Look, let’s stop beating around the bush with this… It should be fairly obvious from the photo above who Nokia’s after with their flagship N97. It also can’t be denied that in North America, at least, Apple’s iPhone is everywhere.

My goal with this post is to highlight the key differences between the two and let you draw your own conclusions. Along the way, I’ll be pointing out what Nokia could have done (and can still do) better.

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As soon as Apple’s WWDC keynote wrapped up yesterday I started thinking about what I would write here.

First I was going to write about the new iPhone 3G S, and how the hardware doesn’t measure up to Nokia’s forthcoming flagship N97. But nobody in North America is likely to even blink at this; they’re too busy drooling over the new iPhone apps like the one for Zipcar, that lets you unlock a vehicle and honk the horn from your phone.

Then I thought about documenting how truly evil Apple is becoming, selling an entire line of notebooks with non-removable batteries while advertising how “green” they are.

I also considered writing about how Apple’s big innovation this summer is taking a cue from Acer, Asus and the like — not by releasing a cheap netbook (as many had hoped) but by slashing the price on their current iPhone and making it a commodity item, almost a disposable one like the lower end of their iPod line.

And then it struck me: I really don’t care.

Considering the behaviour of both Apple, Inc. and their unquestioning masses:

1. Greeting the announcement of voice dialing on their beloved iPhone with thunderous applause like it hasn’t been a feature on other handsets for the past five years;
2. Knowingly committing to a multi-year contract on a crap carrier for a locked handset;
3. Being so smug as to summarily dismiss the Ovi Store less than a month after its launch, and the Palm Pre after only a few days on the market…

… I realize that I can’t win — or more truthfully, I no longer have an interest in attempting to penetrate the overwhelming ignorance that is Apple’s reality distortion field.

So if you’re looking for advice on Apple products you should probably look elsewhere. I just can’t be bothered anymore.

Last night I handed over my 2007-vintage BlackBook to my sister in law, whose IBM ThinkPad has been compromised — most probably by her kids clicking on banner ads.

Though this is the last version of Apple’s consumer portable to have FireWire (and target disk mode) built-in, it has become too cumbersome for me to cart around and has been replaced by a diminutive Asus Eee PC running Linux.

What I’ll miss:

• That it was generally a stable product, probably because I kept OS X Tiger on it and never went near Leoptard.
• (oddly enough) iSync – though not unique to this particular machine, I did store all my PIM data here. I’ve since moved on to a “cloud-based” PIM 2.0 app, but through all my trials of Nokia smartphones iSync never let me down.
  

And not so much:

• The heft – in this day and age, this thing was just too big to carry around comfortably. That fugly briefcase I had didn’t help much either.
• The glossy screen – it looked great in the store and terrible everywhere else.
• The fan – it seemed to kick in at full blast for no apparent reason and was annoyingly loud when it did.
• Paying an extra $200 CAD to get it in black. That was dumb.
  

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…

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…