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Will Android sync with Macs?

N

Necross

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 31, 2011
131
33
Sorry if this is in the wrong place, wasn't sure what forum to put it in....

So, I'm thinking about getting an Android phone.

Only reason is, I'm a web designer and I need to test my mobile sites on one.. and I have an iPod Touch that does that job just fine for testing iOS. OK, other reason is I absolutely hate the on screen keyboard, and I want a phone with a keyboard built in.

Anyway, can an Android sync with a mac at all? I wouldn't really be adding music and movies to it, but more for downloading apps I might need.

I do have Boot Camp with Windows 7 on my Mac, but it will be kind of a pain to always have to switch over whenever I want to sync up

Any chance of apple ever making iTunes for Android? like how they have it for windows? :)
 
Android phones don't use a client like iTunes to manage applications.

All you need is a web browser to go to the Android Market or download directly from the phone. The Market remembers your downloads for you and you can re download any purchased app from any web browser as many times as you need/want to.
You are not tied to a single machine like iOS devices are.

As for music, OS X will the see the phone as a USB Mass Storage Device. You simply drag and drop the files onto your phone or use DoubleTwist.
Again, you are not tied to a single machine like iOS devices are.
 
Android does not sync with Mac nor does it sync with PCs. Some Android phones include third party software to sync like The Missing sync, but only for PC. On Mac it is a separate purchase.
 
Yeah I have a Droid X and it doesn't sync with anything so you won't have a problem with any other android phone :)



Sent from my iPod touch using Tapatalk
 
RebeccaL said:
Android does not sync with Mac nor does it sync with PCs. Some Android phones include third party software to sync like The Missing sync, but only for PC. On Mac it is a separate purchase.
Click to expand...

I have used The Missing Sync to sync a Blackberry and a Windows Mobile phone to my iMac in the past. Although it costs around $30 it works great and is worth the price in my opinion.
 
For contacts and calendar you can sync iCal and Address Book with a google account. The Android phones will sync over the air with a google account the same way Mobile Me does.

For Apps, they aren't managed in a program like Apple apps are. They reside only on the phone. You can download .apk files and then install them from the phone's SD card, but be careful where the files come from if you go that method.
I know that you could browse some of the Android Market via a web browser but I don't remember if you were able to download apps to your computer from it or if it told you to go to your phone.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8J2 Safari/6533.18.5)

rjohnstone said:
Android phones don't use a client like iTunes to manage applications.

All you need is a web browser to go to the Android Market or download directly from the phone. The Market remembers your downloads for you and you can re download any purchased app from any web browser as many times as you need/want to.
You are not tied to a single machine like iOS devices are.

As for music, OS X will the see the phone as a USB Mass Storage Device. You simply drag and drop the files onto your phone or use DoubleTwist.
Again, you are not tied to a single machine like iOS devices are.
Click to expand...

Just to add to this, all you need to do is go to http://market.android.com to browse and install apps.

Click install/purchase and an application will automatically download on your phone with no need for you to touch it at all.
 
Cool thanks for the info. I guess I was expecting it to work like an iphone

So I guess it goes without saying that itunes songs won't play on it.. what if I ripped a CD to AAC instead of MP3? will those work?
 
Necross said:
Cool thanks for the info. I guess I was expecting it to work like an iphone

So I guess it goes without saying that itunes songs won't play on it.. what if I ripped a CD to AAC instead of MP3? will those work?
Click to expand...

I've synced my entire library with AirSync and both ripped mp3s and AACs play fine, and surprisingly so do iTunes purchases, but not some of the older ones which had DRM.
 
Ah .. good to know. Though no phones seem to have the amt of space I need for my music anyway, that's why I have it all on the ipod.

Looking at the new T Mobile Sidekick.. but I have another month to wait for my AT&T contract to run out...
 
Necross said:
Ah .. good to know. Though no phones seem to have the amt of space I need for my music anyway, that's why I have it all on the ipod.

Looking at the new T Mobile Sidekick.. but I have another month to wait for my AT&T contract to run out...
Click to expand...

You are looking at one of the great Pros and Cons of android. Many of the handset makers don't put a lot of internal memory in the phones because they expect that the user will be using a micro SD card. I my self love the micro sd cards. I have had the same one now for three years. Three phones but the same card. It is a great thing because if you break your phone all you need to do is pick it up and pop it into a new phone. They are really cheap to find online now. I got my 8gb three years ago for 40$ now i am going to retire it in a few months for a 16gb that i saw on newegg for 30 bucks.
 
I have a 16gb card now, I got it for my old Samsung wannabe iPhone that I got 2 years ago, right as Androids were popping up but I didn't think to get one then :( So I should be set for memory. I'd need them to come out with a 64 gb card for me to have all my music on there.. well it's about 42 gb but I guess 64 would be the next step up. All the phones seem to say the max is 32 though but I don't know if that's just because there's no 64 gb cards yet? or if they are out I bet they cost as much as the phone does....
 
Necross said:
I have a 16gb card now, I got it for my old Samsung wannabe iPhone that I got 2 years ago, right as Androids were popping up but I didn't think to get one then :( So I should be set for memory. I'd need them to come out with a 64 gb card for me to have all my music on there.. well it's about 42 gb but I guess 64 would be the next step up. All the phones seem to say the max is 32 though but I don't know if that's just because there's no 64 gb cards yet? or if they are out I bet they cost as much as the phone does....
Click to expand...
A lot of newer Android phones come with 16 GB internal storage and then you can add a 32 GB MicroSD to bump it to 48 GB.
Haven't seen anything higher than that just yet.
 
RebeccaL said:
543.jpg
Android does not sync with Mac nor does it sync with PCs. Some Android phones include third party software to sync like The Missing sync, but only for PC. On Mac it is a separate purchase.
Click to expand...

^^^^^^^this
 
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