On the way to work this morning listening to one of my favorite Podcasts, Your Mac Life with Shawn King, he was interviewing one of the co-founders of BusyMac about thier Mac application BusyCal. After looking at their website, I must say that I am quite impressed with what they have done on the desktop in terms of picking up some of the slack where iCal left off.
But that is not the topic of this post. What struck me about the interview was the realization of how complex the overall landscape and architecture is when it comes to keeping your life in sync across you Mac and your iPhone. To be honest, at first I was a bit confused, because I have found my setup to be quite straight forward and painless. Not at all what I was hearing on the Podcast about how complex things can get. I do however fully understand the compexity and simply forgot what life was like before my current configuration.
Essentially, what we wall want is seamless access to our Mail, Calendar and Contacts that can be maintained regardless of where you may be or whether you make changes on your Mac, Web or iPhone. Changes on one platform are updated and visible on all platforms or "One-shot-One-Kill" as I like to refer to it as. That has always been a challenge for any platform or service to deliver. The sync should be transparent... period.
With that, I decided to share how my own personal configuration is set up. It may not be perfect and may not provide some functionality that you might want in your own life, but for me there are several benefits.
- Easy Setup
- Low Maintenance
- FREE*
I especially like the last bullet. * However, I must add that it is not necessarily free for me, as I am still a paid subscriber to the MobileMe service offered by Apple. As time goes on, I am finding more justification for moving away from that. MobileMe is an option, but not a show stopper for keeping your Mac synced wirelessly with your iPhone.
I have to say that it did take me a couple of attempts to figure it all out, but in the end, I have essentially broken the physical link between my Mac and my iPhone and they share information 100% wirelessly. It was hard making the leap away from having iTunes as the center of the sync experience for me. Essentially there is no need to sync your contact, mail or calendar information through iTunes any longer.
Before I go forward, lets take a look back. Prior to figuring out my optimal configuration, I was already using the iPhone and Desktop Apple Mail client to connect to GMail via IMAP so I was good on that front. For my Calendar situation I used MobileMe to keep it all together the same with my Contacts. For anyone without a MobileMe account I believe you relied 100% on iTunes to keep everything in sync and there was no wireless solution provided that was simple to setup and operate.
Google had always appeared to have developed its Calendar and GMail/Contacts as seperate services and in isolation; each with its own strengths and weekeness. The first sign that something was afoot in Google World, was the introduction of Google Sync. A service that outlined various configurations to take advantage of their on-line services. It was still very much lacking on the Calendar front as you were limited to using CalDav as a means to access your calnedar. This was a cumbersome process and difficult to configure for the layman on both the iCal application and iPhone.
At the same time, Apple was busy building into iCal and the Address book the ability to sync with Google Calendar and Contacts. The convergence had begun. This all came to a head as Google opened up their Google Sync for the iPhone through the use of Microsoft Exchange. Although a tad bit buggy at first, I have had no issues since moving to the Exchange service offered by Google which keeps my iPhone's Calendar and Contacts completely in sync with their "Cloud."
Once I enabled Google Sync on the Mac's iCal & Address Book application I quickly realized that there was no need for any of the Sync features in iTunes that assisted the iPhone with staying in line with your Mac. I turned them off. I was now 100% wirelessly syncing my Mac's Calendar and Contacts with my iPhone via Google's cloud. Mail of course was always connected via IMAP so there were no changes needed on that front. I now have access to all of my information on all three platforms (Mac, Web, iPhone) and can do what I please with the information on any of these and see the changes on any of the others like Magic.
Don't get me wrong, it isn't perfect. For example, my Mac's Groups in Address book do not sync with Google, so I had to create seperate groups in GMail Contacts and despite that the Groups still do not appear on the iPhone. For me a small sacrifice to make as I can search for contacts on the iPhone. Another issue remains is some people's need for a better Calendar client on the Mac. That is where companies like BusyMac come in. Leveraging Apple's sync services and also offering Google CalDav syncing they still fill the functional void on the desktop.
Even on the iPhone, I have turned towards the App Pocket Informant to provide me with a very robust calendar application combined with the ability to sync my ToDo's with Toodledo the online ToDo service.
The key to all of this for me, was jumping on the Google Bandwagon completely with my Calendar and Contact managment needs. To most MobileMe is a cost prohibitive service. Google has now provided an alternative that is free. Why not leverage it to keep your world sync'd?
In summary:
- Get a Google Account
- Turn on Google Syncing in iCal and Address Book
- Setup Google Sync on the iPhone and enable Calendar/Contact/Mail through an Exchange Account
- Turn off all iTunes sync preferences for the iPhone
- Enjoy!
