Sony Clié on Mac

I've had a Palm Pilot since 2001, and can't live without it. However, the two devices I've owned are both Sony Cliés, rather than actual products by Palm, from where the name Palm Pilot came. The Sony devices always felt much more refined to me, and I've never regretted choosing them over other similar choices. My first Clié, a PEG-S320, was running strong when it "retired" to make room for a better model, a PEG-TJ37. I still use my little TJ37 everyday. It will be replaced for sure, as soon as the Apple iPhone becomes available in Canada. In the meantime, it's served me well.

To perform the most important function of a Palm Pilot, HotSync, one needs to install the Palm Desktop on one's computer. Sony provides their clone of a Palm Desktop, which works fine, except that it is only for Windows. Sony has never been keen on Mac or Linux, and, as the Clié line was discontinued a few years ago, never will be.

On Linux, there exist a few clones of the Palm Desktop, with my favourite being J-Pilot. It isn't quite powerful enough, and used to require tinkering and additional kernel modules before it would work with a Sony Clié. Nevertheless, it is always fun playing with programs on Linux. Even though I could only do a HotSync via USB, not Wi-Fi, for years, I relied on J-Pilot to back up my Clié.

A few days ago, when I upgraded to Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy, I discovered, to my consternation, that J-Pilot stopped working because of a kernel bug. While I can still back up the Clié on my Win XP-based laptop, I was annoyed.

It then occurred to me, Why hadn't I thought about HotSyncing on our iMac? A little research on-line (mainly from the Wiki entry on Clié) shows that it is entirely possible. There is a product out there by Mark/Space called "The Missing Sync" which offers a desktop HotSync tool between Palm OS and Mac OS X. However, I could save myself the $40 charged by The Missing Sync by using the free Palm Desktop if I'm willing to do some delicate work. The only negative is that HotSync via Wi-Fi is not supported in Palm Desktop for Mac. This is an inconvenience, but not one worth spending $40 on, especially considering that my Clié's days are numbered.

I downloaded Palm Desktop for Mac and installed it on the iMac. After carefully following the instructions described by lensovet, I successfully performed the first HotSync between the Clié and the iMac.

An added advantage of HotSyncing on the Mac is that many applications, such as SplashID, offer a version for Mac OS X, but not one for Linux. Now I can backup not only the basic PIM data but also application data, something that I couldn't do on Linux before.