As I have discussed here on my blog, I am really enjoying Parallels WorkStation on my MacBook Pro and one of the only reasons I wasn’t completely able to remove the Apple Boot Camp partition was USB support to allow me to sync my mobile devices. While testing the alpha of The Missing Sync for Intel Macs and Windows Mobile 5.0 devices I found a utility loaded on my i-mate SP5m called USBSwitch. This utility allows you to switch the way the USB connection is made from the default RNDIS mode to Serial mode. Once I made the switch then I was able to sync perfectly using The Missing Sync in Mac OS X. I then thought this may work in Parallels WorkStation since the problem there now with Windows Mobile 5.0 devices is that a network connection is trying to be made and multiple network connections don’t seem to be supported. I then switched modes on my i-mate SP5m, started up Parallels Workstation and then connected my USB cable. Voila! I was syncing my device via ActiveSync 4.1 to the virtual Windows XP environment and am now a happy camper. I then did some digging around and found the .cab file for USBSwitch over at the XDA Developers site and installed it on my i-mate JasJar (most Windows Mobile devices don’t have it preinstalled) and now I can sync that device as well.

I am posting USBSwitch here for anyone else who wants to give it a try. I don’t offer any guarantees it will work or any warranties if something happens to your device and am just passing along a useful tool I found and want to share.