I happen to be the owner of a Porsche Design P9522 cellphone (that's Sagem hardware).

Actually a nice phone, if, like me, you just use your phone to actually place and receive phone calls - if you (want to) use it for anything else, or consider that some other feature beyond that is mandatory for a phone, then you should probably best buy something else.

Either way, I want to synchronize my contacts with my (freshly installed) macbook, and I know there is an iSync driver for that. Although, the driver version that I have in stock (bundled with the phone goodies) had some serious quality issues, so I figured I would get the latest version from Sagem (who knows, maybe they fixed their driver since then?).

Here is what happens:

  • start by being unable to find anything useful there: http://www.porsche-design.com/
  • then try to google "P9522 macos download", or any variant - give up. Mm. Well, crappy SEO is not that unusual for poorly managed corporate websites, so...
  • let's go directly to http://sagem.com - then...
  • From there, it's absolutely impossible to tell where you should go/click to find the driver, so, you will probably try a couple of these links, based on the naive assumption that "mobile phone" or "support" will get you to anything useful. You'll end-up there:
  • http://sagem.com/index.php?id=49&L=0 - try to click on "Mobile Phones", and you get a marvelous 404 there: http://www.sagem-online.com/icssb2c/init.do?uilanguage=EN
  • or you end-up there: http://www.planetsagem.com/ - a wonderful customer website where login-in is MANDATORY to get access to any update for your phone. Which you eventually do (after registering, obviously). Just to discover that the phone in question is not even listed!
  • or there: http://www.sagemwireless.com/ - which to me demonstrates the worst things you can do with flash. Which, if you really are patient, (yes, I have a crappy link these days and it took me three tries and about ten minutes to have the thing even display anything), may lead you here: http://www.mobileporschedesign.com/P9522/index.html (after a number of try and fail clicking) which in turn after the same pain will FINALLY provide a link to the iSync driver, which I'm posting there as to possibly save another poor soul all this awful procedure: http://www.mobileporschedesign.com/P9522/includes/downloads/PorscheDesign1.3.dmg
  • finally you got it! So, you thought you would download as well the MobileManager app as a reward for a very crappy 30 minutes web experience, now that the link appears in its full glory to you? Héhé. Too bad, cause the link gives you this: http://www.wellphone.com/webportal/portals/porschedesign/

And if you wonder, version 1.3 is the same I already had - but given all the above, would you expect them to actually QA their driver?

And if you wonder, yes, I started the quest at http://www.porsche-design.com/ and ended it up at http://www.mobileporschedesign.com/ which as far as I can tell don't link...

The problem here is not IMHO a technical one. Sure, they use flash, java, probably dot net (which you all despise, right? :-)) - but they do also use HTML and JS, and the end-result is equally disastrous - blaming the underlying technology for the people who use it is a rather moot angle. And using open-standards doesn't magically turn horseshit into gold, unfortunately.

No, I think the problem here is entirely managerial. There is obviously no concern at all for any basic and essential development concepts (QA, maintenance, platform consistency), web concepts (SEO, rational use of domain names), ergonomical concepts (do I need to say anything here?), and probably customer care. This is not usually things that you either expect to just "happen" from a technology pick, or magically emerge from a development team that has no decision power (well, maybe the QA part?).

Whoever is actually in charge (if anyone) of Sagem web development should probably consider hiring someone to shake this awake. Start with scrapping the whole thing - put in place development processes, people with competence and vision, and do something professional.

</rant>