sync Motorola RAZR v3...how to?

select the "contacts" checkbox and select the Address Book group I'd like to see the contacts downloaded to

That's not how it works. The Address Book group selected in iSync is the one from which contacts are sent TO the phone.

Any new contacts that come FROM the phone are added to the All group in Address Book.

it seems like iSync is a one-way program, designed to take stuff from my computer and put it on the phone...is this true?

No. iSync syncs data in both directions. It keeps both your phone and the Mac Address Book "in sync" with each other no matter where you make changes.

it suggests I should erase the information on my phone and replace it with info from my computer!

That's correct. Generally, when setting up a new phone for syncing for the first time, you should start with a fully up-to-date Address Book and an empty phone. On the first sync, everything is copied to the phone. Then on subsequent syncs, changes are synced in both directions whether you make changes in Address Book or on the phone. That's how iSync keeps track of changes.

Can you send your contacts to the Mac via Bluetooth as vCards, then import them into Address Book. Get Address Book exactly how you want it with a group containing the contacts you want on the phone, then start the first-time sync, overwriting what's in the phone.

First off, I do not see that any of the contacts from my phone have been uploaded to the 'All' group

Did you choose to "merge" on first sync? That option should take what is on the phone and merge it with what's already in Address Book.

Are your contacts in your phone stored on the SIM card or the phone memory? They need to be in the phone memory as iSync cannot access the SIM (plus the SIM has a very limited capacity).

why would I want to merge a list from a discrete device into an existing Address book?

Er, because you may have additional data in your Address Book that isn't in your phone? Or maybe your phone has limits on what data it can store whereas the Mac Address Book doesn't?

Most people keep all their contacts data - names, email addresses, postal addresses, phone numbers, URLs, birthdays etc. on their computers.

-what do you want to copy?
-where do you want to copy it to?

But it's not copying - it's syncing. That's why it's called iSync and not iCopy.

And then the software does what YOU want it to.

Software does what it's designed to do - which is not necessarily exactly what you want it to do, for various technical or logical reasons.

Also, I'm not sure where the iSync designers got the idea that I'd be originating my phone book contacts on my computer.

Because, when you buy a new phone, where are your contacts? Already on it, or in your computer?

iSync is designed to facilitate the easy transfer of contact and calendar data between your Mac and phone. Buy phone, connect to iSync, press Sync = all data on phone in a matter of seconds.

The data in Address Book should be treated as the master source for a number of reasons:

1) It's very easily backed-up and restored
2) If your phone gets stolen or breaks, you still have all your contacts.
3) It's easier to enter extended contact information into your Mac, than into the phone
4) The same data can be synced to any number of other phones, Macs, PCs, iPods, MobileMe and applications.

So the logical flow of events is to take the information FROM the phone, and merge it WITH the Address Book, not the other way around.

It depends. That works for that one situation, but what if you get an email on your Mac with phone numbers, address, URLs etc in it, and you add that to your Mac Address Book? Then, that data needs to go FROM the Mac TO the phone, does it not?

After the initial sync though, what you want is exactly what iSync does. New data on the Mac gets transferred to the phone and new data on the phone gets transferred to the Mac on every sync. In BOTH directions - keeping both the phone and Mac in sync.

Do what I suggested in the final paragraph of my previous post and use Address Book, iCal and iSync as intended and you'll have no problems.

I've been using iSync for over 8 years with dozens of different phones and never had anything more than a trivial hiccup, which has been easily resolved.

Mike, sorry for jumping in on your topic here but I'd like to ask you and Julian if you can point me in the direction of a solution. I can't get iSync to see my razr V3a at all. If I link with a bluetooth dongle it sees the phone but can't sync. Via usb no devices found. metaclasses.plist has entries for V3xx etc. This is an Alltel phone (yes it's still Alltel in Montana.)

Again, sorry for poaching, I've been looking for help on this for a couple of weeks. Any help you can provide.

Thanks,
Cal

According to the thread below, support for your phone was added to iSync in Snow Leopard:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1144775