Motorola E815, Address Book, iSync 2.1.1, Mac OS 10.4.3

Question

Motorola E815, Address Book, iSync 2.1.1, Mac OS 10.4.3

I just replaced my Motorola v60i which worked perfectly fine with Address Book, iSync, Mac OS X 10.4.3, on a PowerBook G4. I upgraded to the Motorola E815 and although it syncs through Bluetooth it does not sync numbers with wait commands (i.e., 9785551212w1234w1) properly. The w is the wait command for burst dialing whereas 9785551212 would be sent, then you would press the right smart key to send 1234 (a password), and then you would press the right smart key to send 1 (to play a message). When the infomation is synced, iSync sends 978555121212341.

If you manually enter the wait command on the phone and then sync it eliminates the w when synced to the Address Book.

I played with entering a upper case W, but when synced, it converts it to a 9.

Has anyone run into this? Is there a fix for this? Manually editing the numbers with w commands would be a real hassel.

I contacted Verizon Wireless (Massachusetts) and they directed me to Motorola. After 6 calls to Motorola and 2-hours on the phone because their system kept hanging up on me, a support representative told be "Oh, you have a Macintosh. We don't support the Macintosh so call Apple." Real helpful. ;-(

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

PowerBook G4 15-inch Mac OS X (10.4.3)

PowerBook G4 15-inch Mac OS X (10.4.3)

PowerBook G4 15-inch Mac OS X (10.4.3)

PowerBook G4 15-inch, Mac OS X (10.4.3)

Posted on Nov 27, 2005 2:04 PM

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Answer 1

Nov 27, 2005 3:14 PM in response to Steve Stearns

It would seem that this is an iSync issue, not one triggered by any change on the part of Motorola or your wireless provider. Apparently, iSync now strips at least the the w non-numeric code from a number sequence when the value is passed to your device. It may be iSync itself that is doing it, the iSync Agent transfered to your device when you configured it, or it may be the Sync Services platform iSync now uses. I cannot find any documentation that indicates why this would occur, but the fact that it changes a W to a 9 is a further indication that developers overlooked the requirement to pass special characters in the string to your device.

How manufacturers implement pause codes - a three-second standard pause period [as opposed to a wait code] - varies greatly. I've seen Motorola use both of these symbols: ¤ and Ü to indicate a pause, and Nokia has used the classic + sequence to indicate a pause. On at least some Motorola handsets, the ¤ pause symbol is created by holding down the left arrow for a couple of seconds. It is a special currency character on the Macintosh, which you might be able to most easily copy from this message and insert in your numeric string in the Address Book. [The alternate character is created on a Macintosh by holding down the option key while depressing the u key, then pressing the caps key and U immediately afterward. Again, it too could be copied and pasted.]

I wonder if you insert any of those characters into your number string if they will survive the handoff, or if they too will be stripped out or modified.

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Answer 2

Nov 27, 2005 4:30 PM in response to Michael Lafferty

Mike, thanks for your response and advise.

I talked to Apple via AppleCare Tech Support. Paul (the technician) was extremely helpful and we worked through the issue.

What we did was to create a test user account and try syncing from the e815 to the Mac. That worked and all numbers with a w in them transferred fine. We deleted the test user.

In my primary user account, we deleted the e815 from the Bluetooth System Preference, deleted the iSync device, deleted com.apple.Syndication.plist and com.apple.isync.plist from the Library > Preferences folders. Restarted the computer with Disk 1 of the original Mac OS X Installation CD and checked and repaired the harddrive. We restarted again.

We set up the e815 in the Bluetooth System Preference. We established a connection in iSync. We than synced the phone. After syncing the e815 did not have the w in the numbers on the e815.

We reset the device (phone) in inSync, which deleted all the information and transferred the data from the Address Book to the e815. The w were not in the e815.

I then entered the w using the Insert Wait command in the e815 and resynced. Everything worked. So, the key "seems" to be to insert the w in the cellular telephone and then sync to the Macintosh. We synced several times afterwards and everything seems fine now.

Paul (at AppleCare), you are awesome! Thanks so much.

FYI - Paul said he would escalate the issue and hopefully Motorola or Apple will fix this "feature." 😉

PowerBook G4 15-inch Mac OS X (10.4.3)

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Answer 3

Nov 27, 2005 7:52 PM in response to Steve Stearns

That's amazing. I guess it just goes to show how important it is to test using a temporary account, even when logically it would seem that there is no way that a damaged or corrupted set of files related to a particular user could be responsible for something as obscure as your problem. Who knew?

I'm certainly happy to hear that your issue has been resolved, though I continue to wonder how it could have surfaced to begin with…

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