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Google Sync for Mac may trump MobileMe
Ever since Mobile Me’s inception, there have been significant burps and hiccups of Apple’s revolutionary syncing service. When it works, it’s beautiful. When it doesn’t, it’s a bear. My experience over the past year has included more bear than beauty. Granted, Apple acknowledged its stumble out of the gate by extending members’ expiration dates beyond their 12-month paid subscription. That was a caveat.
However, the amount of times I’ve had to reset iPhones, my sync history, and generally yell at my calendars for not syncing correctly between our three computers and two iPhones has been excessive. Apple should be paying me for bug discovery of this service, not the other way around. Since it’s a $99 annual fee, Google’s recent end-around may sound the death nell for Apple’s stumbling.
Disclaimer: Before you think I’m being hard on Apple, just remember you always tend to be hard on those you love. I am a diehard Apple fan, and therefore my criticisms, I think, are fair. I have a hard stomaching those who take pot shots and make snide remarks without any familiarity with Apple’s stellar and amazing products and customer service.
Let me make a long story short: If you own an iPhone and do NOT use Mobile Me but WOULD love to have your contacts and calendars sync wirelessly with your Google account, (what’s on your iPhone appears magically on your Google calendar and vice versa) then go here and set up your iPhone to work with Google’s new Activesync.
At the very least, you’ll want to use it if you don’t already use another service. For Mobile Me users, you may be tempted to demand a refund or pro-rated credit. Certainly for users of the super-expensive BusySync(see my review of it here), you’ll sigh and regret paying their astronomical fees.
I would think most folks will be switching to Google’s services soon.It’s free, and it works.
Like Mobile Me should be, on both counts.
Also, you can watch the video for an explanation of what exactly it does:
All that’s left for Google to roll out is push-service email for iPhone and that should be around the corner within the year, definitely. I give it 3 months. That’ll be nice.
I already enjoy push through my hosting company Eleven2.com and it’s nice. Unfortunately, most of my stuff comes through my gMail, so I still drain my phone with unnecessary server queries through that service every 30 minutes. It’s nice to have items right when you get them and need them.
Thanks for the clarification on Push vs. Fetch. I am changing my settings now! I just never drilled deeply enough to consider how much my 3-4 IMAP accounts were draining my battery.
Just set this up, works great! The only thing I haven’t figured out is how to get changes to Address Book on my Mac to get updated in my Google Contacts (ie without manually syncing the iPhone to my Mac). During set up I lost some contacts from the phone, but they still exist in Address Book… I’ve configured iCal changes to get pushed to Google Calendar, works great!
By the way, I used Calaboration to get iCal and Google Calendar to play together: http://code.google.com/p/calaboration/
I am not sure I can give up my MobileMe. I am tightly integrated between MobileMe and iLife (iPhoto, iWeb,) and other apps (Safari Bookmarks, Keychain, Mail, Address Book, and iCal). I am constantly uploading pics to my MobileMe gallery, can Google Sync do that or will I have to use Picasa? Will Google support uploading my websites from iWeb?
I doubt Google will support the iWeb uploads, but they might surprise us. I’m encouraged by James’ experience by his switch. As soon as my MM subscription runs out, I’ll be switching too – at least that’s the plan right now.