UKH

Sorry for new thread, my thread about a "cheap and cheerful mp3 player" was archived. 

I did get an old Lumia 640 for £30 to fit this bill. 

And I forgot that the easy way to put your music onto it is by simply copying files to a micro SD and putting it in the phone. I've done this now, so the following post is not really a request for help, just relating an anecdote really, as the process was laughably bad.

So.... before I remembered to just use a micro SD, I thought "let's see about transferring direct to phone from my MacBook pro"

My goodness what a hullabaloo! I'm aware that Apple and Microsoft don't want their devices to talk to each other, but check this out for intractability - bearing in mind that I am no tech nerd, I don't hack or root things, I just want things to for example show up as drives that I can copy to.


Google results say "download Windows Phone" app onto Macbook from the Apple Store. This app does not exist!

I can not make iTunes or the Macbook itself find the phone, plugged in by USB. I can't make the phone show as a drive. 

I CAN connect the Macbook to the phone by Bluetooth, hurrah.

But I still couldn't "see" it via iTunes, I guess because I don't have iTunes on the phone. 

However, there is an option to "send files to Bluetooth device", and you get a little dropdown that includes the option to browse your music.

Great, I think! I can just select artists by folder, and get them all copying....
NOPE

It is ONLY a song list, and it doesn't display file type. 

No problem, I think, I will just select a bunch of songs and if some happen to be AAC or something, they just won't play on the phone (I think it only takes mp3 files)

NOPE
You select a bunch of songs, and click "Send", and the phone prompts you to confirm that you are happy for the Macbook to share files. 

ON EVERY SONG.
And if you don't respond within a time window, ON EVERY SONG, the entire process gives up and bins everything
And if any of the songs is not an mp3, the entire process gives up and bins everything. 


I've not encountered something as arcane and tortuous as this since a rickety set-up in my old job ended up requiring 4 computers just to run some x-ray-experiments (one to control the x-rays, one to control a motor, one to control a detector, and I don't remember what the fourth one was)

Hilarious. It's nearly 2020, and copying some music was actually more difficult and time consuming than making a compilation cassette!

 

See the first reply to this question on the official Microsoft community forums:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/mobiledevices/forum/mdlumia-mdapps-mdap...

From a Microsoft forum moderator: "Windows Phone app for Mac is no longer available... We removed the app so we could focus our resources elsewhere."  Note that that was posted in December 2015, less than a year after the Lumia 640 was launched.  It is any wonder that Microsoft's mobile phone efforts died a death?

(Ignore the comment from Philip Anderson's Mother's Son, by the way - it's garbled nonsense.)

Not sure why you were trying to use iTunes - it's Apple's app for syncing with Apple mobile devices. One doesn't use it to sync with Android devices (thank goodness).  There is - as you have discovered  - no 'standard' for syncing phones to personal computers.  Each phone OS does it in a different way.  In Android land, each manufacturer (Sony, Samsung etc) has their own app for syncing to Mac or PC.  Google does at least keep the generic Android File Transfer app kind of up to date - they don't pull the app altogether because they need to "focus resources elsewhere", presumably because they know damn well a fair proportion of their users want some kind of 'official' file sync/exchange tool.

I am a little surprised that there wasn't a way to get the SD card on a Windows phone to mount as a drive on the Macbook, like you can do with Android by enabling MSC mode on the phone when you connect it to the computer via USB.  As you mentioned, though, it's as easy to do that directly from the computer to the SD card without the phone needing to be involved.

Final point: IME file transfer via Bluetooth is and always has been pretty flaky.  It's based on the OBEX protocol which was originally developed for the Palm III (those devices were launched in 1997 and are now, literally, museum pieces - as in, you can see them on display in museums.)  According to the Wiki article about OBEX, support of OBEX on Windows Phone 7.8 and 8 devices is: "limited to the transferring of pictures, music and videos via a 'Bluetooth Share' app".  Whether that app is still available, and whether it would be better than doing it the hard way like you did, I couldn't say - I've not touched a Windows Phone since 2016, when I configured 300-odd of the things for a major financial institution.  That was fun.  (And I do sometimes wonder whether anyone got fired for that particular far-sighted decision!)

Bluetooth file transfer between Android devices seems to work okay. I've even used it to transfer mapping data sets running into hundreds of MB.

Museum pieces...? That reminds me; must look for an app that's as good as Agenda on my old Psion...

What a come down for the best mobile operating system that never was... reinvented as a budget music player.

Hope to keep my HTC 8X, age 5 3/4, going for as long as possible. Despite its age, it outperforms the latest Apple and Android offerings in terms of battery life and for business use (MS Office, Outlook/Exchange etc.) and the user interface with the transparent tiles is beautiful with a nice photo behind it. Shame that some actually useful apps are gradually disappearing, but the browser still works for most purposes.

Was looking for something in my box of old cables, gadgets, connectors etc a couple of days ago & found my old Psion - one of the best gadgets I've ever bought, real shame they never kept developing them.

And to Blue Straggler

My partner asked me to transfer some music from a Mac to her phone (no card slot) & Bluetooth seemed the only way possible but like you couldn't find a way of transferring more than one song at a time & gave up very quickly

thanks

one note...I did not try connecting the phone to the Mac with SD card inserted into the phone . Maybe that would have worked . The card was not already in the phone and it just seemed logical to plug it straight into Mac