OSX with Google Sync, Not So Great


Like most geeks across the nation yesterday, when word of osx 10.5.3 got around, I backed up ye’ol computer, ran some system tools to clean out system cache and ran the upgrade.  I was pretty excited to try the native Address Book -> Google Contacts sync since I actually do have an iPhone and it just made sense, however I was not that impressed and still am not after hours of recovering from a sync gone horribly wrong.
 

 

 

Once I bought my iPhone last year I spent some serious time going through my contacts and getting them as clean and together as I could.  It makes a big difference by the way they show up on the phone and it’s just nice to know you have all your contacts in order when you’re searching and need to find something.  I always keep a backup of my address’ and after yesterday I’m glad I do.

 

My Google Contacts are sort-of inline, however since it automatically creates a contact for you when you email anyone, it’s not really something I want showing up when I’m looking for a phone number.  In any case, I ticked the checkbox, agreed to the legal jargon and realized that nothing happens until you sync your phone.  I ran the sync and corrected a few conflicts and then started to tear up as my gorgeous and organized list of 100 or so people turned into the confusion of about 480. Most people had two entries, others had up to 8 entries, all because it was an additional email address.  The sync wasn’t even close to a “sync” it was a merger with basic matching. Then if the name happened to match it might combine info.

 

Based on this I decided to give it a shot and thought I could power through it while watching The Andromeda Strain.  Two hours into this process and I was only at H.  It was a nightmare.  So I ran another backup of both, dumped my google contacts, rolled back my Address Book and ran another sync.

 

In the end here’s what I figured out:

 

  • The sync only runs two ways the first time. (annoying)
  • After that in order to manage both, you need to modify your google contacts to control your Address Book, Address Book does not control removing/adding to Google. (annoying)
  • If you wipe your Google Contacts out regardless of if you restore it with valid data, you will loose everyone in your Jabber iChat list and need to re-send auth requests to your people (really annoying).
  • It’s not a sync, it’s a poor attempt at a first try to merge info between the two.

 

My recommendation is don’t even bother and just keep your Address Book up-to-date as often as you can. Apple, I’d love to see this feature enhanced a bit.  Take some notes from SpanningSync on how they sync my iCal with Google Cal flawlessly and in the background. I bought this app without hesitation, and I’d even be happy to pay for this contact sync feature.. if you could actually make it work correctly. 

 


Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time. Mad? You can blame blog spammers.

Powered by WordPress with GimpStyle Theme design by Horacio Bella.
Entries RSS feed. Valid XHTML and CSS.