Products & Services
Macs and Nokia: Can we just work together? Uh, we do.
By Charlie on 16 October 2008
ESPOO, Finland - Rita (aka dotsisx) wrote a great and pointed article (and got a ton of comments) about compatibility between Nokia and Apple products, specifically Nokia phones and Apple Macs. As is my way, when my comment ends up being longer than a post, I figure it deserves to be a post, so what follows is my reply to Rita.
This paragraph sums up what she’s getting at:
“For a company that is trying to push its software and services to the masses, this is absolute bullshit: neglecting the development of software for one platform is a self-imitating self-suicidal decision. It’s true that Macs are still niche products, but look around and you’ll see that a lot of N-series users and S60 users in general are Mac users.”
Hey Rita, great post!
Yeah, our Mac support is way lagging behind Windoze, but pieces are there. As you point out, we have the Nokia Media Transfer, which transfers non-iTunes store music from iTunes to your phone. Nokia Media Transfer also makes it easy to sync bookmarks with Safari, transfer photos and videos to iPhoto, and sync back photos and videos from iPhoto. It also can encode media for the phone during the transfer. Also, if you have iMovie, the videos from the phone can be edited without conversion. And we have been working with Apple creating plug-ins for iSync to get your contacts and calendar into Address Book and iCal.
Internal use
As for using them internally, in the past few years, the numbers have grown as IT has loosened the rules and the internal platforms became less Windoze-specific. I’ve been using Macs since 1984 and it was a tough 5 years to use Windoze here at Nokia. But, two years ago I got a PowerBook (with which I made the video you mentioned - in iMovie no less). Indeed, my whole team had Macs. And we were product people.
In my current team (in corporate communications), there are only two of us with Macs, and we’re the only ones in the whole department (that I know of). Sigh.
The effort shows, though
Yeah, sometimes it seems we don’t care. For example, Nokia.com didn’t work in Safari for a while (it’s fixed now). The irony being that the S60 browser uses the same engine as Safari so Nokia.com was messed up on them as well. But these things can happen if people aren’t big Mac users themselves.
Nonetheless, there are some great guys working on Mac software (these guys). I’ve been trying to corner them for an interview, because I know a ton of you (as shown with these comments) are passionate for both Apple and Nokia and have long wished for more compatibility. The good news is, that things just keep getting better.
I’ve sent your link to the Mac guys and some sympathetic product people. We hear you. All of you.
And we’re wanting these things, too.
UPDATE:
News comes to us via MobileCrunch and Symbian-Guru about a new job posting for a Mac developer at Nokia. Now that’s a good sign!
Image of my own BlackBook and N85
Related posts:
October 16th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
Just a comment re the UPDATE: the first one bringing news on the Mac Developer at Nokia was RenegadeFanBoy: http://www.renegadefanboy.com/2008/10/nokia-is-working-on-the-ovi-suite-for-mac/
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October 16th, 2008 at 1:45 pm
This is ludicrous… almost 3/4 of the functionality made available by PC suite on Windows is available out of the Box with a Mac. Music, Photo and Video transfer can be performed quite easily even without Media Transfer. Modem connectivity is as easy as 123 and for synhronisation iSync has been around for years…
How can these so called Mac users (who clearly can’t use Macs properly) be so naive…
I am a proud Mac user and have had no issues thus far other than NSU which Bootcamp takes care of quite easily.
Come on already!
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October 16th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
First of all, thanks for the mention Charlie. But to improve the usefulness of your post, I want to point out to the FIRST post I wrote about S60 and Mac: http://www.symbian-guru.com/welcome/2008/10/a-walk-on-the-other-side-s60-mac-a-match-made-in-heaven.html
As you see, I clearly and blatantly stated that in SOME aspects, I had a better experience on a Mac than on my previous PC. YES, Nokia Multimedia Transfer is awesome, yes iSync is great. I’m not arguing about those (wink at Kyle Smith, before commenting that I know zilch about Macs, take the time to read the posts i’ve written :p )
What I’m arguing about is Nokia Music, Ovi Suite, Nokia Software Updater, Nokia Maploader, and on-computer N-Gage downloads. NONE of these work on a Mac, at least not that I know of (i’ve been using macs for less than 3 months). I’m talking about Nokia’s SERVICES, you know, that abstract thing Nokia has been shouting about for about a year now. If they want to make it on the Services front, they need to support everyone.
(I also wrote a bit about Linux, if you care, though I haven’t tried it myself: http://www.symbian-guru.com/welcome/2008/10/a-walk-on-the-other-side-s60-linux-exploring-the-dark-corners.html)
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October 16th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
Oh and Katica is right, the first one to mention the Mac Ovi Suite job is renegadefanboy, and I cited him in the “Via” at the end of the post on Symbian-Guru
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October 16th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
Once again I mention BOOT CAMP… for all those Windows based programs like Map Loader and NSU, which I mentioned in my first post, you can easily install Windows XP/Vista on a separate partition of the hard drive.
N-gage downloads??? Simpley put the phone in mass storage mode and transfer the .sis file to a folder to install it on the phone……
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October 16th, 2008 at 11:21 pm
Kyle, I have Parallels on my mac so I know about bootcamp, Parallels and VMware :p
because as u said, u have to have windows on, and if everything u do on windows can be eventually copied to the mac, there’s still the music u purchased over nokia music that will only work on windows.
But we could argue for hours whether Boot Camp is Mac or Windows
As for N-Gage downloads, did you EVER try downloading over the PC? You get a small Zip file. Extract. It’s a .exe file. Yes .EXE! You run the .exe to download the .sis. Eventually, you CAN use Boot Camp to run the .exe, but we’re back to question number 1: is Boot Camp Mac or Windows?
I have to keep 20GB out of my 160GB hard disk for windows xp on my mac. Why? ONLY because of Nokia’s software. Nothing else requires me to have XP!
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October 19th, 2008 at 7:37 pm
I see your point, I must be honest I am not affected by most of that simply because I don’t use N-gage and Nokia Music store, like many Nokia products, are not availabne in South Africa.
Appologies on my part for that.
It has always been my fight that software developers in general are one track minded when it comes to OS compatibility as you have seen here. The gold medallion that Microsoft waves in front of everyone to hypnotise them like sheep needs to stop. Yes they do have a majority share mainly because the buyers have all got eyes swirling around following the unstable Windows platforms like zombies.
I for one, have broken free of that terrible cycle as have you. Lets hope for your sake that things improve in the future, For now I will continue to promote Mac for the stable and wonderful computing it offers
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April 24th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
New Technology that can be incorporated in Nokia Mobiles( which is having Infrared option).
Car central locking system which is done by using Infrared signals. The same signal can be stored in mobile, these signal can be used to unlock the door when central locking system key is lost.
This additional feature can be incorporated for customer usage.
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Srini Reply:
April 24th, 2009 at 1:49 pm
@Vadiraj,
Really goog idea, this helps the customer very much.
lakshmi
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April 24th, 2009 at 1:49 pm
Vadiraj,
Really goog idea, this helps the customer very much.
lakshmi
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