How to sync with a Mac

[Goots]

Syncing to Google is easy, even for a mac user .

Very subtle

is there a way not to use google as I want to use everything in my address book including the notes, as it like a mini database

Remember it is a google phone so it's kinda designed to work alongside your google account. I use an app called Catch Notes which is free and syncs everything. It's never let me down yet.

Having said that, contacts sync hasn't either, and I use it for more than just phone numbers

[Deepmeister]

@Deepmeister.... Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU! Got my galaxy s II yesterday and have been having trouble getting it to talk to my macbook. I still wish it were easier, but this is the most straight forward explanation of how to get address book contacts on to the phone that I have found yet (I spent hours searching last night). I have not had any luck with my ical though. I don't want to sync my ical and google calendar (i have never used google calendar and don't want to start now), too much effort! Smart phones are supposed to make life easier, I just want to transfer information from ical to my phone, not have to go through google calendar to do it! I'm still sceptical on this phone, it's supposed to be easier to use than iphone but I'm not feeling it... I tried the process you mentioned but can not export from ical as vCal file, only .ics... Any other suggestions?

Glad you found it useful! Regarding iCal, you save the file as a ".ics" as you have done. Then, transfer to the phone via Bluetooth the same way as other files.

There is a great app in the Android Market which is free called "iCal Import Export". Use this app to take data from your ".ics" file and place inside the built-in Calendar.

If the "Cal Import Export" app appears to stall or fails with an error in moving the data into the Calendar, it is because the Mac calendar has some dodgy data which did not get recognised. Try and narrow down to the month, week, day of where it aborts and manually re-enter that even in the Mac Calendar. I found the culprit in my case to be an automatic repeating event that had a custom schedule which the phone Calendar could not understand hence it choked. Wiped that event and entered it again and it worked. I suspect that iCal stored that custom event in a newer format once the event was re-entered as something that was a bug and fixed by Apple at some stage. It went unnoticed on the Mac, but reared its ugly head once moved to another platform.

Regarding Videos, Music, and Photos, these can all be moved directly to/from the phone using Bluetooth or by connecting it via a cable to the USB. For the phone to "see" those newly added items, they must be in the right place.

The advantage of Bluetooth versus USB is that Bluetooth does not leave ".DS_Store" and other Mac files on the phone storage device when files are transmitted. The USB method is faster so it makes a difference if you have many Gigabytes of data to move but results in this "residue" that happens whenever a non-Mac media card is mounted in the Mac. The "residue" can be deleted but is irritating extra step to handle, though leaving them in place is fairly harmless.

If you take photos on the phone, and want to move them back to the Mac via Bluetooth, you need to first make the photo (or any file) "visible" via Bluetooth. Use "My Files" on the phone, navigate to the folder on the card where your photo (or any file) is stored and press the menu button. Look for the "options" or similar, one of which will be "Bluetooth Visibility". You can then toggle on/off for each item. Once made visible, you can see that file in the Bluetooth browser on the Mac to drag/drop the file(s) to the Mac.

Hope it helps!

[ScottXe]

Deepmeister, thanks for your useful advice of transferring address book. That is working for me very well. However, it was not applied to iCal unsuccessfully. I believe I could not know how to create the .ics file with all schedules. The file size was just 4 k. The file also could not be sent to the phone via bluetooth.

[Deepmeister]

To make the ".ics" file, go to iCal, select the calendar so it is highlighted on the left side column, then select Export from the File Menu. The result is a ".ics" file of that calendar.

To send to the phone, keep the ".ics" file on the desktop or somewhere easy to find, does not matter where exactly. Assuming the phone is paired with the Mac, look in the Bluetooth menu for the device name (Galaxy S or whatever), then select "Browse Device". You will be able to see the phone storage card and transfer the ".ics" file to it.

[f0h]

Your a tiny little penis.

[Goots]

Your a tiny little penis.

It's "You're", you illiterate loser.

[Doomed]

But still, I'd like to know who you are referring too and how you came to your conclusion.

If your remark was at me, I'd like to know who I'm attached too, does this person get much action and how is it possible for me to write this message. What is the person I'm attached to doing while I'm writing this, if it was mine I'd be pretty worried. Could you imagine the pain for hitting the wrong key!


I'm off now to look at some bouncing milk bottles