8 May 2007 - 23:11Make your Mac and Sony Ericsson M600i (or P990i) friendly

Sorry for the lack of updates. I’d like to say it has been because I have been ridiculously busy at work and just haven’t had the time to post, but the opposite has been very much true – work has been particularly uninspiring, to the point where I just don’t want to sit and write at a computer for a while about techy stuff. Anyway, some inspiration has hit me this morning, so I’m going to bash out a post on making your Mac work with your M600i in a friendly way. It’s also worth noting that the P990i also runs on UIQ3 like the M600i, so all the steps below also apply, as do the problems outlined with the M600i communicating with the Mac.

To explain a bit more, the Sony Ericsson M600i is a particularly nice phone, but along with the P990 it really doesn’t play with well the Mac. Out of the box it’s not possible to sync contacts or calendars, or even mount the internal memory or memory card on your desktop. Basically, it’s a pretty closed system. So, what follows is a quick round-up of how to accomplish basic transfer and syncing capabilities, and ways to go beyond that if you really want.

File Transfer

According to Magnus Nordlander, the M600i is recognised by the Mac as a communications device when connected via USB – a modem of sorts, but a pretty useless one when in this mode. Selecting File Transfer in the M600i USB settings does nothing to help the situation, so Magnus developed a .kext system extension which fools the mac into treating it as Mass Storage device, allowing you to mount the memory card (but not the M600i’s internal memory) on your desktop, which opens a whole realm of other possibilities in getting media to and from your phone. Thanks Magnus – this is REALLY useful.

Contact Syncing

Let me preface this with a caveat – I have NOT found a way to get true syncing of contacts working between the mac and M600i. It is possible however to send contacts back and forth between the two fairly easily – so it becomes a game of sending an updated contact from the device (Mac or M600i) on which it was updated most recently. Pain in the rear, but this is how it’s done…

Mac to M600i

1. Fire up Address Book, and go to the preferences section. Under the vCards option ensure that the vCard format is set to 2.1 and not 3.0. The M600i doesn’t like 3.0 format for some reason, and errors on import. I don’t know what you lose by selecting 2.1 over 3.0, but I haven’t noticed the difference. Would someone care to enlighten me?
2. Next, in Address Book’s main window, select the contacts or group of contacts that you want sent to your phone – could also be your whole library.
3. In the file menu, choose Export vCard and export the contacts as a single group to a convenient location (your desktop?)
4. IMPORTANT: Make sure any changes made on the phone, but not present on your Mac have been sent across (using the process below)
5. Delete all contacts on your M600i. There’s a bit of an odd way of doing this, but quick – in your M600i contacts list, select More, then Mark, then Mark All. Then go back into the Menu and select delete. Contacts have to be deleted as they don’t get overwritten in the next step.
6. Send your contacts file saved above to the M600i via bluetooth (invoking Apple-Shift-B with the file selected or your other preferred manner), and open it up on the phone, which will then import the contacts from your Mac Address Book to your phone.

M600i to Mac
I don’t really have any desire to move my whole phone address book to my Mac, as most of my contact updates are done on my MacBook. It acts really as a central contact management hub, with contacts going out to my iPod, phone, online etc. So, what follows is how to send a single (new or updated, for example) contact to the Mac.

1. Select the contact in the M600i contacts menu
2. Send to the Mac via Bluetooth
3. Open the file on your Mac. Magically, Address Book knows if this contact is one already in your Address Book, and if so asks which one you want to keep – the original, or the one you jus transferred from your phone. Got to love Mac simplicity :)

Calendar Syncing

Calendar syncing on the Mac to the M600i is simply not possible out of the box. It is possible to send individual calendar files and events back and forth between the phone and the Mac, but to be honest this gets quite messy and cumbersome very quickly. One way of simplifying this method though is to look at the little app p990iCal by a swiss gu, Thierry Girard. This allows you to export calendar files in M600i friendly formats and send them to the phone. I haven’t got into this method as my way, outlined below, works well for me – but if you want to try something else, this would be a good place to start.

So, the solution I have come up with is a bit roundabout, and to get it work fully you have to cough up a bit of cash – but, it works, as in events on the Mac get synced to the phone, and vice versa. There’s the free, slightly limited way, or the more expensive, but with full sync way. They both involve using Google Calendar and GooSync as conduits from your Mac to your M600i.

The free, but limited way

iCal on your Mac < Google Calendar <> Goosync (with 1 calendar limitation) <> M600i
(note: > indicates a one-way sync, <> two-way)

As Google Calendar has to act as a conduit to Goosync, with which you can sync your phone using your service provider’s data connection, you pretty much have to commit to using Google Calendar as your primary calendaring application over iCal. That’s the easiest method. This is no bad thing IMO, GCal rocks my calendaring world, however that may not suit everyone. Somehow though, you HAVE to get the events you want on your phone into a single calendar in Google Calendar, as the free Goosync service only supports syncing one calendar to your phone. The way you do that is up to you. I’d really recommend spending some money on this though, as the solution really does work well, and gives you fully synced phone, online and Mac calendaring…

The more costly, but fully synced way

iCal on your Mac <> Spanning Sync software ($25/yr) <> Google Calendar <> Goosync (paid service, £19) <> M600i

As you can see, this method results in all events coming across successfully from phone to Mac – easily, and virtually automatically. Spanning Sync syncs iCal calendars with Google Calendar, and the service has so far been absolutely rock solid. The company is open and forthcoming about any issues they are having, and having all your iCal calendars online and synced up to GCal is very valuable for those who work at multiple computers.

Spanning Sync for Mac System Preference Pane

The paid version of Goosync will then sync all of your calendars from GCal across to your phone – data transfer from your phone is really minimal which should keep costs down for those without unlimited data plans, and so far the service has never failed in my month or so of testing, so it’s thoroughly recommended.

In addition you could of course use only one of paid versions of Spanning Sync or Goosync if one of Google Calendar or iCal is more important to you.

Some notes on using Goosync with your Phone
Goosync setup is fairly easy, but still a little involved. You input your phone number into the Goosync site, and if you’re phone can handle automatic setup (which the M600i can) then you are sent a text with the setup to install. This is quick, and then to sync your calendar you choose Manage Calendar on the Calendar menu on the M600i, and then Synchronise, and then the M600i syncs over your phone’s network to Google Calendar. Like magic really.

Goosync has to give each of your Calendars in Google calendar a prefix of up to five letters which you can customise- so you can work out which calendar is what on your phone. If you only have a couple of calendars it might get annoying as the additional characters mean that less of the event info can be seen on your phone without going into the event details themselves. No way around this though really, just a small detail.

Full disclaimer – I was given a years use of Goosync for free when I offered to test their full service and include some explanation as to how it can work for you. This review IS unbiased though, Goosync really does work well and only has a few minor limitations, as listed above.

Beyond Calendars and Contacts

There’s more software that can be run on the Mac to make it work better with the M600i – check out SyncTunes or iTunemyWalkman (better as it will auto launch on memory card mount), which will sync an iTunes playlist with a folder on your memory stick, or the Copy Playlist to Card applescript which is a lighter weight way of doing the same thing – ideal for listening to music on your phone. Also, take a look at my iPhoto to Phone Automator workflows, which are designed to take Photos in iPhoto to your phone at the right resolution. The M600i version is here (zip file).

I’ll also write up in a forthcoming post the best applications I have found so far for UIQ 3 and Java – as it’s possible to really extend the functionality of your phone for virtually no outlay and little time investment. Look for that coming soon (but soon in newformula.org world – could mean 2008!)