Unlike Google, Apple doesn’t subscribe to the “Release Early, Iterate Often” model of software and service publishing. Even so, that’s how things have turned out with MobileMe. On Friday, Apple published updates to its MobileMe News pages detailing improvements to the service.

“As part of an update to the MobileMe web applications, you can now access Find My iPhone directly from the MobileMe toolbar.” Doesn’t sound like much (and it isn’t) but it’s a nice touch that makes Find My iPhone easier to access. (Previously the feature was confusingly tucked-away in the MobileMe Settings page.) Also handy is the use of a new URL users can enter into a browser to go straight to the Find My iPhone functionality: me.com/findmyiphone.

The web-based Contacts has been tweaked to resolve a problem that occurred when exporting multiple contacts at once, but by far the most Update Love was lavished upon long-neglected iDisk.

The Apple knowledge base article lists the following updates and improvements to iDisk:

• New Public folder page located at http://public.me.com/membername now matches the look of me.com and supports drag and drop of files between folders (when enabled for visitors)
• Allowing visitors to upload, move, and delete files on your Public folder can now be set from www.me.com/idisk
• An iDisk Public folder password can now be set from www.me.com/idisk
• When logging in to a password-protected Public folder with a web browser, entering the generic username “public” is no longer required
• Adds ability to connect to another member’s Public folder while viewing your own iDisk at me.com

I’m happy to see the addition to iDisk’s web interface of drag and drop functionality, but I have to confess it makes no difference to me at this stage. I simply don’t use the web-based version of iDisk very much if I can help it – it’s too slow, cumbersome and unpredictable. I’ve all too often found myself several-folder-levels deep into iDisk, digging around for a file or three, and suddenly discovered the interface has stopped responding to my clicks. Almost at the same instant I realize things have ground to a halt, the page automatically refreshes itself, dumping me back at my iDisk root folder. That’s frustrating. The language I use in those moments reflects just how frustrating.

In my experience, the poor performance and functional unpredictability of iDisk are the only things about it that are predictable. I don’t know anyone who has had a better experience. Ah well. At least it looks better now.

I’m hardly bowled-over by these updates, but I appreciate they’ve been made. As a paying subscriber to MobileMe, it’s nice to see that Apple remains committed to improving the service. At $99 a year for a single user licence it’s not fabulously expensive, and while a lot of people feel it’s still too pricey, it falls far short of the costs of most hosted Exchange servers. Apple touted MobileMe as “Exchange for the rest of us” and, while a shaky start didn’t do the service any PR favors, I’ve been using MobileMe’s over-the-air sync/push services from Day One with (mostly) satisfaction. Generally speaking, it works.

But I’ve stopped using iDisk because it’s a joke. Stingy storage capacity and horribly slow, flaky performance means I learned long-ago to stop hoping for iDisk to be a dependable cloud-based data storage and sync solution. (Try saying that five times fast!) Today I use DropBox instead of iDisk. And while DropBox is quite ridiculously priced there’s no arguing it’s the no-brainer alternative to iDisk.

But, as they say, “Half of something is better than all of nothing” and I’m glad to see I’m getting some added value for my $99 membership fee. Even if I don’t use it.

Of all the file syncing solutions available, one of the most popular is Dropbox. As one of the solutions that is also cross-platform compatible, many Mac users have embraced Dropbox as a more reliable and robust solution than other alternatives, like MobileMe’s iDisk. Diehard Dropbox users can now rejoice as the Dropbox team is at it once again with the release of a native iPhone app, allowing users to access their dropbox on the go.

For a while, Dropbox has provided users with an iPhone-optimized web site for accessing their contents on the go, but that left many users desiring more. Even with 3G speeds, web browsing through Mobile Safari is not as fast as an application that can read/write to its own resources and sync with a server.

Native App, Native Features

With a native application, the Dropbox team has managed to provide full access to your dropbox contents as well as several interesting iPhone-specific features.

One of these is the ability to take photos or video directly within the application (or use existing content on your device) and have those photos synced to your dropbox automatically. Dropbox then gives users quick access to generate an email with an appropriate link to view the content and share it with others.

The application itself is very usable and functions like most other native apps. As expected, you can delete items from your dropbox just as you would an email (swipe to delete). To prevent users from experiencing lag (as would have happened with a web app), the application caches a copy of the directory structure once you’ve viewed it at least once. (This later is re-synced if changes occur elsewhere.)

Typical application file types that are supported on the iPhone (images, PDFs, Keynotes, Pages documents, Word documents, etc.) are all supported within the application. Word documents even support copy and paste! If you have video files that are of a supported type (QuickTime and the like), they will also stream from your Dropbox. For those who love sharing content, just like the aforementioned photos, a mail icon in the lower left corner allows users to generate emails for any content stored on their dropbox.

Dropbox also supports a “Favorites” feature which allows you to sync your favorite files directly to your iPhone, even further speeding up response time. To favorite a file, simply tap the star icon at the bottom of the screen when viewing the file.

A Few Shortcomings

One little complaint that I have is that Dropbox uses its own picture browser. As such, when I load an image, I’m unable to pinch to zoom like what happens when browsing photos elsewhere on my phone. Support for the accelerometer is present, though, as rotating my phone allows the photo to reorient itself. I’m assuming this is just a bug and something the Dropbox team will work out in a future update.

Another interesting piece that is missing is the fact that Dropbox supports Growl on its desktop version. Though it may be annoying, some users may be wishing for push notifications for any updates to their dropbox. Again, as this is an initial release, this is something that could come in a later update.

Dropbox is a free download from the App Store but does require a valid Dropbox account. Users can sign up for a free Dropbox account (limited to 2GB), and there are paid options for greater storage (50GB or 100GB). As someone who has used Dropbox for over a year now, it’s a very robust solution for file syncing and in my tests, a lot more stable than MobileMe’s iDisk. If you’ve used Dropbox or the new Dropbox app and have thoughts on the matter, tell us your experience!

It was announced alongside iPhone OS 3.0, and its absence has been a conspicuous, if minor, cause for analyst concern. Today, though, Apple finally released its official MobileMe iDisk app for download via the App Store. As was announced previously, the app allows iPhone and iPod touch users to wirelessly share and view files from their MobileMe iDisk.

Note that in order to use MobileMe iDisk, you must have a MobileMe account, although people who sign up for the 60-day free trial can get a full taste of what the app provides without paying the full price of admission.

The interface is clean and simple, as you’d expect from a native iPhone app, and there are some nice extras over and above what similar third-party applications, like OneDisk, offer. For example, when loading larger documents for viewing, the iDisk app provides an estimated time remaining in addition to a progress bar representing the file download. It’s horribly inaccurate, of course, but what estimated time remaining dialog isn’t?

The big draw for frequent iDisk users is the ability, from within the iPhone app, to share any files stored in their MobileMe account with others through email. Clicking the “Share” button brings up an email compose dialog, complete with options to set an expiry date and password for added security. Recipients won’t need to be MobileMe users to access the shared file, either. You can also add the Public Folders of other members for browsing, if you know of any. Finally, you can access all your shared documents at any time and stop sharing with only two clicks.

Still not sure what caused the lengthy delay, but as a MobileMe subscriber, I’m glad this free app has finally arrived.

According to a report in Friday’s Charlotte Observer, North Carolina lawmakers are falling over themselves to entice Apple to build a state-of-the-art server farm in their backyard — specifically, Catawba or Cleveland county. The carrot they’re dangling? In this case, nothing short of a multimillion-dollar tax break.

According to a “state official” with knowledge of the state’s efforts, the server farm would represent a $1 billion investment.

The proposed tax changes aren’t just because North Carolina loves MacBooks and iTunes and quite fancies a bit of an Apple super-presence. Rather, the changes are proposed as a means for improving local economy and standards of living. In detail, companies qualify for the tax break if:

• They relocate to one of North Carolina’s poorest counties
• Provide employees with health insurance
• Meet a minimum wage standard
• Waive all other grants and tax breaks from the state

If the new server farm remains active for over 30 years, Apple would have corporate tax savings of more than $300 million. Why 30 years? The state already agreed to a similar incentive deal with Google, which opened a server farm in North Carolina last year, and expects to run the facility for 30 years, making a tax saving of over $260 million.

Software as Services

Apple has been moving progressively toward the Software as Services (SAS) business model for some years now. The iTunes Store and original .Mac products have long required robust server-infrastructure to support (at least in the case of the iTunes Store) millions of requests every minute.

The introduction of MobileMe saw a bold commitment from Apple to provide essential services to customers, and much of the instability and pain users experienced in the days following MobileMe’s launch were possibly due to an inadequate server backend.

The little-discussed, seldom-used iWork.com web-based collaboration service (currently in beta) will also demand a sturdy and reliable server infrastructure. While customers might tolerate the odd, fleeting instability in their MobileMe Photo gallery, a malfunctioning document collaboration service would be unforgivable.

Worth noting, however, is that Apple’s MobileMe and iWork.com subscriber-bases are tiny when compared with its iTunes customer base. The massive sales success of the iPhone (particularly Apple’s recent share growth in the smartphone market) means millions more hourly connections to the iTunes Store. Think of Apple’s recent download milestones — 1 billion apps, 6 billion songs — and the need for much-expanded server infrastructure becomes clear.

MobileMe, Apple’s online personal information management (PIM) solution, has withstood quite the controversy. While some of the more fortunate subscribers, like myself, have had only positive experiences, others had to wait several months before syncing worked without reporting cryptic errors or silently failing.

My only gripe was the buggy MobileMe web site. Problems were numerous, such as the page randomly refreshing in the middle of adding a calendar event. Obviously this wasn’t disastrous on its own, but annoying tics add up, and eventually push people to look for alternatives.

Recently, I discovered an offering from Google that challenged the PIM synchronization features of MobileMe and competitors like Microsoft Exchange (what you unfortunately probably use at the office). This new service, Google Sync, offers the same seamless integration between your computer and mobile phone. It’s fast, free, and, most importantly, it works.

Setting it up, as you will soon find out, can be tricky, and takes time, patience, and an understanding of two-way syncing. Unless, that is, you’re starting from a blank slate with no contacts or calendars. However, I assume you already have a digital life, so I will attempt to coach you through transferring your information to Google first. I’m not going to retype all of Google’s own instructions. Instead, I’ll outline shortcuts around the sticky issues I encountered while setting up Sync. Google doesn’t organize its instruction processes well, so hopefully this will save you some time and a few headaches.

Requirements:

• Google account
• Contacts organized in Address Book
• Calendars organized in iCal
• You do not use an Exchange account on your iPhone

Exporting your Address Book Contacts to Google

1. I used a Google-recommended application called A to G to export my contacts as a large CSV file, and then import them into Google Contacts. You can get A to G here.
2. After you created the CSV file on your desktop, go to your Google Contacts page:
   https://google.com/contacts
   Note: For Google Apps users go here:
   https://mail.google.com/a/[domain name]/#contacts
3. Click on “Import”, choose the CSV file on your hard drive, and boom, your contacts are now in Google.

Exporting your iCal calendars to Google

1. Unfortunately, you have to export your iCal calendars one at a time. You can do this by clicking once on a calendar in the CALENDARS area, and selecting File -> Export.



2. Then, go to Google Calendar:
   https://www.google.com/calendar/
   Note: For Google Apps users go here:
   https://www.google.com/calendar/hosted/[domain name]/
3. Settings -> Calendars -> Import Calendar
   
4. Click “Choose File” to select the exported calendar on your hard drive. Choose which Google Calendar you want to import the information into. I recommend manually creating calendars in Google Calendar with the same names as your iCal calendars. Then, import the iCal files into their corresponding Google calendars. Repeat for each file you exported from iCal. Your calendars are now on Google.

Let’s recap. Your current contacts and calendars are now on Google. However, that information will never change unless you set up synchronization on your iPhone and Mac(s).

Configuring Google Sync

Warning: This is where you begin changing settings. If you’re a MobileMe user, all of your data is safe with Apple and everything you do here is completely reversible.

It’s easy to temporarily disable MobileMe while you set up Google Sync. Go to Settings -> Mail, Contacts, Calendars, select your MobileMe account from the Accounts list. Switch Contacts and Calendars to their OFF positions. If, in the end, you don’t want to use Google Sync, you can remove the Google Sync account you are about to set up, and switch your MobileMe Contacts and Calendars to their ON positions.

If you sync your Address Book and iCal information via iTunes, you should deselect those options in iTunes and resync your iPhone. The goal here is to clear out your contacts and calendar information on your phone. Again, if you decide to not use Google Sync, you can remove your Google information, select the contacts and calendars checkboxes in iTunes, and sync your iPhone with your computer once more to restore your data.

Now you’re ready to get your iPhone syncing data from Google. Follow these instructions about setting up your iPhone to get that working.

Important Google Apps note #1:
Apps users have to enable Google Sync in your dashboard, which can be done following these instructions.

Important note #2:
If you use more than one calendar, you have to configure that on the iPhone, otherwise only one will appear in the phone’s calendar app. After you’re done with the “Setting up your iPhone” section, go to m.google.com on your iPhone and select Sync. If you’re a Google Apps user, scroll to the bottom to select the “Google Apps User?” link. After logging in you can select which calendars you want to sync to the iPhone (maximum is five currently).

Now, any changes you make in Google Contacts or Google Calendar will be reflected on your iPhone. Also, any changes you make to your iPhone’s contacts or calendar information will be reflected on Google’s corresponding sites. Do you use IMAP for your Gmail account? Then consider yourself 100 percent synced.

If you’re satisfied with using Google’s sites and your iPhone to manage your information, then you’re done. However, if you want your current information to appear in iCal and Address Book, then you have a few more steps:

1. Importing your Google Contacts into Address Book
   This requires setting up built-in Address Book preferences.
2. Importing your Google Calendars into iCal
   This uses software called Collaboration.

Conclusion

Congratulations on making it this far. Hopefully, you’ve successfully set up Google Contacts and Google Calendar with your existing information, and both your iPhone and Mac(s) are now synchronized with Google. You can now make changes to or add contacts and events from any computer or your iPhone, and all without spending a dime. Please leave a comment below if you have any questions!

No wonder this went unnoticed by most people. In the grand history of non-newsworthy news, this is right up there.

Two days ago, Apple updated their MobileMe News page with the announcement of 24/7 Live Chat support. If you have a problem with MobileMe, and the topics on the main support pages don’t help, you can hit the “Chat now” button to start a real-time chat session with a MobileMe expert.

I can’t say for certain, but I reckon this is how most of those discussions will play out:

Customer: My Contacts have stopped syncing with my iPhone.

Support Agent: OK, I’ll try to help you with that. There’s no reported problem with the MobileMe service. I need to check your iPhone settings…

[Time passes as settings are checked and rechecked.]

Support Agent: That should correct the issue.

Customer: (Pause) Yeah, my contacts are still not syncing.

Support Agent: You just need to give it a little more time to catch up.

Customer: How much more time?

Support Agent: (Cheerful) Not long!

[24 hours later]

Customer: My Contacts have stopped syncing with my iPhone.

Support Agent: OK, I’ll try to help you with that. There’s no reported problem with the MobileMe service. I need to check your iPhone settings…

OK, all joking aside, I’ve used MobileMe since its first difficult days, and it’s far better now. Apple has continued to improve the service to the point where outages are few and far between and syncing is (usually) a smooth and hassle-free experience. You know…it just works…

…except when it doesn’t. And when it doesn’t work, in my experience at least, it’s for absolutely no good reason whatsoever. In fact, as I write this, I’m about four weeks into a period of “slow” email synchronicity; by that, I mean that my Calendar and Contacts tend to sync between my devices almost instantaneously. Email once did that, too — but not now. Now, I have to tell my iPhone’s Mail app to refresh. But, nothing has changed. This is just one of those MobileMe oddities that tends to come and go over time.

Still, adding this kind of real-live-person-at-the-end-of-a-phone support to MobileMe speaks volumes about Apple’s confidence in the service, and how seriously they’re taking it. And that’s great news for crazies like me who long ago stumped-up the green and paid for MobileMe. Of course, I can’t live without it now.

Maybe I should try calling to test the accuracy of my little imagined exchange?

It seems all but confirmed by Apple that video capabilities will be present with the next-generation iPhone. It may be in a few months. It may be next year. But what I’m really curious to know is what will video recording on the iPhone look like? There are a wide range of possibilities and I have a few theories, so let’s take a look.

Record now, upload later

This is the most boring of the possibilities. iPhone users will record videos, watch them on the iPhone, and eventually sync with a computer to upload them. In this case they will probably appear in the Movies section of iTunes on your computer where they can be exported to iMovie or uploaded to YouTube directly. I’m limiting this scenario to YouTube because that functionality already exists in iMovie.

This will be a closed system. Third-party applications on the iPhone will not have access to videos. The only way to upload the videos to the Internet is through syncing with a computer.

Record now, upload through the camera app

This is another closed system. The difference is iPhone users will be able to record videos and immediately upload them to the Internet through the camera app. Possible services include:

• YouTube — Likely because it’s an established feature in iMovie.
• Flickr (with a maximum length of 90 seconds) — The latest version of iPhoto allows Flickr photo uploads, so this may be an expansion of that relationship.
• Facebook — Likely because it’s another new photo upload service in iPhoto. A video agreement between Facebook and Apple could significantly increase the number of video uploads to Facebook.
• MobileMe — Perhaps Apple will introduce a basic video upload service for MobileMe subscribers. Anyone can view the videos, but only subscribers can upload to the service.

This will most likely require a Wi-Fi connection since AT&T’s 3G bandwidth is so limited.

Record now, upload from any application

Videos will be able to upload through any third-party application on the iPhone. For example, Facebook’s iPhone application will have a new button for recording video. Flickr apps, like Mobile Fotos, will also have this new button. Now imagine your favorite Twitter app (Tweetie!) adding a video record button. The recorded video will automatically upload to a video service, and a tweet will be generated with a link to the video. Cool!

Sadly, this will still require a Wi-Fi connection.

Record now, upload any way you want

Upload from any application. Upload with any connection speed…except Edge. This is obviously the most “open” format, but it seems it would fight against Apple’s desire to control the details.

What do you think? If and when video comes to the iPhone, what do you think the functionality will be like?

After a short period of downtime in the early hours of the morning, MobileMe has emerged with a slight refresh to the interface, numerous speed improvements, and changes to the interface for the Mail, Calendar and Contact apps.

The login page has also undergone a minor re-design, aiming to provide more information and delegating less space to the display of the various application icons. The changes will be well-received, particularly to regular users of the online applications.

Mail

A few changes to the Mail app center around the composition of new messages. Notably:

• The compose window address selector shows all email addresses for contacts, not just home and work addresses.
• Newly added email addresses to Contacts appear in the compose window selector without having to log out and log in.

These are both welcome improvements, fixing oversights which have been niggling users since the launch of the service. However, rather than being impressive new features, these are simply adjustments to functionality which should really have been in place at the outset.

In addition to composition changes, the fix brings improved printing of HTML formatted messages.

Contacts

The MobileMe contacts app is fairly simple, doing its job in an effective and straightforward way. As with the Mail alterations, these are simple fixes focusing on improved results when searching with both first and last names and improved Japanese name ordering.

In addition, vCard export now supports all text fields rather than the limited previous selection — good for those wanting to move away from MobileMe!

Calendar

The Calendar application has undergone the most notable overhaul, with speed improvements across the board. Users now benefit from a faster start time when accessing the Calendar for the first time along with much faster performance when switching between day/week/month views. Speed has occasionally been a limiting factor for me when using the online calendar, and I may well be more tempted to view it more often now.

A few changes to view settings have also been integrated, with the calendar now retaining your last view settings, such as day, week, or month view, as well as whether you’ve set the To Do panel to show or hide. This is great news for regular users, who won’t need to re-set their display preferences every time they log in.

Login Page Changes

The original MobileMe login page received a great deal of acclaim as an attractive interface that gave a good overview of the functionality available. Apple has managed to implement a re-design which retains these original positive aspects, also integrating a brief written overview of MobileMe’s features. It looks good to me!

A full list of changes can be seen in the accompanying Apple support document.

Is it Enough?

MobileMe has come under fire from critics since its launch, on account of the service speed, synchronization not working as initially advertised, and patchy periods of downtime. Reliability has undoubtedly improved dramatically in recent months, but are the recent changes enough to create a better impression of the service overall?

Personally, I’ve always found the online applications at me.com to be satisfactory. The main sticking point has been the sometimes-questionable synchronization between Mac, Me.com and my iPhone. I must admit that I’ve found this to have improved in recent months and my level of praise for the service is gradually increasing. Rarely do I open my iPhone to find that I’m missing a contact or appointment previously added on my laptop.

I’d be very interested to hear your opinion on whether the recent interface and speed changes make any difference to you. Is your opinion of MobileMe being affected by the minor issues you have with usability, or the fact that it’s lacking major features which haven’t yet been implemented?

One of the things demoed by Phil Schiller when MobileMe was introduced was the ability to easily share files on your iDisk with others. The idea was that you’d select a file on the iDisk, choose to share it, and then add password protection and/or an expiration date for the link.

Then you’d key in the email address(es) of those you want to share the file with, and they’d get an email with a download link. 

It all looked pretty slick, but there was just one little thing wrong: When MobileMe went live, this feature was MIA. 

Well, not any more.

I tested the feature (with password) and it worked as advertised. One thing you’ll notice is that there’s a new “folder” listed on your iDisk in MobileMe. It’s called Shared Files, and is of course empty at first, but immediately contains a reference to any files you share.

Keep in mind you can only select one file to Share at a time. If you have multiple files you’d like to share, to avoid sending links for each one I suggest the following:

1. Select all the files. 
2. From the Actions menu (Gear icon), select Compress.
3. A file called Archive will be created on the iDisk. 
4. Now just Share the Archive file as usual. 

When the user downloads Archive (on the Mac, at least), it’s automatically expanded into the original files. 

I think this is a pretty slick solution for sharing a few files with someone as opposed to trying to have them navigate your Public folder. Especially if the intended recipient is not technically savvy. Getting an email with a download link is about as simple as it gets.

This might just be incredibly coincidental timing, but Apple is announcing that they’ve finally brought the Windows side of their MobileMe personal data syncing service up to snuff, only shortly after it’s come to light that Microsoft in working on their own similar service, currently dubbed “My Phone.” Either way, Windows users who are also MobileMe subscribers (like myself, via BootCamp and netbook) should be well pleased with the new feature additions.

The improvements were made to MobileMe’s syncing service for Outlook, which until now was pretty dismal, and not very Push-y at all. In fact, I never actually considered Windows syncing to be a big part of my MobileMe purchase, and rarely used it when running Windows, preferring to just check my email, calendar, etc. via the web interface or on my iPhone.

Apple now promises that changes you make to your Outlook calendar and/or contacts list will automatically update the information stored on MobileMe, and vice versa. To get the new auto-syncing features working, all you have to do is make sure you are running iTunes 8.0.2 and have downloaded and installed the latest update for MobileMe Control Panel, version 1.3. Once that’s done, you just have to set the “Sync With MobileMe” option to “Automatically.”

It’s something the service should have launched with, honestly, if they really wanted to appeal to the Windows market. Personally, I suspect that most, if not all, Windows users of MobileMe are also OS X users. I find it highly unlikely that Window-only people would buy an Apple-branded personal data syncing solution. If you’re out there, speak up and prove me wrong!

One of the perplexing limitations about MobileMe is its inability to sync birthdays in iCal to the iPhone and iPod touch. As you may already know, iCal can take birthdays from Address Book and add them into a special “Birthdays” calendar, which is really a subscription calendar.

But while the latest updates to MobileMe now allow for the syncing of subscription calendars from your Mac to MobileMe, their events are not pushed to iPhone and iPod touch. Apple’s explanation is this:

When syncing subscribed calendars to MobileMe, the calendar information and settings for the calendar is synced, but all of the downloaded events are not. This is done to help streamline the syncing process with MobileMe, as it prevents syncing redundant information to other computers with an Internet connection.

Duh.

To get around this limitation, you can disable over-the-air syncing, and sync Calendar events via iTunes instead. But that defeats the purpose of paying for MobileMe’s push abilities. The other way is to export the Birthdays calendar that iCal has created and re-import it back into iCal as local calendar events. These birthdays and anniversary events will then be synced with MobileMe and, subsequently, pushed to the iPhone Calendar app. The problem is, you will have to do that every time you add a birthday to a contact in the Address Book.

Well, I’m happy to tell you that there is finally a solution that requires little to no effort on your part.

Dates to iCal 2 is a small application for OS X Leopard that reads birthdays and anniversaries from Address Book and writes them as regular calendar events into iCal. It does this automatically in the background; set it once and forget about it.

In setting up Dates to iCal 2, you can customize in various ways how it should create events.

You can choose to add either birthdays or anniversaries, or both, and specify only a certain group of contacts.

You can customize the way event titles will be written, such as adding the age of a contact to his or her birthday event. To me, this feature alone is worth the price of the application.

And one very powerful aspect of Dates to iCal 2 is the many ways it can remind you of upcoming birthdays and anniversaries. You can set up to five alarms for an event, useful if you want, say, to be reminded each of the five days leading up to a birthday or anniversary. It can even send a reminder email to any of the email addresses in the Me card in your Mac.

Dates to iCal 2 costs £3 (approximately USD $4.50) for a single license. Until Apple improves MobileMe, I highly recommend this well-designed and useful gem.

Jealous of MobileMe users but not willing to part with $100 and/or wary of its seemingly persistent problems? Have no fear, Google’s here.

Google Sync Beta, that is, which is now available for the iPhone (and Windows Mobile, but c’mon, honestly). With it, you can sync your Google Calendar and your Gmail Contacts over the air, and what’s more, changes on either side are automatically pushed. I know I’m sort of regretting that MobileMe subscription right about now, considering I never use the Photos, iDisk, or Bookmarks features anyways, although push Mail syncing is not yet supported.

Setting up Google Sync Beta on your iPhone is easy, but be forewarned: doing so will delete your existing iPhone contacts and calendar data, so don’t do it unless you have that information safely stored somewhere else. And if you’re currently using MobileMe, disable that first, or you’ll run the risk of pushing your deleted contacts/calendars to your other devices.

Once you’ve safely backed everything up, activating the service is easy. There’s no app to install, and nothing to activate on the web-based side of things. Google Beta Sync uses Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync protocol, so you’ll basically be setting up a new Exchange account via the “Add Account…” feature in the “Mail, Contacts, Calendars” settings submenu. Google has full instructions on their official help page.

I set this up on my iPod touch, once I’d safely deleted my MobileMe account there, and it worked without a hitch. Since my Gmail account is long neglected, and only briefly used in the first place, I only had about three contacts, but their information was there. My calendar was actually still set up from when I’d used it for work, so it had all the recurring events accounted for. Test events and contacts that I created on either side were automatically synced, so the service does indeed behave as advertised.

Probably too early to say, but if Google builds this out a little more, and manages to add support for any of its other web services, I’d say MobileMe has good reason to shake in its proverbial boots.

This past weekend, Ed Oswald of Technologizer published a piece about how Apple seems to have stolen his contacts as if they owned them. The gist of the article is that he canceled his MobileMe account — without taking any actions to save his data beforehand — and thinks it’s Apple’s fault that the contacts left stranded on his iPhone cannot be somehow “saved,” even though he killed the very method he was using to maintain them. 

I disagree this is Apple’s fault, and portions of his own piece seem to support my argument. For example, we get these statements — mentioned rather matter-of-factly — as if they should have no bearing on the issue:

This means that if you leave [MobileMe] for whatever reason, your synced information is as good as gone if you don’t have it locally.

Well, of course you would need it locally. Why would you still have access to Apple’s servers after leaving their service?

It won’t sync with iTunes (I wondered why new appointments and contacts suddenly weren’t getting synced anymore), 

Translation: I noticed there was a problem, but did nothing to analyze it or connect the dots. 

and there’s no way to go back to just syncing sans MobileMe.

He’s upset he can’t sync with MobileMe servers without MobileMe? Did he really just say that? In iTunes it’s trivial to go back to syncing local data, but we’ve already established he doesn’t have any. How is this Apple’s fault? 

Here’s a scenario to consider…

FIRST: A user, let’s call him “Bob,” calls me up and says “Tom, will you please host my contacts on your server for me? I’ll just hit up your server for additions, deletions, etc.?” My reply to this is “Sure, let’s do it.” We agree, and it’s a done deal. 

At this point, who owns Bob’s contacts? Like Mr. Oswald, I believe that Bob does. I also believe just as strongly that having his data on an “outside” server modifies the relationship Bob has with it. In other words, adding a third party to the mix changes the rules in a manner Bob must realize, and is obligated to act accordingly. As just one example, Bob must not be surprised that he cannot modify his data if my server is down; he must wait until I get the server back up. 

SECOND: Bob calls me up after a few months and says, “Thanks, Tom, but I’m not going to hit up your server anymore, I no longer want to use that method for my data.” My reply to this is “OK by me.” 

At this point I’m done with Bob; what’s my obligation with the copy of his data I possess? Well, I shouldn’t use it, or sell it, or spam it, etc. But at the same time I sure as heck am under no obligation to hang onto it, either. Why should I waste my server’s disk space on a client no longer using my service?

THIRD: Let’s forget any speculation that there may be telltale signs Bob is ignoring that something is amiss with his data, and just skip to the part where he calls me a month after #2 and says “Tom, um, I need my data just one more time.” My reply to this is “Huh?” 

I think you can see where we go from here. 

I’m sorry that Mr. Oswald lost his contacts. Really, I am. But blaming Apple is pointless. In iTunes it’s pretty clear when you use MobileMe syncing that there’s no “local” sync. The fact that he had issues after killing the service confirmed this, yet he did nothing. 

Finally, and to the heart of Mr. Oswald’s complaint, if I ever owned Bob’s data you could claim I did not take proper steps when the relationship was ended (at which time presumably I no longer owned it). In other words, when the responsibility of ownership passed back to Bob from me, I should have had to “hand off” the data back to him. But it’s the very fact that I never owned the data to begin with that makes this claim silly. Bob is (and always was) shepherding the data, it’s his even when it’s on my server. 

I think Mr. Oswald should have published a mea culpa, and instructed others how to avoid the same fate. If I were going to kill my MobileMe account this is what I would do: 

1. Export my contacts and calendars using Export from the Address Book and iCal File menus.
2. Go into MobileMe control panel and kill contact and calendar syncing. Do the same on my iPhone. 
3. Go into iTunes and set contacts and calendars to sync from my Mac (i.e., locally).
4. Import the exported files from step 1. 

I would absolutely do the above before killing the MobileMe account, so I could ensure it all works. When I was satisfied everything is OK, then I could safely kill my account. 

Keep in mind the above only discusses contacts/calendars because that was Mr. Oswald’s complaint. In my case, however, I also sync primary data on my iDisk, bookmarks, email, and other data as well. I would follow a similar process to the above for all of it, doing it all before killing the MobileMe account.

We’re not talking about a lot of work here, folks. More importantly, it’s the prudent thing to do because, well, I own this data; who else should I expect to do it?

The MobileMe trial began to seem like it was going to go on forever, since Apple kept tacking on more time to make up for having released a half-baked service to begin with. Sadly, not so. My own trial term recently came to an end, but by the time it did, I’d become fairly dependent on the service, so I quietly acquiesced while Apple charged my credit card for the full subscription.

Some others did not go so quietly, and promptly canceled their account rather than be caught paying. The result? All of their data not only no longer synced, it no longer existed. Part of the downfall of storing info in the cloud is that when you stop paying for said cloud, it has a very short memory. What had happened was that users who’d forgotten to disable sync in their devices’ settings had indeed synced. With their information gone from the MobileMe servers, what replaced it was blank information. Long story short, sync with nothing and you end up with nothing.

It looks like the only way to recover the data is to pay for a full year’s subscription, and then cancel said subscription. Alternatively, you can just remember to turn off MobileMe syncing before canceling your account, if you haven’t already done so.

I’m conflicted as to who’s to blame here, but I’d say Apple should probably have made people more aware that this sort of thing might happen if they didn’t continue their MobileMe subscription or at least disabled the ability to sync to the account. A perfect time to do so would’ve been in those reminder emails they send out shortly before your trial subscription runs out. As a cautionary tale, the whole mess is a good reminder that the cloud is not yet the be all and end all of computing.

A little while ago, Google released a free iCal-to-Google Calendar sync tool called Calabaration. I don’t believe that Calabaration works very well, given how it generates a new calendar group within iCal and has limitations on how the Google Calendar can then sync to MobileMe. So I reached out to BusyMac, the makers of BusySync, and Spanning Sync, makers of the Spanning Sync application, to see if they wouldn’t mind me reviewing their products. Both companies happily agreed. Here’s what I learned:

Commonalities

Each one:

• Installs as a preference pane in the System Preferences.
• Is very easy to configure.
• Has fantastic support. Also, hats off to both developers for answering so many of my questions and for helping me to diagnose some key problems with sync services.
• Doesn’t appear to have any tangible impact on system performance.
• Works with MobileMe, enabling you to view/edit your Google Calendar within iCal, on the MobileMe web site and via an iPhone.
• Has excellent instructional videos, tutorials and documentation.
• Let’s you perform a reset of the application so that you can start over with clean settings.
• Has exceptional logging so that if you do come across a problem, it is easy for the developer to help resolve it.

Differences

• BusySync’s primary function is to enable direct editing of iCal calendars in small business environments. The Google Calendar sync feature is just another bonus to the overall package.
• SpanningSync not only syncs with Google Calendar, it also Syncs with Gmail Contacts. Granted, if you have an iPhone, Apple’s Address Book also lets you sync your contacts with Gmail. The key difference here is that SpanningSync also syncs the contact photo.
• Pricing. BusySync has a base price + potential upgrade price model. Spanning Sync has a subscription model or an optional flat-fee price.

BusySync – Details

Once you install BusySync, you can configure it via the preference pane. If you are running BusySync as a single user, the only real benefit is syncing your local iCal calendar with Google Calendar.

However, if you are in a multi-user environment, this is where BusySync really shines. In the Bookspan household, we have two Macs and using BusySync solves a key problem: With the three of us, we have many schedules to maintain. Here’s an example:

Using BusySync enables my wife to directly edit my calendar and vice versa. And we both can sync our updated calendars to MobileMe, enabling us to see the calendar info on our iPhones.

We can also make edits offline and BusySync will automatically update the other user’s calendar once the computer is online again. This is also handy, as my wife doesn’t leave her MacBook running all day.

Lastly, setting up Google Sync is pretty trivial. You just provide your Google credentials, specify which calendars you want to sync and BusySync does the rest. Here is an example:

Of course, no software is perfect. It would be great if BusySync supported the ability to sync iCal ToDos. BusySync also can’t sync meeting attendees from iCal to Google Calendar. However, BusySync will sync alarms and meeting attendees from Google Calendar back to iCal.

Spanning Sync – Details

After you install Spanning Sync, you can also configure it via a preference pane. Like BusySync, setting up Google Calendar Sync is very easy. Once you provide your Google credentials, you then specify which calendars and contacts you want to sync and Spanning Sync does the rest. Here is an example:

If you really care about how your Address Book Contacts sync with Google, then Spanning Sync is the tool to have. Using the product, you can specify which contact groups you want to sync, or all contacts. Further, Spanning Sync is intelligent in the way it handles name formatting between Address Book and Google:

The developers are trying to figure out a way to enable Address Book Group support when syncing. If they can achieve this, it would be a minor miracle, as syncing between any Sync Services enabled application does not support this (for example, Microsoft Entourage and Address Book).

During my testing of Spanning Sync, the developer released a software update that improved memory usage by 4 times! As an added bonus, syncing performance was also significantly improved.

Finally, just like BusySync, the Spanning Sync application cannot sync iCal ToDos. Further, Spanning Sync can’t sync meeting attendees from iCal to Google Calendar. However, also like BusySync, the Spanning Sync application will sync meeting attendees and alarms from Google Calendar back to iCal.

Conclusion and Recommendation

Both of these products are solid applications that can easily meet your needs. If you are looking for more capability than what Google provides with their CalDAV sync tool Calabaration, then you can’t loose with either BusySync or Spanning Sync.

In order to make BusySync most effective, you’ll need at least two licenses which will run you about $50. This is not inexpensive, although when you look at the value, it’s pretty reasonable. Further, the Developer has not charged for an upgrade in the history of the product.

By comparison, Spanning Sync is a $25/year subscription (which includes all upgrades per year) or you can pay for an unlimited license for a total of $65. I personally am not a fan of annuities, so if you plan to buy Spanning Sync, I recommend the unlimited license. Interestingly enough, Spanning Sync recently introduced a new incentive pricing program. They call it Save 5 + Make 5 — essentially each referral you make saves your friend $5 and you receive a $5 bonus. Not bad.

In the Bookspan household, we have chosen BusySync because of the additional iCal functionality. However, that is not a negative toward Spanning Sync. In fact, if my wife and I didn’t need to edit each other’s calendars, then Spanning Sync would be preferred due to its ability to sync Address Book contacts with GMail Contacts (with the added bonus of syncing photos, too).

Apple’s documentation for changes in the recent 10.5.6 system update includes a line of interest to MobileMe users on the Mac:

Contacts, calendars, and bookmarks on a Mac automatically sync within a minute of the change being made on the computer, another device, or the web at me.com.

So we now have “push” for those items on the desktop, as we’ve always had on the Web and the iPhone. That’s good news.

However, the MobileMe changes go deeper than that. Apple didn’t just change Contacts, Calendars and Bookmarks to “push” distribution (for Macs only), they changed the sync times for all items in the MobileMe control panel, and also made changes to the MobileMe service itself. Let’s take a look…

Changes to the Mac

I outlined how MobileMe synced in an earlier article. What it boiled down to was that for Leopard users all items in the MobileMe control panel would sync up to every 15 minutes when using the “Automatically” setting. This is described in Apple support doc 307135 (below quote is from a cached copy):

When Automatically is selected in the MobileMe (.Mac) System Preference or Control Panel, the expected behavior is as follows, depending on where the change of your data is occurring.

Changes made on your computer

Mac OS X 10.5.4: Changes made on your computer will sync to MobileMe every 15 minutes

Pretty simple stuff. Every 15 minutes it syncs your changes.

But with 10.5.6 it’s all different, and the support doc has been updated. The differences are interesting, to say the least:

When “Automatically” is selected in the MobileMe pane (Mac) or Control Panel (Windows), the expected behavior (see note 1) is as follows:

• Mac OS X 10.5.6:
  • Contacts, calendars, and bookmarks sync automatically (generally within a minute of the change being made on the computer, another device, or on the web at me.com). (See note 2.)
  • Mail Notes and third-party application data (such as Entourage Notes, Transmit Favorites, and so forth)sync up to MobileMe every hour, and automatically sync down to another Mac with Mac OS X 10.5.6 (usually within a minute).
  • Dashboard Widgets, Dock Items, Keychains, Mail Accounts, Mail Rules, and Preferences sync up to MobileMe every eight hours, and automatically sync down to another Mac with Mac OS X 10.5.6 (usually within a minute).

That’s quite a change! I can’t help but wonder if the change to Widgets, the Dock, etc. are a trade-off for pushing Contacts and others. In other words, the greater load on MobileMe servers for pushing the most common elements is in part tempered by no longer checking for the other stuff every 15 minutes.

Why eight hours? Your guess is as good as mine. Seems to me that’s a bit of a jump from 15 minutes. However, I don’t change those items very often — and I suspect most users don’t either — so Apple probably feels they only need to check them three times a day. I think in the future, when I do change them I’ll just force a sync myself.

If the less frequent check for those items are a trade-off for push contacts, calendars, and bookmarks, then I approve. Keep in mind only the sync up to MobileMe has changed. The sync down to other Macs remains as “generally within a minute.”

Changes to MobileMe

There’s another interesting revelation in the support doc. It has a new footnote:

The intervals for automatic and hourly syncing in Mac OS X 10.5.6 or later are determined by a setting on MobileMe servers. If this interval setting is adjusted in the future, this article will be updated to reflect those changes.

This may have always been the case, but when everything was 15 minutes it didn’t seem to matter much. With the new rules, I suspect Apple can modify and tweak syncing times to help balance the load and maintain good performance.

Apple also updated the MobileMe Service Updates document. Aside from mentioning the push changes above, there are other interesting changes. My favorite one is this:

Resolved an issue that could cause some contacts to temporarily disappear on iPhone or iPod touch when syncing with MobileMe over an intermittent network connection; iPhone Software 2.2 is required to take full advantage of this

I’ve had this happen to me twice, and I must say it’s a bit disconcerting to have your contacts “disappear.” They are not really gone, they just appear to be. To get around it I turned off syncing, and then back on. I’m glad this one is fixed, because it’s probably caused panic in more than one user.

There were other changes to the MobileMe service as well, mostly revolving around improved syncing and reliability.

To Sum Up

Clearly, today was a good day for MobileMe users. When the MobileMe rollout turned out to be a disaster, and Apple did the right thing by doling out months of free usage, Steve Jobs claimed they were going to work to make it a service Apple would be proud of by the end of the year. With today’s updates perhaps they’ve made that goal.

Great work Apple, I appreciate it. Pat yourself on the back and take a break. OK, break’s over. Now that MobileMe is where it should have been at service launch, you can begin improving it for next year.

Recently MacLife magazine reviewed Apple’s MobileMe service. My problem with the review is that it lists something as a negative that continues to spread misinformation: 

Doesn’t “push” your email instantly, rather every 15 minutes.

This is wrong. In this article I’ll touch on what gets synced with MobileMe, when it occurs, and why I’m happy with it. 

First, keep in mind the following about MobileMe:

• Many think MMe is just email, contacts, and calendars, but that underrates the service. I’ll discuss everything MMe can sync.
• The sync process depends on what is syncing, and where the update was made. 
• Updates can be made on as many as three different “device types.” I’ll refer to them as the Web, which means you’re logged into www.me.com, the iPhone, and the Desktop, which means a desktop computer.
• While the iPhone and desktop can have their sync/push configured, the web always syncs/pushes. 

Calendars and Contacts

I’m assuming you have Push enabled on your iPhone, and ‘Automatically’ enabled on the desktop. 

Any change made on the iPhone or Web will be pushed to all three devices. In other words, iPhone and Web are “true” push, in that the change is propagated immediately everywhere.

However, a change made on Desktop is not pushed immediately, but rather takes as long as 15 minutes to be sent. This is because the ‘Automatically’ setting in sync is actually on a 15-minute timer. Obviously, this is not true push, and it’s what Apple clarified after the MobileMe launch, stating that they will no longer use the word “push” unless and until they change this. Keep in mind this doesn’t change that iPhone and Web do push, only Desktop does not. 

To sum up, iPhone and Web both send and receive calendar and contact data via true push. Desktop receives data via push, but sends only at regular intervals up to 15 minutes. 

Mail

Mail works differently than Contacts and Calendars. This is because Desktop has its own setting for checking Mail (i.e., it does not use the ‘Automatically’ setting above). 

For iPhone and Web, an email sent to you is received instantly. Again, this is a true push. For Desktop, email will be received at the interval set for checking (as often as one minute). So Desktop does not receive via true push, though checking every minute is pretty close. 

To sum up, iPhone and Web send and receive mail data via true push. Desktop sends mail immediately, but otherwise receives at the interval set in the Mail app.

Bookmarks, Widgets, Dock items, Keychains, Mail Accounts, Mail Rules and Sigs, Notes, and Preferences

These are the remaining items on the Sync tab in MobileMe System Preferences. While most of these don’t apply to iPhone or Web, those that do (such as Bookmarks) are pushed when updated.

On Desktop, however, just like Calendars and Contacts, these are not pushed; an update takes up to 15 minutes to get sent. Many of these (such as Mail Rules) only apply if you have multiple Macs, so a change on one Mac may take 15 minutes to reach another. 

To sum up, once again we see that iPhone and Web operate via push, whereas Desktop will receive updates via push, but send at 15 minute intervals. 

iDisk

Finally, we come to the last sync option within MobileMe. The biggest difference with iDisk syncing compared to the others is that it’s not based on time. In fact, there are only two options for syncing your iDisk, either you do it manually, or automatically.

In iDisk, ‘Automatically’ works as you would expect it to. Instead of waiting up to 15 minutes, it notes a change and triggers accordingly. This seems to be true no matter where the change is made. How quickly the change is propagated depends on your connection speed and the size of the file(s) changed, but generally speaking the sync starts quickly. 

To sum up, if set to update automatically iDisk syncs whenever changes are made to it. 

Why I’m staying with MobileMe

With my iPhone set to push, my desktop Mail set to check every minute, and MobileMe and iDisk syncing set to  ’Automatically’, I don’t worry about any of the above. Basically, it just works.

It’s true that when I enter contact or calendar data on the desktop it won’t hit the iPhone or Web for up to 15 minutes, but since I’m actually at the desktop (obviously) when that occurs I’ve never been bothered by the wait. Same is true for any Mac-to-Mac change; if I’m at a Mac and change a Mail Rule, I’m not concerned it may not hit the other Mac for 15 minutes. 

Email is even less of an issue. It’s not pushed, but I get it within 60 seconds. 

Sure, I’d like Apple to make Mail, Address Book and iCal push clients — and wouldn’t mind a few features that Exchange has – but the above issues are pretty trivial. How often do you make, say, a contact change on the desktop and then have to see it on another device within 15 minutes? How often will waiting 60 seconds for emails at your desk be an issue?

While I had numerous gripes with the initial rollout, thought there were too many early bugs, and think the web interface still needs work, I love MobileMe now. I have three Macs, one PC, two iPhones, and an iPod touch syncing with the service on various levels. It’s working great.

I have zero interest in potential alternatives that must be assembled from disparate third-party software and services. Seems to me that’s just the software equivalent of cobbling together your own PC instead of simply buying one. I like it all under one umbrella, and consider $8 a month (even less through Amazon) very reasonable for what I’m getting. Syncing works great for me, it’s simple to configure, and the non-push items are just not an issue in the real world.

I have been using MobileMe, and its previous incarnation DotMac, for just over two years. Everyone has talked about the great features it has as well as some of the near-misses. However, I haven’t seen anyone point out a major flaw in MobileMe — how it does not compare to Enterprise class offerings.

With MobileMe, we can sync our calendars, contacts and email. We have a version of “push” which really only provides instantaneous email, not calendars or contacts. Even Apple has gone on record to state what is “push” and what is not. A colleague here on TAB also wrote about what we should have expected for push when MobileMe was released, as compared to what we received.

There are three main Enterprise server synchronization tools for calendaring, contacts, email, notes and tasks in the market.

• Microsoft Exchange (or more specifically, Exchange ActiveSync)
• Good Mobile Messaging
• Blackberry Enterprise Server

Each of these services directly connects to Microsoft Exchange, Outlook, Outlook Web Access and Windows Mobile Devices/Blackberrys. If you have used any of these enterprise class services, you know what true “push” means (for calendars, contacts, email, notes and tasks).

One of the big misses that Apple left out of MobileMe is the ability to accept meeting invites from other users when not using a Mac. This especially causes problems when using the iPhone or the MobileMe web calendar.

In order to complete this meeting circle, we need to be able to accept these invites from anywhere. What makes this situation worse is that we cannot create/send meeting invites from the iPhone or the MobileMe web calendar. This is very frustrating, especially for those who use MobileMe for business (or personal business).

There are many situations where I am away from a computer and I want to send an invite to my wife for dinner (or maybe just put something on her calendar that I will be out for the evening). We both use MobileMe and yet my wife has to wait until I get home for me to send her the meeting invitation.

Another big miss is that Apple does not provide the ability to sync Tasks (To Dos in Apple speak) and Notes. Everyone and their mother has complained about Apple not supporting these two sync items, especially when adding tasks and notes on their iPhone or via the MobileMe web applications.

Thankfully, the Apple developer community has offered up solutions around these two missing items, some examples include:

• Evernote (for notes) – free
• Omnifocus (for tasks) – $79.95 + $19.95 for the iPhone App
• Remember The Milk (for tasks) – $25/year
• Things (for tasks) – $49.95 + 9.95 for the iPhone App

There are many other solutions, although these three offerings have either Mac or Web clients, as well as iPhone applications.

Yes, Apple did achieve a reasonably decent service with MobileMe. It has been generally reviewed as such. However, for Apple to provide Enterprise-class synchronization, they will need to ensure native support for the management of meeting invites as well as notes and tasks. Sadly, we have no idea when Apple will add this functionality. Here is my vote for a major announcement at the Macworld keynote…

Apple’s replacement for .Mac has had a very rocky start, and has a long way to go before its ready to compete with free alternatives. Many users do not want to move away from MobileMe because of the deep integration with the Mac desktop, while others are reluctant because its hard to find another single service that provides all of the services that MobileMe does. If the latest outage has you ready to jump ship, here’s a guide to making the break.

Mail: Gmail

Making the transition to Gmail is very easy. Gmail allows you to use POP3 to download all of your existing mail from MobileMe into Gmail, and Gmail also allows you to send email as yourname@me.com allowing you time to migrate slowly. With instant search, integrated chat, nearly infinite storage, and an extremly fast interface, making the switch to Gmail not only replaces MobileMe Mail, it makes your email overwhelmingly more enjoyable.

Calendar: Google Calendar

Using the mail substitution above, its a simple click away to use the excellent Google Calendar. The web interface is excellent, but if you are an iCal user, Google Calendar provides a very simple way to migrate all of your existing calendars off of MobileMe. 

First, create blank calendars on Google Calendar to mirror each MobileMe calendar you use today. Next, simply follow the instructions here to sync your Google Calendar to iCal. Finally, drag and drop your calendar events from the local iCal calendar to the newly added Google Calendar. Once all of the calendar events are moved over, delete each of the iCal calendars. Give Google a second to sync everything up to their servers and then check the web interface. All of your calendars should be available.

Address Book: Plaxo

Plaxo not only syncs your address book contacts to their web service, it also keeps your contact information current with others who use their service. Plaxo includes a plugin for the Mac’s Address Book that makes the sync painless. It can also sync to Gmail’s contacts, Outlook, and a host of other services.

iPhone Bonus! If you’ve got an iPhone, you can sync Address Book directly with Google, bypassing Plaxo. There’s also a clever hack to enable this ability without an iPhone, but, being unsupported, the next Mac OS update will probably wipe it out.

Gallery: Flickr/Picasa

There’s certainly no shortage of photo sharing web sites available.  Crowd favorite Flickr is a great choice, and with the $24 FlickrExport tool from Connected Flow, you can upload directly from iPhoto.  Flickr also has a ton of social media capabilities, and the ability to integrate into other online services.  If you’d like to keep with one provider as much as possible, Google’s Picasa is another great photo sharing site, which also has a free iPhoto plugin to upload photos.

iDisk: Amazon S3

This is another area where there is certainly no shortage of competition but I ultimately chose Amazon S3 + Cyberduck for my online storage needs. Box.net is another strong option; however, my initial tests found very poor WebDav capability. Amazon S3 can be a little complicated to set up, but at only 15 cents per gigabyte, the price is hard to beat, and there is an active developer community creating new applications for accessing S3 all the time.

Sync: Mozy

Mozy provides 2 gigabytes free online storage, and their Mac client integrates easily with the desktop. The utility installs as a menu item, and offers pre-configured “Backup Sets” for many common items like Address Book, Apple Mail, Keychains, and Firefox or Safari bookmarks. It also offers to backup your entire Documents, Music, and Movies folders. With the Backup Sets feature I set up a custom Yojimbo set by selecting all of the files in ~/Library/Application Support/Yojimbo. Mozy also allows you to specify a specific file or directory that you would like backed up.

Sync Bonus! If you are using Firefox as your main browser, Foxmarks can sync both your bookmarks and passwords between multiple machines, regardless of operating system. I use it to keep my browsers in sync between my Mac at home, and my Windows XP laptop at work.

iWeb Hosting:  Google Sites

Google Sites gives you a very simple and easy way to setup a web site for sharing stories, photos, and movies with friends and family. While not as all encompassing as an iWeb site, it still gets the job done. If Sites is not really what you are looking for, consider setting up a free blog site with WordPress.com. If sticking with iWeb is a necessity, simple, low volume web hosting with a company like 1and1 or Dreamhost is relatively inexpensive, and can give you full control over the content, look, and feel of your site.

Breaking away from MobileMe is not a decision to be taken lightly, but by taking an objective look at exactly what you want out of an online service, the move can be relatively painless, and surprisingly enjoyable.

In a previous article I explained how in the last year I’ve moved the majority of my data to the Cloud. By utilizing MobileMe’s syncing mechanisms, I’m able to do this without sacrificing the “comfort” and “safety” of having all my data local. This not only saves me from worrying what I’d do if all of Apple’s servers exploded tomorrow, but it also allows me to utilize local desktop applications of my choosing, and to do so even if I have no Internet connectivity. 

For me it really is proving to be the best of both worlds. 

Well, a few days ago I received a new MacBook, and I want to recount how utilizing these sync services (specifically, MobileMe) made setting up the new machine a snap.

Keep in mind that my iMac will still maintain my complete iTunes library (currently 80GB), and my full Aperture library. I may very well move my photos to the Cloud, but I think iTunes media will stay local — due to its size — for a while. 

Before hooking up the new machine

The one step I needed to perform before setting up the new machine was to sync everything from my iMac (not just the iDisk) to the Cloud. I went into MobileMe’s Sync tab on my iMac in System Preferences and literally checked every box to sync every item.

Under normal conditions the four items you see unchecked above remain that way (I’ll explain why later), but for now I checked everything and let it all sync. 

This action gets everything up to the Cloud so when the new machine arrives I can sync it back down. 

On the new machine – First Sync

I spent the 10 minutes to walk through the startup. When it asked me about migrating from another Mac, I just said “no”. With syncing, the Migration Assistant isn’t needed. 

Once up, I went into the MobileMe control panel’s Account tab to log in, then the Sync tab to check every syncing option as I had done above, set it to automatic, and let it rip. The sync suggested that this may be a new sync, and asked what I wanted to do. I selected the option to replace everything on the machine with what’s in the Cloud. This initial sync took about 20 minutes. 

Second Sync

The above sync brings all my calendars, contacts, email accounts, filters, etc. Since I now have my email accounts my next step was to launch Mail and let it bring down all my emails. Recall from my first article that while I leave my messages in the Cloud, I download them locally as well, so Mail had a lot of work to do. 

It took ~20 minutes to bring all my mail down.

Third Sync

Now for the biggie. I went into the MobileMe’s iDisk tab and tuned on iDisk to sync automatically. This disk contains my word processing docs, spreadsheets, PDFs, some pictures, etc. Once the sync began, I knew it would take a little while so I went out to run some errands.

I can’t say how long the sync took (I’d guess maybe 1.5 hours), but it was all done when I got home a few hours later.

So, at this point, my email, calendars, contacts, documents, etc. are on the new machine.

Let me also point out that since I synced Preferences, the Dock, Dashboard, etc., the machine is already comfortable to use. It’s amazing how much time we normally spend with a new machine just re-establishing all the preferences we’d set over the course of months or years, and yet with MobileMe it’s all synced up. 

Other Syncs

I installed NetNewsWire, signed up with my account, and let it do its thing. Likewise with MT-NewsWatcher, whose preference files I keep in iDisk so each machine keeps track of the same subscriptions and read messages. 

Manual “Syncs” (copies, actually)

I did have to copy a few things myself. I utilized File Sharing to do this. Even if you don’t want to leave this on after your machine is setup, you can activate it temporarily to make it easy to manually copy some files to the new machine. Just go to the Sharing system preference and check the File Sharing box. Then from the Finder of the iMac I could connect to the new machine, open the Public folder and drag things into the folder called “Drop Box”.

So why do I need to copy some things manually? Well, for example, I installed Aperture and iWork on the new machine, and it’s great that since I synced preferences, after installing these apps they act just as I have customized them to. However, the default templates for each iWork application are not synced (iWork expects them deep in the local user’s Library folder), so I simply copied that folder from the iMac into the “drop box” on the new machine and then moved it to the appropriate place. 

Also, since my media files (iTunes and Aperture) will remain on the iMac, I exported some key projects (versions only) to the new machine’s drop box and imported them into Aperture. This allows me to have some photos on the new machine (mostly for viewing).

Regarding iTunes, I share my library, so in the house I have full access to my music from the new machine. When I travel, I usually use my iPhone or iPod for my music. Still, I wanted to have at least some local music so I grabbed about 30 of my 760+ albums and used the drop box to copy them.

Final Touches

I hit the web and installed a few essentials, such as Mail Badger, VLC, Perian, Double Command, Graphic Converter, and others. What’s remarkable is that as I install these apps their preferences are already there! Again, I can’t overstate how easy this makes setting up a new machine. 

Finally, I go into MobileMe’s Sync tab and turn OFF (i.e., uncheck) the items unchecked in the picture above. Why? Well, as I described, syncing Preferences is perhaps the single greatest time saver when setting up a new system, which is why I do it initially. However, the prefs I use for a 13″ display are not exactly the same as those for a 24″ display (perhaps 90 percent of them are, but there are some differences). Of course I can make changes to accommodate the smaller screen, but then they’ll just get synced to the iMac, and I don’t want them there. So after the initial sync I just shut them off. The same is true for the Dock and Dashboard. As for Mail accounts, they never really change, so why expend time with each sync messing with them?

Conclusion

I don’t think I can even count how many times I’ve setup a new machine. In many cases this has been going from PC to Mac or vice versa. The truth is moving the data itself is not the hard part. An Ethernet cable, external hard drive, or even an FTP server can all work to get data pretty easily from one machine to another. 

No, the hard part about setting up a new machine is moving all the intangibles. The email accounts, settings, application preferences (I’m pretty anal about those), etc.. Even the directory structure of where your data is located may take time to reproduce. But now, with syncing from the Cloud. that amount of work was easily reduced by 90 percent (maybe even more). 

I’m usually tweaking settings on a new system for several days after a move, but in less than 24 hours with the new MacBook it was pretty much done. You could argue that an Ethernet connection would allow for faster moving of data then a Cloud sync, but I would counter that the time saved with all my personal settings – and of course the original goal of having everything synced with the cloud as well as local — far outweigh any speed gains in initial setup. After all, you only do the setup once anyway.