The Missing Sync has been released with Windows Mobile 2005 support, and boy this works great. I've been lurking (and sometimes contributing) in their beta mailing list for the past few months, and as a fellow Windows Mobile developer, I've felt their pain during the process.

What most (non-developers) don't realize is the huge expense both in hardware and time in developing for Windows Mobile. This always ends up frustrating me whenever I switch over to, say, updating Conversions In Hand from working on a Mac project. Consider the vast number of devices produced by a seemingly random selection of OEMs, each with their own particular idiosyncrasies and, because OEMs don't like to provide O/S upgrades anymore, different versions of the O/S itself.

We actually have a stack of defunct Windows CE/Pocket PC/Windows Mobile devices, sitting in a box, that we've had to buy over the years. Coupled with the huge chunk of money re-distributors take for each software sale, this ends up making Windows Mobile development, mmmm, less than lucrative.

We've taken to testing on only a small handful of devices, along with the new native code emulator in Visual Studio 2005. Hopefully (for us anyways), this will reduce our costs and frustration, although it's going to leave some of the fringe devices out in the cold.

Interestingly, it looks like Microsoft is going to take the same approach with their "iPod Killer". It's too bad really (for them, anyways), because all they'll end up doing is confusing consumers with the plethora of units produced by various OEMs, some known and some unknown. New units will appear and older ones will disappear on a seemingly daily basis. Said consumers will end up buying an iPod because it's the simplest choice.

I've been using DirectPush on my JasJar, coupled with the 4SmartPhone service for a couple of weeks now. I have to say...it works really, really well.

So well, in fact, that as I thought it's breathed new life into my use of Windows Mobile. Let's face it, if there's nothing else that the success of the Blackberry has taught us, it's that push mobile email is the killer application for handhelds. Everything else is icing on the cake. Good icing, but still icing.

DirectPush definitely works as well as Blackberry. Email arrives almost instantaneously, and the volume of data transmitted is low enough as to not overwhelm your data plan (and your wallet).

There are some distinct advantages over Blackberry as well. DirectPush can easily be turned off, so you're not getting distracting email messages at an inopportune time, and if you have a WiFi connection available, you can sync your email using it instead of, say, your GPRS connection (although due to hardware restrictions, DirectPush itself only triggers push email operations over cellular type data connections).

I'm convinced that given sufficient marketing of DirectPush, and the availability of reliable and attractive hardware, that Microsoft has a real chance at reviving Windows Mobile's fortunes.

Recommended reading, if you're interested in the mechanics of DirectPush: Exchange 2003 Mobile Messaging Part 1 - A look at the Microsoft DirectPush technology

Things are looking up for my iMate JasJar, which has gone largely unused due to it not doing anything I really need it to do.

First off, real "push" email is finally available with the latest firmware update from Club iMate:

Microsoft™ Messaging and Security Feature Pack (MSFP): • Addition of the MSFP allowing Direct Push email, remote device wiping, security policy enforcement and Global Address List Lookup for customers using a Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 with Service Pack 2. Note that Push email will use GPRS connection even when connected to a WiFi network.

Not that I have anything to connect to at this point (the free Club iMate Exchange server doesn't seem to support DirectPush). I may have a look at one of the hosted Exchange providers if I can find one that seems reputable and supports Direct Push. Promising development though; it seems we've been hearing about this and waiting for it for years...

Secondly, The Missing Sync now supports Windows Mobile 2005 units in the new alpha version. It works very well (at least for me) and I'm now happily synching and installing from my PowerBook.

On a side note relating to the JasJar, I read the Business Week article regarding HTC with a some interest. Certainly they're pretty much single-handedly saved Microsoft's ambitions in the Smartphone market (and by Smartphone I actually mean Pocket PC Phone Editions). For all their self proclaimed passion though, I really do wish someone in the company would actually read some of the instructions that they give people:

(Hint: only one of the conflicting directions for resetting the unit actually work)

And so, after a lot of time spent trying to debug reinstall, upgrade and uninstall problems on Windows Mobile 2005, I find out that (tada) it's a Microsoft bug. From:

Pocket PC Thoughts :: View topic - Doing Battle To Uninstall Or Upgrade On Windows Mobile 5:

The problem has been fixed is will be included most device upgrades in queue and also future releases on WM 5.0. If you find yourself running into install/re-install issues, the best thing to do it to soft-reset *prior* to the install operation to ensure you have optimal memory available to perform the operation. You are most likely to see failed installation on device under the following conditions:

So basically there was (once again) insufficient testing before release. Does that sound like a harsh statement? I hit this problem (as did a large number of other people) the very first time I tried to uninstall an application on WM2005. I'm pretty sure someone should have caught this.

I'm at my limit on these mysterious failures that appear in each new WM release (remember the wake up problems from WM2003?) and which end up costing developers and users a vast amount of time and frustration.

This particular bug won't be gone for a while, either, since we have to wait for all of the OEM's to release the fix at some point. Hopefully. In the meantime, I'll probably have to encorporate the kludge (oh, sorry, workaround) suggested here.

Well, I have to say that the latest Windows Mobile, coupled with the iMate JasJar makes for an extremely usable PDA phone.

It seems that Microsoft has concentrated on smoothing some of the rough edges of Windows Mobile rather than adding new bells and whistles, which is just what was needed. I actually have no real complaints about the JasJar itself aside from a rather unfortunate name and a still more unfortunate carrying case. But those are both obviously minor in the grand scheme of things.

Sadly I have absolutely zero connectivity with my Macintosh - neither The Missing Sync nor PocketMac currently support Windows Mobile 2005, and Activesync 4.x under Virtual PC 7 just doesn't want to work at all. I expect that I'll have to be patient regarding the first two, and spend a whole lot of time trying to find out what's going on with the latter.

Recommended reading: Microsoft Mobile Software Still Behind, but Closing