S60 and Mac - from first principles - part 2

[slitchfield]

The next part of my Mac virgin series, trying to get to grips with OS X and get my Nokia N95 8GB connected up and productive. In part 1, I found it fairly easy to get the two devices paired up by Bluetooth and synced using iSync. In part 2, I look at connecting my phone up via USB cable and archiving my photos and videos.

Read on in the full article.

[Ratkat]

You can leave the full size pictures on your phone, it will only send back optimised copies of the pictures placed in the N95 folder created during initial setup/import.
By dragging all your images to this folder after import you told it to copy then back.

iPhoto will happily import your pictures with out having multimedia transfer installed, either set iPhoto to open on device connection or open iPhoto and then connect your usb cable, in both case wait a few seconds and import will start.

[fidolatry]

Hi Steve,

That Nokia MM Transfer looks pretty sweet, but I should probably warn you that iPhoto comes with some potential risks, due to its proprietary database format. Should that become corrupted, your precious photos might possibly be lost along with it!

More on this can be found on the Apple Discussions site:

http://tinyurl.com/6pgzzj

There are other cataloging apps available -- my favourite is this one:

http://www.iview-multimedia.com/

You do have to pay for it, but it's well worth it IMHO...

[ashu]

Post by post, review by review, you are drawing me towards a mac!! I always have wanted to own a mac but then the needs of my n 82 are much stronger than the want of a mac!

if you can do all that I do with my phone on my windows laptop, theres no stopping me from splurging into a mac!!

Am waiting for more to come from you!

[Ratkat]

Originally Posted by fidolatry

Hi Steve,

That Nokia MM Transfer looks pretty sweet, but I should probably warn you that iPhoto comes with some potential risks, due to its proprietary database format. Should that become corrupted, your precious photos might possibly be lost along with it!

More on this can be found on the Apple Discussions site:

http://tinyurl.com/6pgzzj

There are other cataloging apps available -- my favourite is this one:

http://www.iview-multimedia.com/

You do have to pay for it, but it's well worth it IMHO...

Never had a problem with iPhoto myself in over 2 years of using it, regardless of that, should the database file become damaged, your photos are still stored in the Finder and are not affected.

@ashu,

I switched from SE and Windoze to Nokia and Mac a few years ago. I have NEVER had one problem syncing my data. Unlike with Windows you do not need the bloatware PC Suite to move your data. You can symply sync via iSync. You can move data to your phone via BT, or you can use the Media application that Nokia developed. Either way there are no drivers to install, no .dll's to get corrupted. I am currently using an N82 with my Mac, right along with my iPhone. I even created a script to sync my data daily at 22:00 so that any changes made during the day will be there the next day. It really could not be easier.

[jrmt]

> but I should probably warn you that iPhoto comes with some potential
> risks, due to its proprietary database format. Should that become
> corrupted, your precious photos might possibly be lost along with it!

Sorry, but you're wrong. Photos in iPhoto are saved as separate JPEG files. The database is purely for recording "Smart Albums" and other relationships between photos that can't be stored in JPEG files themselves.

[Tzer2]

Post by post, review by review, you are drawing me towards a mac!! I always have wanted to own a mac but then the needs of my n 82 are much stronger than the want of a mac!

if you can do all that I do with my phone on my windows laptop, theres no stopping me from splurging into a mac!!

This is quite an interesting point, I wanted to switch to Linux Ubuntu on my main PC but didn't because like you I have to have Windows for various phone-related applications.

BUT... things like over-the-air firmware updates and online services, which work directly with the phone, are steadily eroding the need for a computer at all. If you don't need to use a computer with your phone, then you're free to use any computer OS you want.

[tsupatsupa]

you can also check nova media's fonelink, not free but worth it. What's good about fonelink is the backup feature, it's like having Time Machine.

The itunes sync is better than nokia media transfer, the abilty to encode automaticall the music from iTunes.

Maybe you can also write a review and welcome to the mac world and enjoy!

[slitchfield]

Well... it's not quite 'welcome to the Mac world' because a) the Mac's got to go back to Apple and b) I've found a few semi-showstoppers - see parts 3 and 4 of the series, coming up soon!

[AVR4000]

It´s very interesting to read those articles about S60 and Mac OS X.

I´m running both Mac OS X (as my primary OS) and Windows XP but my phone duties (other than image and video transfer) is done with XP. The deal breaker for me with Mac OS X is the complete lack of support for eAAC+ encoded music. This makes iTunes useless for my phone collection and when this forces me to use Windows my decision was simple: use Windows for everything phone related (contacts and so on).

It would be nice if Nokia and Apple releases support for eAAC+, Nokia Software Updater and other services. That day I will gladly use Mac OS X for the phone related tasks.

[ashu]

hey, thats supercool.

I think i will need some tutoring on that from you. i also have an n 82. in 3 months time, will go in for a macbook.

hope u r a frequent here!! by that time evn our steve will become a master!!!!

Originally Posted by Ratkat

Never had a problem with iPhoto myself in over 2 years of using it, regardless of that, should the database file become damaged, your photos are still stored in the Finder and are not affected.

I've had the database corrupted with iPhoto & yes, your originals are still on your hard drive but because of the way iPhoto saves them (in literally a thousands of nested folders) it can be an absolute NIGHTMARE retrieving them again.

Trust me, once you've had this happen, you'll be a lot more scared of trusting iPhotos filing structure.

A safer way is to (in the newer versions of iPhoto) select in preferences the option that does NOT 'copy' your pictures into the iPhoto database. That way you can keep all your pictures in eg the 'Pictures' folder on your mac, then drag them from there into iPhoto.

iPhoto then just imports photo references to your originals which are safely stored where you can always find them.

[Tzer2]

It would be nice if Nokia and Apple releases support for eAAC+, Nokia Software Updater and other services. That day I will gladly use Mac OS X for the phone related tasks.

You won't necessarily need Software Updater on future S60 models, the updates will go straight onto the phone over Wi-Fi or the phone network.

Music would still be a problem though as computers still tend to be better places to store tracks.

[Ratkat]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

I've had the database corrupted with iPhoto & yes, your originals are still on your hard drive but because of the way iPhoto saves them (in literally a thousands of nested folders) it can be an absolute NIGHTMARE retrieving them again.

Trust me, once you've had this happen, you'll be a lot more scared of trusting iPhotos filing structure.

A safer way is to (in the newer versions of iPhoto) select in preferences the option that does NOT 'copy' your pictures into the iPhoto database. That way you can keep all your pictures in eg the 'Pictures' folder on your mac, then drag them from there into iPhoto.

iPhoto then just imports photo references to your originals which are safely stored where you can always find them.

Sorry but you are completely wrong, iPhoto saves your pics in the following file structure

pictures/iphoto library/originals/year imported/date imported (or event name, if you have changed it)

It doesn't get much simpler than that to be honest.