First Look - BlackBerry Desktop for the Mac
I’ve just installed the new BlackBerry Desktop Software for Mac and wanted to share the good news and bad news of that experience.
First let me say that although I encountered some difficulties overall I’m glad to have BlackBerry Desktop as it’ll let me do much-needed backups, allows me to sync my BlackBerry Bold with my Mac Address Book, gives me the ability to do a restore if I somehow mangle my phone, offers great features like synchronizing music with iTunes, and in general lets me get the most out of my Mac and BlackBerry together. However it’s definitely best to do it with your eyes open so read on.
Installation
Download and installation of BlackBerry Desktop for Mac is easy enough and proceeds as usual for Mac OS applications. Once installed the software asks you to connect your BlackBerry via the USB cable, which I expected and so plugged my Bold in. Right away BlackBerry Desktop detected that I needed to update quite a bit of the device software and offered to do that for me. I figured that was the right thing to do and allowed it to proceed, though I now think that may have been a mistake. (More on that later.)
The software update required installing 702 files, which seemed extensive but I concluded it was because it was the first update since my Bold left the factory. Overall it took about 20 or 30 minutes and restarted the phone at least once. No error messages or warnings were generated at any point.
The Pain
Once complete, the software update rebooted my Bold one last time. Immediately I noticed things were different and missing. Here’s what I determined had changed:
- I had to go through the setup wizard, which included setting the date & time, picking a font, and setting some basic configuration that I would have hoped the upgrade hadn’t modified.
- The default AT&T theme (“Precision AT&T”) had been reinstated. I had to restore my preferred theme (“Precision Silver”) by going to Options -> Theme.
- My corporate standard email application, NotifyLink, had disappeared altogether! I checked to make sure it hadn’t been accidentally moved off the main screen into some folder but couldn’t find it anywhere. Though it is a third party app I fully expected it would survive the software upgrade. This was a Very Bad Thing.
- All my browser bookmarks were gone and instead I had some default AT&T set. Yikes!
- All the Profiles (e.g., Normal, Quiet, Phone Only) had been reset to factory default. I had to go through and restore every one of them.
- Several applications had been moved out of the folders I’d had them in and put in other folders or on the main screen
- Lock on Holstering was off, so I had to go to Options -> Password -> Lock Handheld Upon Hostering to set it to “Yes”
- Settings for the two convenience keys had been restored to factory default, so needed to be reset.
- Applications lost whatever stored settings or preferences they may have had. For example, Google Maps lost my favorite locations and Latitude settings, and Google Mail lost my login account info.
Most of these problems I’ve subsequently fixed, though it took a while. I had to reinstall NotifyLink and call their support line to get my device re-registered against their secure servers, then redo all my various customizations. I reconstituted my browser bookmarks from memory. I’ll probably find more things that need to be restored.
The Gain
On the positive side, the software update did include some new applications and games, specifically:
- Games - Tetris, Scrabble, Brain Challenge, and PacMan (none of which I’ve had a chance to play)
- WikiMobile - a free mobile front-end to Wikipedia that is designed to streamline searches and better present information on a mobile device. So far it looks pretty useful, as I often did direct searches of Wikipedia using my BlackBerry’s web browser.
- MyCast Weather - $4/month for access to weather info, radar, etc and I’m perfectly happy with free weather sites like the National Weather Service and Weather Underground.
- Make-UR-Tones - $7/month for a tool that can create 3 ringtones a month from music files. Additional ring tones are $3 each. No thanks, I make my ring tones for free on my Mac or PC with Audacity.
- MobiTV - $10/month to watch TV on your mobile device.
- AT&T Visual Voicemail - which seems to be free but does require enabling a corresponding feature on your AT&T wireless account. I’ve not had a chance to investigate this yet but it does sound interesting.
All my files, including ringtones, pictures, music, etc. were untouched so restoring Profile settings was easy.
My Contacts were fine. (Hurrah!)
I definitely plan to use BlackBerry Desktop to sync my Bold with iTunes. By inserting a microSD card I should be able to carry quite a bit of my music around with me and listen through the speaker or any standard headphones.
Conclusion
As I’ve said, in the end I do believe having and using BlackBerry Desktop for the Mac is a good thing. I did a backup right away and have done another one now that I’ve restored and reconfigured everything.
In retrospect I believe doing the software update first thing was a mistake. My suggestion to anyone else who plans to go through this is to skip the software update and instead immediately do a full backup of your phone. My hope is that you could subsequently do the software update, then do a restore from your backup if you need to correct for any problems such as those I encountered. I’m unable to test that myself, alas, so can’t be certain that would help. To be safe, make sure you have a record of all your account info, favorites, bookmarks, etc.
