The Switch, Day Four: Intertubes Anywhere – One Man's Account on Switching to Apple

Day Four: Intertubes Anywhere

If you are here for the first time, see The Switch – One Man’s Account on Switching to Apple for the first installment.

For each passed day, the Mac/OS X is becoming less and less mystifying. Aside from the differing keymappings, I feel there's nothing extraordinarily amazing or different about OS X. Now, don't misinterpret me: What I mean is that OS X is a good operating system with a very neat GUI, but the bottom line is that OS X is just that, an operating system that does the demanding job of being the interpreter between the hardware and the human and the occasional adventurous pet cat. There's nothing a Mac can do that any other desktop computer can't do, but there's nothing a Mac can't do, either. The rest is up to the software developers. For me, it's just another operating system, alongside Windows, Linux, MS-DOS, OS/2, and the rest of the bunch.

 

This day's biggest achievement, I think, is getting the Mac talking with my Nokia 6680, a S60 (Symbian OS based) "3G" phone. It did sync the addressbook/calendar/todos right out of the box with the iSync software, having, after a few clicks, the phone's contacts in my Mac. But syncing dull stuff isn't all that important to me. What I'm talking about is accessing the Internet via the phone's 3G connection. This doesn't come out of the box - not for my phone at least.

OS X comes with something called "Nokia IR" and two other Nokia model specific modem scripts. According to some helping hands and the Internet, these wouldn't do. Instead, I'd need some certain third party scripts, found in a rather dodgy looking website by a Ross Barkman. I followed his admittedly good instructions for setting up the PPP-over-bluetooth connection for my cellphone, but after many hours' perspiration and frustration, I still wasn't Connected to People.

Searching around in different forums, I noticed that someone else had the same problem - while everyone else was happily entangled within the net, he didn't - via bluetooth. He did get it working via the USB cable. Hopes up, I connected the cable that came with my phone, used the same settings as with bluetooth for the USB cable (which was happily accepted by OS X, by the way) and suddenly I was online. Awesome!

PS: It seems like you can use the "Nokia IR"-modem for connecting via WCDMA (3G) and Bluetooth - it worked for me at least (thanks Ville!).

To be Continued in Day Five: Less Important Stuff

Article republished from post on metku.net with permission from Henrik Paul.

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