Introduction
Nokia doesn’t have a version of the Ovi Music Player for the Mac. Its a long time coming but Mac users are not completely left behind. There is still Nokia Multimedia Transfer, which allows you to do the following with your Nokia mobile:
- Transfer music & playlists from iTunes
- Transfer and copy photos and videos from iPhoto
- Sync bookmarks
- Transfer files from your Mac
Setup
The application is available in two versions, 1.4 .2 is for MAC OS 1.5.8 (Leopard) and 10.6.2 (Snow Leopard) and 1.3 Beta, for Mac OS 10.4 (Tiger). You can connect Nokia Multimedia Transfer via Bluetooth or the data cable. I used a Nokia 5800 Xpress Music for the transfer.
Music
You can transfer all DRM-free content from iTunes to your Nokia mobile. Protected music and audio books cannot be transferred. Once you select “Enable iTunes Transfer” in the Device Settings, all playlists, podcasts and music are now visible in Nokia Multimedia Transfer and you can choose what you want to transfer. Before transfer, you can choose to change the encoding, to save space on your phone’s external memory. But I prefer to leave the encoding undisturbed, but if you really want to save space, suggested encoding is Apple’s AAC 128 Kbps format.
Its important to note that this is music transfer, not sync. Sync lets you transfer meta data of your music files from the mobile back to your primary media too. The downside to not having sync is that play counts, last played and other meta data, that’s useful to create dynamic playlists in iTunes cannot be updated. I would ideally like to keep all my media content n iTunes and use multiple devices for playback.
Its a long way off before I migrate lock, stock and barrel to Ovi Music Player because its not in the same level as iTunes, as of today.
Album artwork, embedded in the mp3 file will be transferred but not album artwork created using iTunes’ get album artwork feature.
Photos & Videos
Nokia Multimedia Transfer also lets you transfer photos from iPhoto to your Nokia mobile. You can not only transfer photos but also Events, that are created in iPhoto. You can also choose to resize the images before they are transferred to the phone to save disk space.
In order to import photos from your phone back to iPhoto, click the “Enable this devices as a digital camera“. With this, whenever the device is connected, iPhoto is automatically started, if Nokia Multimedia Transfer application is open, and you can import the images to iPhoto.
iTunes and iPhoto videos can also be transferred immediately when the Nokia phone is connected to the Mac. Videos playable by QuickTime and are not copy protected can be copied. Nokia Multimedia Transfer also lets you transcode the videos before they are transferred, to make them playable on your Nokia phone.
Sync Bookmarks
With Nokia Multimedia Transfer, you can sync bookmarks between Safari and your Nokia internet browser. Bookmarks in a bookmark folder with your device name, say Nokia 5800, in Safari will be synced with the bookmarks on the device. When you change your bookmarks in Safari or on your device, Nokia Multimedia Transfer will synchronise your bookmarks on both.
Transfer Files
You can browse the contents of your device from your Mac and transfer files to and from the device using the Nokia Device Browser. I suggest that you use this only for files like application executables, etc and not media files. For media, use only iPhoto and iTunes transfer.
Conclusion
Nokia Multimedia Transfer is no where near a comprehensive multimedia desktop application for the Mac to sync with the Nokia device. Its a testimony of the market share of Mac versus Windows. Nokia obviously has a large team working full time for the Windows platform. Ovi Music Player, Ovi Suite and other applications run on Windows and they are more feature rich. But for a Mac user, Nokia Multimedia Transfer is better than nothing. Its still a good application, if you’ll forgive the lack of basic features like music sync etc.
