Monday, June 21, 2004
Mac Users, Free Yourself from Palm with PocketMac Pro 3.0
Posted by Zack Mahdavi in "SOFTWARE" @ 11:00 AM
Music & Photos
PocketMac can copy music and photos from iTunes and iPhoto, respectively, to your Pocket PC. The implementation is very well done: a playlist is installed in iTunes named “PocketMac Mobile Tunes,” and in iPhoto, an album named “PocketMac Mobile Photos” is installed. Want to put some music on your Pocket PC? Just drag the songs into the playlist. Want to install some photos to your Pocket PC? Just drag some photos to the album.
Figure 9: PocketMac Mobile Tunes Playlist in iTunes.
PocketMac even lets you upload the music and photos to the storage card instead of main memory. Also, PocketMac can automatically resize the photos you upload. These features are useful, although the copy process can be slow.
Synchronizing
Figure 10: The Main Window for PocketMac.
Figure 11: PocketMac opens several Windows during a sync.
The synchronization happens quickly, but not without user intervention. Every now and then, a dialog box will nag you for attention. I prefer Palm’s intuitive synchronization more. Asking questions may be safe, but it can be annoying.
Figure 12: PocketMac’s iSync integration is a nice feature, but clunky.
PocketMac can integrate with Apple’s iSync, a multi-device synchronizer. I set up my Sony Ericsson T610, my Pocket PC, and my iPod to all be synced together. I don’t like the way that IAA implemented it. Instead of having iSync coordinate the required actions on the Pocket PC, PocketMac launches and starts synchronizing Calendars and Contacts while iSync is trying to synchronize other devices. I’m afraid this might corrupt my files in the long run.
PocketMac is full of connectivity features. I was successfully able to synchronize my PocketPC using Bluetooth and WiFi. It was really easy to set up and only took a few steps to get things working.
