Palm Desktop and syncing strategies

[hazmat]

So I have a Motorola V60c cell phone and absolutely no way to sync it to the Mac. The only way I can think of is that at work, where I have a PC, I grabbed an old Palm IIIx. With that, I was able to sync the cell phone's address book to the Palm. Now I want to get it to the Mac to eventually get it to the Address Book and iPod. Anyone know if I can take the Windows Palm Desktop's address book files to put them on the Mac or do I have to sync the Palm itself to the Mac?

Any other ideas to make life easier are also appreciated, but I don't see any other way. I find this extremely disheartening that I can't simply sync my phone directly espectially since I have a USB data cable for the phone. Thanks Apple for supporting only about five cell phones on the Mac. Obviously no one else has any interest for Mac support. I think Apple could only benefit for adding support for this if they want to attract more switchers.

 

[kenny]

The file formats are different between Windows and Mac. On Mac, the data is stored in "User Data" in the user's folder, whereas on Windows, it's broken out into things like 'Datebook.dat' and 'address.dat', etc. You'll have to sync the Palm with the Mac (with all that entails).

I wouldn't be too hard on Apple, though. Supporting all the various dialects for syncronization over USB is going to take some time to put together, if they choose to. Frankly, it's a lot easier to do over bluetooth, since there are some well-defined protocols for exchanging data that level the playing field for data syncronization. My hopeful view of the future is one in which all devices that store this (and other) kinds of data will have bluetooth (or Rendezvous/zeroconf) and be able to explain to one another what kinds of info they have and seamlessly share that data. It's just gonna take some time.

Good Luck!

 

[Randman]

If your phone has infra-red, you should be able to send your address book/calendar that way. But if you can sync your phone and the Palm in whatever way, you shouldn't need a PC.
Once you've transferred the info from your phone to your Palm, sync the Palm to the Mac.

http://palm.com/support/macintosh/

Then you use iSync and you can sync info from the Palm to your Mac desktop and to your iPod. It might be an extra step or two to get info from your phone, but it is workable. I do it with my Nokia 7210 at least weekly.

http://www.apple.com/isync/
Now if you ever get a Palm such as Tungsten, you can even sync via Bluetooth. Anyway, hope that helps some. Cheers.

 

[hazmat]

Thanks, guys. No, no IR on either end. And no direct cable to connect the phone and the Palm. I'll just have to sync the phone and Palm on my PC at work and then Palm to Mac at home. Crap.