A few years ago, Apple gave us .Mac so that our Macintosh computers could sync to one another without any extra effort on my part. My .Mac account is set to update my bookmarks, my address book and my calendar every hour or so.
The way it works is this: on my main Mac, which happens to be a Mac Book Pro, I edit an address or a calendar event. Within a few hours, with no other work from me, it is magically synced to my iMac where I listen to iTunes at home, my iMac at work that I use for iTunes, and a few other macs that I use for various purposes. I don't have to plug in any cables, or click on any special sync applications.
The key here is that I enter the data once on any of the machines, and in a little while, over the course of a couple of hours, it's on all my machines.
All of them but my iPhone. To sync my iPhone, I actually have to get a cable and plug it into the one mac (my Mac Book Pro) that "owns" it. I can't just plug it in anywhere or iTunes will wipe it out and I'll have to resync (for hours) to get the music and videos back on it. I know there are work-arounds, I already sync just data from my Mac Book Pro and just music from one of my iMacs.
My question tho, is why doesn't my iPhone just pick up iCal/Address Book/Safari Bookmarks data over the edge network and sync it to my iPhone so I can quit hassling with keeping the phone up to date?
I've already whined on this blog about not being able to sync address and calendar info via bluetooth, like my old RAZR phone, or the older Sony/Ericson. Neither of them were built by Apple, and both of them could connect to my Mac for syncing addresses without a wire.
Apple should at least offer data syncing over bluetooth, but why not go the one step further. It'd be great if I could update my address book or my calendar and then have it auto sync (in both directions) to my desktop, portables, or iPhone without having to do anything else.
Why doesn't that work? Does anyone know?
2 Comments
Uhhhh…Huh? Say that all again…s-l-o-w-l-y.
So the problem is that there needs to be server handling the data. Right now, your Mac apps sync to a database that is then synced to .Mac
What is stored on your computer is king. By syncing with .Mac over the air, you make .Mac king. This is handled by Microsoft Exchange by eliminating the need for a local copy of any of your data so that all you see is either the live data from Exchange or the cached data.
I have no doubt that with Apple's introduction of over-the-air Exchange syncing support that .Mac will indeed be getting a much needed face lift to show similar offerings.