Research In Motion to provide ‘PocketMac for BlackBerry’ free for Mac users starting in February

Thursday, January 12, 2006 · 2:47 pm · 7 Comments

Research In Motion (RIM) and Information Appliance Associates today announced a licensing agreement whereby RIM will offer ‘PocketMac for BlackBerry’ to Mac users, free of charge. PocketMac for BlackBerry is a desktop application that enables Mac users to synchronize data between their BlackBerry devices and Macintosh applications including core OS X version 10.4 Tiger applications and Microsoft Entourage.

“The worldwide popularity of Mac OS X is driving the creation of many exciting new products and significant growth in the Apple development community,” said Ron Okamoto, Apple’s Vice President of Worldwide Developer Relations in the press release. “We’re thrilled that IAA and RIM have collaborated to better support mobile Mac users with easy-to-use BlackBerry synchronization.”

“PocketMac for BlackBerry is easy to install and allows users to synchronize email, contacts, calendar, tasks and notes with popular Mac applications,” said Terence Goggin, CTO of Information Appliance Associates in the release. “We are pleased to work with RIM to provide this robust solution to Apple’s mobile customers.”

“This licensing agreement will help expand the reach of BlackBerry to another important market segment,” said Mark Guibert, Vice President, Corporate Marketing at Research In Motion in the release. “There is significant interest in BlackBerry from Mac users and we look forward to delivering PocketMac for BlackBerry to customers around the world.”

RIM has licensed the complete version of PocketMac for BlackBerry from IAA and the companies plan ongoing product development collaboration. PocketMac for BlackBerry synchronizes the email, contacts, calendar, tasks and notes of Microsoft Entourage, OS X’s Address Book and iCal, Now Contact and Now Up-to-Date, DayLite, and Stickies, among other applications. This easy-to-access solution for Macintosh synchronization is expected to be available as a free download at http://www.blackberry.com beginning in February.

Further details of the licensing agreement were not disclosed.

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7 Comments

wandering joe

Thursday, January 12, 2006 - 4:00 pm · Reply

Yesss, I knew it would happen. Companies that start to work with the Mac platform will take off, and ones that don’t are just cutting themselves off from a lot of potential customers (Tom Tom)

Tim Coughlin

Thursday, January 12, 2006 - 4:08 pm · Reply

If its anything like their other products I wouldn’t bother. I have a review of PocketMac Pro on my blog here.

http://timcoughlin.typepad.com/tim_coughlins_blog/2005/06/review_of_pocke.html

Tim Coughlin

Macadaddyoo

Thursday, January 12, 2006 - 5:25 pm · Reply

Hey, I love my BlackBerry, but with the lawsuit hanging over their heads corporate IT deparments are starting to really evaluate other solutions, see today’s WSJ for an article on this topic. And we all know how corporate IT departments are…

This seems like a wonderful thing for the home user or small business user, but for corporate users, this is non news.

carrollw

Thursday, January 12, 2006 - 5:29 pm · Reply

PM for Blackberry does email now? Last I checked, they only synched contacts, calendar, task, notes and such … not email.

If anyone uses this software, has it been upgraded to synch email as well? I have a BB through work and would like to synch it with my home Macs.

Thanks.

huh

Thursday, January 12, 2006 - 5:34 pm · Reply

What are the other alternatives? Windows Mobile 5 is the only thing at the top of my head that comes to mind. I don’t believe Palm has anything out either.

MacMania

Thursday, January 12, 2006 - 6:14 pm · Reply

huh said: “What are the other alternatives? Windows Mobile 5 is the only thing at the top of my head that comes to mind.”

I’ve tried everything and the kitchen sink. As far as Windows Mobile, the PocketMac and Mark/Space plugs are buggy. With the Mark/Space one, I almost lost a very important new account because unbeknownst to me it dropped appointments when it tried to sync.

I wish SJ would revive the Newton project. Boy do I wish he would.

jrag

Friday, January 13, 2006 - 12:51 am · Reply

If you think the Mac apps are buggy, try the Windows stuff. I support Blackberry Desktop Manager, ActiveSync, and Palm Desktop for Verizon Wireless, and I’ve seen them all create data nightmares. I think iSync is the key and hope Apple develops this to it’s full potential. I plugged my cellphone into my dell- nothing but crickets. Plugged it into my Mac, fired up iSync, contacts and calendars done. RIM is giving people a choice- God bless them for it.