Brent Kearney

How to Sync a Nokia 6300 on OS X

Posted on: March 27th, 2007 @ 09:25

* * Update for Leopard * * (02/11/2007) I did a clean install of OS X 10.5 (Leopard) this week, and found that Apple still hasn’t added the Nokia 6300 to the list of supported phones! However, there is now a free plugin, which I tried and it works perfectly on Leopard.

Nokia 6300 Dissatisfied with the local selection of mobile handsets here in Canada, I bought a shiny new Nokia 6300 via EBay. Being a technology geek, I checked before buying to see if the device was compatible with my computer, and on the face of it, it appears that Mac OS X’s iSync does not natively support the Nokia 6300. However, a closer look revealed that several other Nokia phones that run the exact same operating system as the Nokia 6300 are supported in OS X, so therefore, the 6300 is actually supported, iSync just doesn’t know it yet.

So I ordered the phone, knowing that it is just a matter of time before it appears in the list of supported phones. I was excited to take my new toy out of the box, and I realized that it has been a long time since I actually bought a new technology gadget. My money has been going into outdoor sports equipment since I moved to the Rockies, four years ago. So it was a bit like Christmas morning, and I explored the new phone obsessively for the rest of the evening.

osxbox.png I quickly realized that I have quite a few contacts in my Address Book, many of whom have multiple numbers, e-mail addresses and IM identies, and adding them manually was going to take a lot more time than I was willing to put into it. Nor could I wait for Apple to catch up.

So I started Googling for other solutions, and discovered this German site, which sells an “iSync plugin” for bleeding edge phones that aren’t yet natively supported. It was tough navigating the site, which has a bunch of broken links and not much English. Babelfish helped, but the checkout screen has image files of words instead of words themselves, so the machine translation wouldn’t work.

I’m glad that the purchase didn’t workout, because I discovered this forum post, which describes how to add a phone to the list of models that iSync supports. It turns out that it’s fairly trivial to do:

Quit iSync if its running. Right-click (control-click, for you one-button mousers) on the iSync application in your /Applications folder, and select “Show Package Contents”. Navigate through the folders to Contents -> PlugIns -> ApplePhoneConduit.syncdevice -> Contents -> PlugIns -> PhoneModelsSync.phoneplugin -> Contents -> Resources. Now, back-up the MetaClasses.plist file by clicking on it, and select File->Duplicate from the Finder menu.

** Update: for those who aren’t interested in carrying out the simple procedure outlined below, you can put this file into the Resources folder, and unzip it (by double-clicking it). Overwrite the existing file when prompted. Then continue reading below, starting at “Before you pair your Nokia 6300″…

Next, open MetaClasses.plist with a text editor.

What you need to do is find a phone in the list with the same operating system as your phone. The Nokia 6300 runs Series 40, 3rd edition, with Bluetooth and USB. The 6280 fits the bill, as indicated by the string “family.com.nokia.series40.3rdEd.bus.usb-bt”. So I made a copy of it’s XML entry, did a search & replace to change 6280 to 6300, and inserted the new entry below it. Here is my Nokia 6300 definition.

The next step is adding an icon for the phone. You’ll see the file name mentioned in the XML definition: NOK6300.tiff. The icons are 60×60 pixel tiff files with transparent back-grounds. Here is the icon file that I used for the 6300. Put it in the Resources folder, along with your MetaClasses.plist file.

Before you pair your Nokia 6300 using Bluetooth, you need to unpair your old phone, if you have one set up on your computer. Open the Bluetooth preferences panel in System Preferences, click the Devices tab, and delete other phones. Close System Preferences.

It should work now. Save and close the MetaClasses.plist file and start up iSync. Make sure that Bluetooth is enabled on your phone. Select “Add Device” from the iSync Devices menu. iSync should find your Nokia 6300, and display the icon that you added. Enjoy!

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  • Petee

    It works! Thank you very much! thought, it wasn’t possible without a plugin..

  • ton

    @ Petee.

    How did you got it working?

  • Sahil Bhatia

    Thank you so much.. :)

  • marnix

    Hey Brent,
    Cool to read all those comments. I got here because I am looking for a way to sync birthdays. [Normal syncing works fine, due to a plugin I had found somewhere long time ago.]

    Is there a thing for this as yet? I have 6300 pwbG4 OsX10.4.11.
    With Leopard all works fine, including birthdays?

    Thanks.
    M

  • http://brent.kearneys.ca Brent

    Hi Marnix;

    I switched to iPhone last year, but according to John’s comment above, on April 22nd, 2008, there is a way to get birthday syncing working.

    Good luck!

  • tombo

    THANK YOU!
    went through a few things before I realised I hadn’t set phone to sync, entered password etc, this has saved me a lot of time, well done for helping people out, nice one

    T

  • marnix

    Hi Brent,

    Many thanks. I must have overlooked John’s comment. I implemented iDrops’ code, as John recommends. But after some testing and changing, I’ve ONLY changed the SyncEngine.plist. Now it seems to be working just fine. Yiha. Please bear in mind that some pictures may cause some problems. Since I am not using pictures, I’ve removed all and that’s it.

    Thanks again.
    Marnix

  • G Evans

    Thanks for your help. Your tutorial worked brilliantly!
    I can now sync my phone to my Macbook. Thank you!! :)

  • Heiko

    I changed to snow leopard and can´t find the metaclasses.plist file. Do you know how it works? Greetings

  • Toy Maker

    THANK YOU SO MUCH.

    I was getting pissed always having to do manual transfer. Insane.

    Time to sync and finally move onto other phones

    the 6300 is still great, but alas after 5 years of great service it’s finally crapping out.
    Best phone I’ve ever had, still looks sharp, too.

  • Nathan

    Thank you, thank you and thank you again. You saved me from entering 676 contacts onto my phone by following your procedures

  • Frank Hautog

    Thanks for this good and working help, to syncronice the mac with the Nokia 6300. Its the first time, I made a change inside a software-package, so I was a bit nervous, if it works.
    Greetings from Germany, wendland

  • Robin Newman

    Great article. Worked perfectly.
    Many thanks.
    (NB some of the folder names are a little different under Snow Leopard
    10.6.4 iSync version 3.1.1)
    I found the plist file at
    iSync::Contents::Plugins::ApplePhoneConduit.syncdevice::Contents::Plugins::PhoneModelsSync.phoneplugin::Contents::Resources

    Also I had to use sudo command to replace the MetaClasses.plist file because of permissions restrictions

  • Robin Newman

    Oops. File path did not show up above. Here it is with spaces between
    to allow to fit
    iSync Contents Plugins ApplePhoneConduit.syncdevice Contents Plugins
    PhoneModelsSync.phoneplugin Contents Resources

  • http://webhostgvo.com J. Schiller

    Excellent, thanks very much, run perfect.

  • http://beforeandafter.goldmundphoto.com Goldmund

    Thank you so much!

    Almost impossible to believe how easy it would be for the big companies to make their customer’s lives easier. In the example by doing a simple copy/paste job of 5 minutes. But they are so clumsy and disorganized, and it seems they just don’t care.

  • Ju

    Hey…Thanks for this great instruction, it worked out up to the point when my mac recognized my Nokia 6300 with the icon- isync then says, “not supported by isync”…what does that mean?
     

  • beefwad

    Fantastic advice. All worked perfectly. Had to adjust slightly for a Nokia 6301 but same principals applied.

    Thanks.

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