The problem with sync

July 2, 2007

Apple's page trumpeting sync services in Tiger makes it sound great:

Sync Services Supplied
Tiger advances the state of the art by integrating intelligent, high-performance sync services right into the operating system. In Tiger, the preferences and controls for what, when and which devices you want to sync appear inside your favorite applications, such as Safari, iCal, Address Book and Mail — including multiple Mail accounts, Mail rules, signatures and Spotlight-driven Smart Mailboxes.

Indeed these features were prominent two years ago when Tiger was making its way to release. It is puzzling then that the state of sync is so poor in OS X. Here's a brief list of the most disappointing: Read more about The problem with sync

Spanning Sync Uninstall

March 29, 2007

After a recent post about problems with Spanning Sync there seemed to be hope. Alas it was not to be. Following my post there was a comment indicating that Spanning Sync desired to try to make their software work. I spent another several hours getting the data they needed and emailed it away as instructed.

At the end of the day it is yet more time wasted on this product. There are people who test it and never have a problem. So it seems it does work for some, but if it doesn't work you're stuck. Now the trial has ended, the product has been uninstalled (itself a 45-minute process that hangs at every turn) and I'm only haunted by the ghosts of Spanning Sync. Although it's not installed it is still causing sync errors. Fantabilous!

Oh and now sync seems to be completely broken.

The Spanning Sync conundrum

March 18, 2007

I've written about my desires for calendaring that works well on OS X in the past. For the last several months I've been making do with Google Calendar. The phrase making do doesn't do Google Calendar justice as it's actually an awesome web-application. The biggest drawback is that it doesn't completely integrate with OS X and therefore doesn't sync well with my palm. Read more about The Spanning Sync conundrum