a 2GB model will only set you back about $15 CAD and comes in 5 colours and 2 screen orientations, apparently…

All kidding aside, that iPhone knock-off beats Apple’s official product with one killer feature — it’s 100% unlocked. While it’s technically true that Apple’s iPhone 3G is sold unlocked here, to actually buy one you need to meet the following criteria:

1. You must provide proof of Hong Kong citizenship;
2. You must be willing to sign up for a two-year contract with 3, the only carrier that sells it.

With such restrictions, I can’t really fault the local pirates for giving consumers an alternative, albeit an illegal one. And of course, you get what you pay for…

Make S60 a Passable iPod Stand-in with Nokia’s Multimedia Transfer Tool

In a previous post I proclaimed Salling Software’s Media Sync the best way to get music to your Nokia from a Mac. Turns out that verdict may have been a bit premature…

Corrupted Library?

Even though sending music to my E71 via Media Sync is but a one or two-click affair, there is an extra step required before I can actually play any of it from my handset. It looks to me like the Eseries Music Player has to load the transferred tracks into either RAM or a scratch file of some kind. And that “repairing corrupted library” message isn’t exactly encouraging, despite Media Sync going only one way — i.e. Mac to Nokia.

Thankfully for Mac users, there’s another way to get Music onto a Nokia device:

Nokia Multimedia Transfer Main Interface

Say hello to Nokia’s Multimedia Transfer utility for Macs! Like Salling’s Media Sync, this app is accessed through a drop-down window on your Mac’s title bar.

Playlists on iTunes

And unlike Media Sync Nokia’s utility puts a dedicated folder for your device in the iTunes sidebar — this can be a bit confusing at first as you can only drag playlists (and not individual tracks) into your device folder, as I discovered through trial and error.

Playlists on my E71

The good thing about this is that those same playlists get sent to your Nokia for easier navigation of whatever music you’ve transferred over, as you can see in the screen grab above.

DRM Alerts

In place of Media Sync’s vague and alarming “corrupted library” message, Nokia’s app is a bit more clear about what didn’t make it over to your handset and why. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: DRM sucks.

Nokia Music Player Manual Refresh

Sadly, you still have to manually refresh your music library — at least with the Eseries Music Player — before you can enjoy any tunes on your Nokia.

I won’t pretend for a second that this solution (or Media Sync for that matter) is anywhere near as elegant as using an Apple iPod or iPhone to take your music with you, but to paraphrase a famous saying about cameras, the best music player in the world is always the one that’s in your pocket…

4 Reasons Why I STILL Won’t Buy an iPhone

Image courtesy of Gizmodo.com

Earlier this week Apple announced it had sold a staggering 6.9 million iPhones in Q3 2008, beating RIM’s 6.1 million BlackBerry sales and crowning Apple as one of the top three mobile vendors worldwide. And thanks to the company’s “Think Different” bookkeeping, their $4.6 billion profit for the quarter isn’t just gross handset sales, but a mere portion of a typical AT&T 24-month contract.

With every other handset manufacturer rushing to market with a touchscreen mobile of their own you cannot deny that Apple has hit an out-of-the-park home run with the iPhone 3G.

So why am I not using one?

Even though I’m a Mac user of thirteen years I’ve also eight years of smartphone experience under my belt, going back to the infamous VisorPhone, in fact. And for me there are still four major ways in which Apple’s monster handheld comes up short:

1. The Keypad – With a growing number of iPhones around me I’ve had lots of opportunities to play with the virtual keypad. It’s definitely quicker and more intuitive than using T9 — particularly with one hand — but still can’t match the speed of a physical QWERTY. And I know a thing or two about physical QWERTY keypads.

2. The Contracts – I remain fundamentally opposed to carrier contracts for GSM-based devices. And while Apple has certainly revolutionized the mobile handset interface, its dealings with telcos worldwide have been anything but. I’ll let this excellent IntoMobile editorial explain.

3. The Camera – How can you possibly argue that a 2 megapixel fixed-focus camera with no flash or video is better than a 5 (or even 8!) megapixel auto-focus camera with both?

4. The Killer App – I’ve been combing through the iTunes App Store since it became available in Canada and I’ve yet to see that one program that makes the iPhone a must-have device. With all the smart developers out there embracing the platform I’ve a strong feeling that it’s on the way, but from what I’ve seen the iPhone’s killer app is still iTunes, as it has been since day one.

If anyone out there has a killer app for the iPhone, by all means let me know!