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No Bluetooth link from Address Book in Leopard

P

Philsy

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 29, 2004
632
16
South coast of England
You can no longer send text messages from the Address Book via Bluetooth and your own phone.

This is very disappointing and I urge people to supply feedback to Apple on this.
 
This was my biggest disappointment with Leopard. Thanks for the link to Bluephone Elite which works for me - I couldn't make the other SMS widgets work with my phone. I don't mind forking out the $20 for the software but I was perfectly content with the address book bluetooth support in Tiger and I can't really see why it was scrapped. I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure it out since I hadn't seen any mention of it elsewhere - so it's good to at least have the issue identified.
 
Kban said:
This was my biggest disappointment with Leopard. Thanks for the link to Bluephone Elite which works for me - I couldn't make the other SMS widgets work with my phone. I don't mind forking out the $20 for the software but I was perfectly content with the address book bluetooth support in Tiger and I can't really see why it was scrapped. I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure it out since I hadn't seen any mention of it elsewhere - so it's good to at least have the issue identified.
Click to expand...

I totally agree with you. I guess the makers of Elite will be pleased, though.

Perhaps if enough people complain, Apple will restore this feature.
 
Damn....

I used to use this almost daily. Had a Salling Clicker action set up so that as soon as my phone got within range, it would tell Address Book to reconnect its Bluetooth link automatically.

I'm going to miss this a lot. I've sent feedback to Apple, and can only hope this was left out due to time constraints and so will be re-added in a point-release.

Such a shame!
 
displaced said:
Damn....

I used to use this almost daily. Had a Salling Clicker action set up so that as soon as my phone got within range, it would tell Address Book to reconnect its Bluetooth link automatically.

I'm going to miss this a lot. I've sent feedback to Apple, and can only hope this was left out due to time constraints and so will be re-added in a point-release.

Such a shame!
Click to expand...

My guess is it was left out because iChat can send SMS messages (only in the US though)
 
Awful

This is a deal breaker for me. I too used the SMS feature in Address Book every day in my work. This really makes the "upgrade" a "downgrade" for me. I have sent a message into Apple feedback, but I sure would love to know if there was anything else i could do for it.

Seriously irritated...
 
Unfortunately I really can't test this much since I haven't used this feature since my T68i. However, there is some interesting information referring to Bluetooth hidden away in the Address Book package and plist.

It could simply be that these are vestigial icons, but the Bluetooth icons that map to the Bluetooth button that used to be in Address Book are still present in the application package.

Also, there are two references to Bluetooth in the plist.

I am not savvy enough to investigate this any further, but it is possible that BT functionality is still present in Address Book but simply disabled, similar to the way the graphing option in Calculator are present but not easily accessible.

Or it could be altogether gone.
 
G4R2 said:
Unfortunately I really can't test this much since I haven't used this feature since my T68i. However, there is some interesting information referring to Bluetooth hidden away in the Address Book package and plist.

It could simply be that these are vestigial icons, but the Bluetooth icons that map to the Bluetooth button that used to be in Address Book are still present in the application package.

Also, there are two references to Bluetooth in the plist.

I am not savvy enough to investigate this any further, but it is possible that BT functionality is still present in Address Book but simply disabled, similar to the way the graphing option in Calculator are present but not easily accessible.

Or it could be altogether gone.
Click to expand...

It would be great if someone could get it to work. Of course, the real question is, why on earth did Apple disable it? A bummer when you've just spent a lot of money on a new OS and you lose one of the most useful features.
 
I have a copy of the old Address Book application for comparison.

The Bluetooth icons in the new address book are in:
Address Book/Contents/Resources

Whereas, the old Address Book had them inside:
Address Book/Contents/Resources/Telephony.bundle/Contents/Resources

The icons are also different in appearance. Old AB had them as button icons (including the button background) whereas the new AB has them as transparent-backgrounded 'overlays'.

So these are indeed 'new' resources which are (as yet?) unsused.

I even tried copying the Telephony.bundle file into the new Address Book's Resources folder (just to see!) and it didn't work -- unsurprisingly!

Well, let's hope Apple have this under development for a point-release update!

In the meantime, I'm evaluating BluePhoneElite 2, however, it has a Leopard bug where it crashes when an SMS is received.
 
BluePhoneElite2

I've just got the latest version and it's rather good - even supports calls via your Mac's speakers :cool:
 
I'm really annoyed they dropped this too.

I used this feature every day - I can write SMS text's much much quicker on my Mac than using my Sony Ericcson phone.

Why Apple why?
 
i found out why

Unintentionally, I think I discovered why this might be.

I posted a question at http://discussions.apple.com/ on this, after finding that all the previous threads on the topic were locked. Hmm, locked threads? Sweet. I suggested that maybe we could roll our own solution using AppleScript and Gnokii.

Then I found this thread, and I posted another reply over there when I discovered that the widget linked above, http://algoritmer.dk/widget/, did exactly what I want.

Then I posted a third reply, suggesting that Apple must only have deleted the feature from Leopard because it didn't work with the iPhone. My logic (in the post) was that nothing but PRIDE could force Apple's hand to remove a useful feature.

Next thing I know the whole thread was gone.

Perhaps Apple's forum automatically bans any thread that someone posts to three times in a row.

Or maybe I stumbled on the truth :)
 
A alternative is to use Skype to send SMS messages. Its pretty cheap (cheaper than a phone unless you have a messaging plan) and you can make it so the SMS messages look like they came from your own phone.
 
xurizaemon said:
Then I posted a third reply, suggesting that Apple must only have deleted the feature from Leopard because it didn't work with the iPhone. My logic (in the post) was that nothing but PRIDE could force Apple's hand to remove a useful feature.

Next thing I know the whole thread was gone.

Perhaps Apple's forum automatically bans any thread that someone posts to three times in a row.

Or maybe I stumbled on the truth :)
Click to expand...

Nah. Ease off on the conspiracy theories there, sparky :)

1) The iPhone cannot be used as a modem for the computer. However, Leopard can still do this fine with other phones.

2) The OS X team are simply not going to reduce functionality because of another product. Sheer developer-bloody-mindedness would ensure that.

3) Address Book does contain Bluetooth-related icons, resources and preferences which were not in 10.4's Address Book. So, some work has gone into this feature -- it's just not been completed. If you're rushing to meet a deadline, you always have to prioritise. No matter when a deadline is, there's always one more feature you would have liked to get done before release. AB's BT support simply didn't get there in time.

4) Believe it or not, although Apple has this reputation of secrecy, cloak-and-dagger malarkey and whatnot, you'd be surprised how often it turns out that good ol' Occam's Razor applies pretty damn well. Don't try to overcomplicate/overthink. :)
 
dr_lha said:
A alternative is to use Skype to send SMS messages. Its pretty cheap (cheaper than a phone unless you have a messaging plan) and you can make it so the SMS messages look like they came from your own phone.
Click to expand...

Not cheaper than a phone if you have a bundle of free texts each month. :mad:
 
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