back to article Nokia: No Belle download for Apple users

Nokia has told Mac-using owners of handsets capable of being upgraded to its Belle operating system they need to switch to a PC to apply the update themselves. The Finnish phone giant posted the latest incarnation of the OS formerly known as Symbian yesterday for a series of older Nokia handsets. Alas, the new code is only …

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  1. hey_may

    BAHAHAAHAH

    NOKIA MIGHT AS WELL JUST GIVE UP.

    R.I.P.

  2. jai

    [quote]does (Nokia) really care whether folk adopt Belle or not?[/quote]

    or, perhaps more importantly, do folk really care to bother with a platform whose end of the line is only a couple of steps ahead?

  3. Mondo the Magnificent
    Happy

    Easy fix

    Bootcamp or VMWare Fusion into a Windows session... as a majority of OSX users do = fixed

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Do they?

      I got a Mac specifically to get away from Windows. Why on earth would I want to put it on my Mac? I wouldn't let Windows anywhere near it even if it was free! I have absolutely no evidence to back this up, but I would imagine most Mac owners feel the same.

      1. moylan
        Alien

        half assed policy

        i used to have to build a windows system every few months just to run nokias software updater. a real pain in the ass. people who are using expensive phones are more likely to be using operating systems other than microsofts. i didn't want windows on my then mac systems or now linux systems. it was one of the things that drove me away from symbian.

        of course android is not perfect either with both my samsung wanting windows kies software to update the firmware and my sony xperia wanting similar windows crap to do the same. is it so hard to understand that people who use android might not be fans of ms?

    2. Lance 3

      Defused

      It doesn't work, just so you know. You can tell Fusion to connect the phone to the VM but the phone is never noticed by Nokia PC Suite nor Nokia Suite. Even if it, when the update is applied, the phone reboots and reports itself as something other than what it was.

      Bootcamp is the only way. I really don't want two partitions and Fusion is of much better use for the rare times I need a windows machine.

  4. James 51

    Did they not sack all their software people?

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I'd like to see the data saying what percentage of Mac lovers (those mac users that only use a Mac and don't even have a PC in the house) aren't using an iPhone, and of those that don't which one of them would share their life going between the brilliantly design apple interfaces and the shockingly slow and badly designed ones featured on all Nokia phones? I'm guessing that Nokia would make a significant loss developing the software for any other platform than a Windows based PC for the 5users that it would affect.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      @Micky 1

      There is more than one type of "good design". Apple manage to hit lots of different good design principles in each device. Nokia manage to hit a few.

      The biggest difference is software, where Apple are great and Nokia are beyond shit and have been for about 10 years.

      The biggest similarities are in their hardware design, adherence to standards, "openness" and user interface (hardware that is).

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        RE: @Micky 1

        "Apple manage to hit lots of different good design principles in each device. Nokia manage to hit a few."

        You neglected to mention that Microsoft have hit roughly none...

    2. Lance 3

      How many iPhonies are there that use Windows? Quite a few, just to let you know. Your logic has flaws. There is a reason why iTunes in available for Windows.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Nokia and OSX

    Nokia's OSX support has always been shit. I've never been able to sync a new Nokia with my Mac out of the box. Tell a lie: I think my E7 worked first time.

  7. Frederick Tennant

    Typical

    Well done Nokia, Some things will never change.

    I had to abandon my Nokia phone because of the lack of support for Apple OS, thank you Apple for the iphone.

    So what market is Nokia looking for now?

    The clock is ticking Nokia.... remember the Sony Walkman??

  8. PTC Bernie

    Another reason to go to the iPhone.

  9. Kristian Walsh Silver badge

    The reason...

    Updating to Belle requires a complete wipe of the phone, and reinstall of the system from scratch. A backup of your settings is performed first, and then when the install completes, your own settings are written back to the phone.

    Nokia Software Updater lacks the ability to do this full back up of the device (the Windows version of NSU has the same problem, incidentally). It'll be able to do the incremental upgrades after Belle, though.

    A word of warning: some settings aren't preserved (Wifi access points, and message/alert tone settings), and some apps need to be downloaded again from Nokia Store. Other than that, though, the upgrade works very well.

    And, @Micky 1 : I'm in the exact demographic you're talking about. I'm primarily a Mac user, but the reasons I like OS X are the same ones why I'd never use an iOS device: OS X was built on the principle of using and supporting open standards, allowing interoperability and giving the user freedom to do what they want with their computer if they want to..

  10. h3

    Symbian still win's if you need best possible battery life. (Overall it is pretty good efficient etc).

    Belle looks just fine to me.

    Meego also looked good.

    (I use Android just because of the extra stuff you can do with root app's but I don't really like it).

    (Like WP7 quite like WebOS - Don't like iOS)

    Think I will like Tizen but I haven't tried it yet (e17 is cool).

    QNX is also great. (You know to world is messed up when QNX doesn't do well as it is so much better in so many ways than Linux / Mach / Windows CE).

    The modern world - the best never wins.

  11. This post has been deleted by its author

  12. Alain Moran

    Not the only one...

    Nokia are by far and away not the only hardware supplier that does this!

    For example Neato, makers of fine vacuum cleaning robots, still can't be bothered to supply the binaries that they push down the wire to the robot! Despite, from what I can gather, them using nothing more complex than 'dd' to do the transfer!

  13. Dana W
    FAIL

    Not at all.

    I own three Macs. I Looked at other options, I looked at Android, I looked at Blackberry to be fair I even looked at the Windows Phone. And what steered me away from Android yet again, was its refusal to play nice with OS X, something even Blackberry has managed to do.

    The point is, you have to have real multi OS support now if you want to sell to everyone. If iPod had remained an "Apple only" device it would be either a footnote or a niche product today. Nokia is trying to live int he past, where they were relevant and Microsoft was the only game in town for most people

  14. P. Lee
    Linux

    And so it begins...

    oops, HFS support is now read-only

    oops, no HFS support at all

    oops, forgot to add a mac installed

    Seriously, a major corporation accidentally forgot the second-largest OS in the home market?

    However, you can only play these antics of making an OS look insignificant if you a major phone vendor. MS never counted and Nokia no longer counts.

    Bzzt.

    1. El Andy

      "Seriously, a major corporation accidentally forgot the second-largest OS in the home market?"

      Turns out that's really easy to do when the second-largest OS has a relatively tiny market share.

  15. jonfr
    WTF?

    Never going to a Windows phone

    I am never going to a Windows phone. It is a bad security risk. I also find Android not up the task yet. Maybe in about five more years it is going to be ready. However I do not like Google control over it and lack of features.

    As for Symbian. It is a bad move to kill it as they are doing by moving to a Windows phone. But this is what happens when they did hire an ex-Microsoft guy as CEO. It was an bad move that is going to cost them billions of euros in the end.

  16. Bad Beaver
    Megaphone

    It is possible to do the update on OSX

    I found a link in the Nokia Beta Labs forum. It turns out that if you use an EARLIER VERSION of the Nokia Software Updater, you can do the update.

    CAVEAT: Apparently Nokia has some sort of a point not letting people do it, as this updater will erase some personal data and settings. So do your backup, export all important / sync content / contacts etc. My apps were intact tough but YMMV.

    Otherwise this worked just fine and Belle is quite quick on her feet, btw.

    http://www.ukmobilereview.com/manufacturers/m-nokia/belle-update-mac/

    Still can't figure out why Nokia was unable to do a decent OS X updater WITHIN THE YEAR they lost fooling around with the Belle update.

  17. chr0m4t1c

    Completely confused

    I plugged my N8 into my Mac, started NSU, which downloaded an update for itself and then downloaded and installed Belle on my phone a couple of days ago.

    Did I imagine this?

    (I other words, WTF is this article talking about?)

    1. Dan 55 Silver badge

      You've got an older version of NSU

      Which does update to Belle. The newer one doesn't.

      I do wish Nokia would stop doing things like this, it scares the customers.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Shame about the Mac

    Our Mac has the Nokia Software Updater on it (and I haven't updated the thing in months, so it's feasible I could have had an older version which could carry out the Belle update), but in the end I "borrowed" a Windows PC for the job, as we don't have one in the house (Mac and Linux all the way).

    On my N8, it went about as smoothly as a major OS upgrade could be expected to do. More of my settings were retained/restored than I expected, though I still had to reinstall the apps which were present on the C: drive (main memory). I had to re-setup Google Calendar sync, and SIP (VoIP) support still needs you to seek out and download/install the old Symbian^3 SIP settings package (why on earth wasn't this included?). Still not sure what I think about the new OS, but I suspect I'll grow into it.

    That said, it's done, and I feel oddly relieved that this may well be the last major OS upgrade that my N8 will see...

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