Mac Geekery

I was a bit disappointed that the Nokia E70 wasn’t included in the latest updates to iSync in 10.4.9. Since the E70 is running Symbian OS similar to other Nokia S60 Eseries phones, I was using a hack I found on the Apple iSync discussion group. It worked for what I wanted to do but when I installed Mac OS X 10.4.9, the changes I made were naturally overwritten. Rather than re-do the hack I started actually thinking about it. The E70 is really nothing more than an E62 in a smaller form factor and Apple added support for the E62 in OS X 10.4.9. A idea took root.

And here is where I will post a giant caveat IF YOU ARE NOT COMFORTABLE OR FEEL AT ALL UNCERTAIN ABOUT MUCKING ABOUT IN SYSTEM LEVEL THINGS…STOP HERE! There is a commercial app available that will make the changes for you to support your phone (Google is your friend in this regard). I will not be held responsible if you screw up your phone, your Mac or iSync. This information is offered with no warranty of any kind. With all of that out of the way, here goes.

The Not-so “Quick Start” Instructions:

If you already have an E70 defined to iSync using another method, remove this device first. (Start iSync, select the device and then “Devices” -> “Remove Device” and then quit iSync.)

To make this work is fairly easy. Simply duplicate the Nokia-E62.phoneplugin found at: /Applications/iSync.app/Contents/PlugIns/ApplePhoneConduit.syncdevice/Contents/PlugIns. I called the new plug-in Nokia-E70.phoneplugin. Original, huh?

Now open the newly cloned plug-in folder and make the following changes in the following files (detailed listings are linked below):

Nokia-E70.phoneplugin/Contents/Info.plist: substitute “E70” for every instance of “E62”. BBEdit works great for this and a whole bunch of other editing fu.

Nokia-E70.phoneplugin/Contents/Resources/MetaClasses.plist: again substitute “E70” for every instance of “E62”. And since my phone is a European model (the U.S. model is Nokia E70-2), I modified the Identification stanza to: com.nokia.E70 Identification com.apple.gmi+gmm Nokia+Nokia E70-1

(Optional) Copy a TIFF file of an E70 to a file called “com.nokia.E70.tiff”. I found a TIFF in one of the posts on the Apple discussion groups. Or roll your own and add that.

Afterwards I started iSync and re-added the E70 via the “Devices” -> “Add Device” menu. It found my phone straight away and synced with it without error. In fact, I’d say the sync data was a bit better than what I was getting under 10.4.8 but that might be a subjective observation.

For the “Aggressively Efficient”:

Follow the directions above regarding removing any previous E70 known to iSync.

Download this: Nokia-E70.phoneplugin.zip, unzip and drop the resulting folder at: /Applications/iSync.app/Contents/PlugIns/ApplePhoneConduit.syncdevice/Contents/PlugIns. Do make certain to change the owner and group of the new folder to “system” and “admin” via  - I (“Show Info”). Make sure to check the “Apply to enclosed items” box. You’ll need admin privileges to do this, by the way. Feel free to open the folder and check through it before making any change to make certain I’m not slipping in a Trojan. I would check it, you should too.

Then re-start iSync and re-add your phone. You should then be able to sync with your Mac!

Enjoy!

Jay