Syncing is, like baseball, a game of failure.
I’ve said for years that I’ll never build anything that requires sync. Hats off to Brent for taking this on and writing about it.
Search Results for: sync
Can’t believe I just now found this solution…
Nobody wants to build and run this because there’s no money in it.
Interesting how this has changed since I wrote about it last year.
After migrating from MobileMe to iCloud, I ran into a nasty situation where iSync/MobileMe sync thought I had data conflicts but I couldn’t resolve them. The way the Conflict Resolver dialog appears and acts is a nightmare. When it appears, it hangs for a good 30 seconds, spiking the CPU and not allowing itself to…
Here I am about to pay $100/year for contact sync. I tried hard to avoid this, having tried pretty much every other solution out there, but none of them worked properly across several Macs plus a BlackBerry. In the end I just need contact sync that works, and so far MobileMe is the only one…
I wrote the following draft blog post in December 2008: I’m closer than ever to never having to plug in my BlackBerry to a computer to sync it. The exception is still contacts, which I can get away with syncing once a week or so. My calendars are synced with Google Calendar. This is handled…
BusySync 2.0 allows you to sync iCal with Google Calendar, in addition to syncing iCal calendars with others on your LAN.
I’m still using BusySync and am generally pleased with it.
I’ve had a rather bumpy relationship with SpanningSync, and as a result several friends have recommended I try BusySync 2.0 beta. I’m very glad they did. BusySync works differently than SpanningSync. Instead of a service, it works directly with Google Calendar with no intermediary service. It does not suffer from any of the issues I…
I really wanted to like Spanning Sync, I bought a lifetime copy and tried it for over a month. However, I’d had to give it up and go back to my old solution: subscribing to my Google Calendars in iCal. Here are the reasons I’m turning Spanning Sync off (for now): It would somehow decide…
I was really excited for this, then I discovered it only syncs a single calendar. I applaud Google for embracing iCalendars and making it easy for us to create lots of them to keep things nicely organized, but then they go and add all kinds of features that only work with the Default Calendar. That part sucks.
UPDATE: I was wrong – YAY!!
I believed that the sync only did the “Default Calendar” because after I entered my username and password I was presented with only this option. Since I wanted to sync more than just the Default Calendar, last time I didn’t proceed any further.
This time I did, and went ahead with the sync. Lo and behold, the first thing it did was download the calendar list (then synced the Default Calendar). After this initial sync, I was then able to go into options and choose my additional calendar; including my Google Apps calendars.
Most Excellent!
I was initially critical of Spanning Sync1. I still think this would be better as an application than a service, but I’m also a pragmatist and since their pricing is reasonable I decided to give it a shot. Note: Make sure you get the latest version if you are running Leopard. I’ve been using Spanning…
Whenever I use a sync tool for the first time I always back everything up on the desktop and set the sync tool to overwrite everything on the device. I wonder if those steps would have saved Eric some of the trouble he experienced. I’ve been mightily disappointed by PocketMac as well and Mark/Space has a great track record with OS X and sync – probably time to switch.
Like I said, Spanning Sync left the door wide open for this (assuming this isn’t a service – not much info on their site and I don’t use beta sync products). (Thanks Chris)
I’ve been subscribed to the Spanning Sync blog for a little while now, monitoring the progress they are making in their iCal to Google Calendar sync solution. Yesterday they released their first public beta – then quickly had to shut it down again. Frankly, I don’t understand why they choose to implement this as a…
This is interesting to me primarily because Mark/Space has a great reputation for doing sync well. Too bad they didn’t release it before the free PocketMac 4 came out with so many improvements. Right now this only seems to really benefit Pearl users because of the audio/photo capabilities. When the BlackBerry 8800 finally arrives, I’d imagine PocketMac will be updated to include many of these capabilities as well.