APPLE and NOKIA

i have always loved the apple tools such as imovie, quicktime pro, and garage band. apple has gone out of their way to include the mobile platforms in their tools. you can export from imovie to 3gp, from quicktime pro to amr/3gp. the file formats all work seamlessly in and out.

the problem has always been that it is universally known that apple and nokia do not work together.

if you want to send your information to the mac, you have to tiediously, one by one, bluetooth each file. it is so time consuming. not to mention if you want to then transfer the information BACK to the nokia phone. the information is bluetoothed to the phone and arrives in your messages inbox. this can lead to big problems if your file is big and your phone has a small memory space on the phone brain side.
i have recently got a mac book pro,

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and it really is the dream machine. windows never looked so good! i have tested that all the nokia programs i use on forum nokia work on the xp running bootcamp on apple.

however, on the mac os side i still am unable to browse the files on my nokia n70.
apple invited me to their offices in germany  for training when they heard i was still not satisfied with the mac. i was very happy to learn about garage band, imovie, iweb, idvd, etc. they are great programs. however a few questions remained that i asked them to solve: how to network a mac and pc together, how to use my n70 as a modem for the mac book pro, how to browse the nokia phone via bluetooth.

with 4 technicians and 6 hours they were able to teach me how to do everything, after figuring it out for themselves, EXCEPT browse the n70 device. we were able to browse the n80 device that i had on loan to test out.

i decided to investigate further, so when i arrived to london i went to the genious bar at the apple store and arranged to have a genii who is possibly the one and only nokia user at apple. i showed him the problem:

apple bluetooth's "browse device" connects to the nokia phone (this is proved by the bluetooth connect symbol appearing on the nokia phone, the isynch working on the apple side, and the ability to send a file to the phone). however, on the apple side, the browse device box shows no file structure on the phone. it shows a \ (backslash) and no files or file structure of the phone.

we tested again all the phones that i had tried: n70, 6630, 7610, which all were not able to be browsed. we tested the n80 which worked perfectly and showed the whole file structure of the phone, the files of the C & D drives. we tested the 9300, which showed the C & D drives along with it's files. we tested the 7380 which showed the drives and files.

we started a case file and i called apple to escalate the issue internally and was contacted by the head of europe and put in touch with their mobile technical expert a few days later. we tested again all the devices, and he tested them independently of my devices and found the exact same results.

however, he came to the conclusion that the problem did not lie on the apple side (because the device WAS connected to the computer). he said the problem lay on the side of the symbian platform. that either:

-the device file folders were protected, and unable to be viewed by the mac

-the computer was not being delivered to the root directory (being lead to the incorrect place on the phone)

he came to the same conclusion that i came to: that the problem was only with s60 second edition phones. he said that something must have been changed with the s60 3rd edition because n80's work seamlessly (unfortunately i dont have any s60 3rd edition devices and no one in my project has a s60 3rd edition device).
so wheather the problem lies on the side of symbian or on the side of s60, has yet to be determined. wheather it is a bug, or mearly functionality that was left out, has yet to be determined. wheather a patch needs to be created or an update coded has yet to be determined.

one thing is for sure: this "problem" or lack of functionality is messing up my 360Fashion project in a big way. the fashion industry is primarily dominated by creatives who use apple computers. i have constantly heard the response from my collegues and associates saying, "i would love to have a nokia, but it doesnt work with my mac".

they all own sony ericssons. which work seamlessly with apple computers. sony has created even creative tools and software that works on the mac side. perhaps that is one of the contributing factors to why motorola and sony ericsson dominate the fashion and entertainment industries.

clearly this is hurting BOTH apple and nokia, as the nseries devices and the s60 platform are indeed the superior creative tools of my choice.

when i have talked to nokia about this problem i get answers saying they are mainly focused on the windows majority market share. when i have raised this problem to nokia the people i talk to say they cannot test because they do not have a mac.
i wish that i could get this problem solved as it is a huge hurtle for me in my 360fashion network. if you want the primarily non-technical community to begin to create with mobile devices, then you must make it easy for them to use the superior creative tools--which indeed are present on the mac.

i am now sounding the alarm and raising this issue in hopes that i can get this problem solved. can anybody help?

by the way, some people keep focusing on usb...this is not related to usb...this is bluetooth.