hirokazu said:
I can't believe you're blaming Japan and Korea for pushing their mobile standards beyond what the rest of the world offers. It's wrong to be the leading the world in technology now?
No, I'm against being a leader in an un-open proprietary technology implementation. It's why I dislike Microsoft, because it refuses to do things a standard way and won't impart its implementation to others (see: the reason iPhone can't access MSN Live/Hotmail). It's a matter of ONE group thinking they know what's best, when the optimal solution is non-proprietary implementations where possible. And yeah, I just compared Japan's mobile market to MICROSOFT.
hirokazu said:
And you speak as if Korea and Japan are the only countries with non-international compatible networks. US has CDMA, if you had a CDMA-only phone and you went to, say Australia where all the networks are GSM/3G, you'd have exactly the same problem as a non-SoftBank phone in other countries.
CDMA is also an OPTION in addition to a GSM phone with more operability worldwide. Japan gives its customers NO such option. And CDMA is offered in Europe, other parts of the Americas, Africa, the Middle East, other Asian nations (including most metropolitan areas of Japan!)... I could keep going, and it shows an extremely strong contrast to Japan's proprietary cell phones and networks, which work and are available in... Japan and Korea. Bit of a shorter list, huh?
hirokazu said:
Their networks aren't working elsewhere in the world because nobody is setting up the same sort of mobile networks elsewhere, but all most of them choosing to go with 3G instead. Japan installed much of their infrastructure before much of global shift to 3G, you expect them to scrap their existing networks just to conform?
No, I expect Japan to push its technology as the standard, since it's supposedly ever so superior, but that was NEVER done. With most of the technology in Japanese mobile phones, there was little to NO attempt to make them a standard implementation of technology. Standardization works in a similar method to open source, where multiple people contribute to achieve a superior solution for all parties. Japan never even bothered with that, they took their tech and ran with it. For all we know, the rest of the world would have jumped on their systems and implementations as opposed to the 3G GSM and CDMA evolutions we now see everywhere else. But it was never proposed that anyone else be allowed any input, no consortium was constructed, NOTHING. FOMA, FeliCa chips (though Sony and its Japanese nationalist tendencies are probably more to blame for that), 1seg, push mail as a replacement for SMS... there was no intention or effort to globalize these things, preferring to create an unglobalized technology-hoarding mobile market. You can't expect other markets to adapt a technology that they can't have any input on, hence why GSM and CDMA won out worldwide, because it was a worldwide standardization initiative. No such initiative was ever presented by the creators of Japan's mobile technology.
I certainly can't blame them for wanting to advance, but when it comes at the cost of interoperability, yeah, we have every right to call out Japan's mobile market for being stupid about it. They made this situation themselves, it's not up to Apple to fix it or bow to their needs. They got billions of other potential customers that all operate pretty much the same to please first.
hirokazu said:
Not to mention, the main issue at hand, e-mail texts and emoticons can be implemented on any network with Internet access, including 3G. Apple doesn't need Japan specific firmware like you say. They roll all their region-specific stuff for all their products, OS X, iPods, iPhones into the one product already. The iPhone already has region-specific settings, language options, and keyboard options. A proper implementation of e-mail texting would just add to that. Who said anything about region-specific firmware?
You realize the difference between

and ^_^, right? The technologies you say Apple already implements can be implemented without issue because there is no difference in actual use. People use a Pinyin keyboard the same way, because they're designed to work one specific way. Smileys are not emoji, and how do you make the distinction when it's all culture-based and not language-based? Do you suggest having a setting where you have to specify what type of emoticon input the phone recognizes based on your region of the world? Either way, you would have to specifically enable it and determine what each emoticon set based on what each region actually offers for emoticons as opposed to others.
hirokazu said:
I think it's safe to say that those here standing up for Japan's existing services aren't expecting Apple to implement things that would require additional hardware, like 1Seg or osaifu-keitai. We're just saying the other stuff that could be done in software isn't being done, and they stand to be the loser for not doing it.
Yeah, there's a lot of things they could do to their software, and I would support... but I just simply don't see it happening. You blame Apple, but if you cater specifically to one market, you have to bend over backwards for ALL of them, and then you run a lot of risks of being walked all over and having unreasonable demands presented from all sides.
hirokazu said:
There's no reason e-mail cannot effectively replace SMS completely in other countries as it has in Japan, you just need to get the public to rethink the way e-mail CAN work on mobiles, and get them to see the advantages of it. Carriers would need assign customers an e-mail address with their number like in Japan and adopt the same standards for it so it works the same for all carriers.
Yeah, read the first section of my reply... it would have worked, but it's not like anyone tried to push for this kind of service, either, so...
But I suppose all of this is moot, anyways, with Japanese carriers moving to LTE for its 4G technology and therefore actually meeting up with the worldwide standard in at least one degree. Well, maybe au and Softbank, at least. NTT-DoCoMo would likely rather create some 4G abomination that evolves from its FOMA brainchild, I'm sure.
I suppose I just find it inexcusable when people expect a world device to cater to them when it didn't have to be a problem if they used standardized technology in the first place, or even bothered to standardize their technology achievements.
OK, I'm quite done ranting on the situation. There's just too much Japanese nationalism about how "great" a keitai is... and it is, in a way. Unless you leave the country, then it's a nearly-useless BRICK. I just present the opinion that the situation Japan presented is its own by creating an insular market that a worldwide device like iPhone has trouble fitting into. Blaming Apple for the situation and demanding they make it work is like being incredibly tired but only being given the option to sleep on a bed of rusty nails. When you aren't given a lot of options to work with, finding a solution isn't easy without causing further potential problems.
By the way, that Incase looks slick.