Calendar No Longer Me
Not using the MobileMe calendar …. for now
Back a month ago, I mentioned my calendar syncing changes I needed to make due to the MobileMe calendar moving to a CalDAV format, which would break my syncing with all of my devices.
With so many changes I needed to make in order to keep all of my calendar and todo list data in sync, I decided to simply do the MobileMe calendar upgrade, but remove it from syncing with any of my devices – including my iPhone and iPad.
While it’s nice to see Apple adopt standards like CalDAV, it doesn’t mix well with my mixed set of devices. My Palm Pre requires syncing from local iCal calendars. Plus, each time I sync my iPhone and iPad, they can sync from those same local iCal calendars. So not all is lost, except one of the services I’m not using from my paid MobileMe subscription. All that’s left that I continue to use is email, Address Book syncing and iDisk for other backups I do.
Which means, come October 2011, I may be making even more decisions on whether to renew. Stay tuned.
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What a royal pain in the ass!
I’ll stick to being clueless most of the time. 🙂
It is… but I’m sure keeping all of this in sync isn’t what most gadget people do.
I’m glad I have an Android device, it does most of that shit right of the box for free. I was already using Google Calendar and Gmail anyway, so that made the move to an Android phone especially painless.
Yeah, the Google Calendar and Gmail cloud syncing options that I may have to move to at some point. Both do sync to my Palm Pre.
I don’t get this… I have a calendar that is auto-synced between Mobile.Me, iPhone, iPad, three Macs, and a couple of remote servers. Why can’t Palm Pre fetch/push from/to your CalDAV Mobile.Me calendar like everything else does? What’s a “local calendar?” If it’s on Mobile.Me, then it’s not local at all… anything can get to it by simply using your iCal CalDAV URL. If Palm Pre doesn’t have CalDAV support, how is this Apple’s problem? Or am I missing the point entirely here?
Previously, with MobileMe, Apple used Sync Services for Calendar and Todo items. All calendars could be stored locally in iCal and be synced via Sync Services to MobileMe. Apple switched their calendar format to CalDAV, which now takes away syncing from local iCal calendars to MobileMe.
The Palm Pre does support CalDAV, just not to Apple (maybe a 3rd party can add an option for supporting CalDAV connection to MobileMe or once I get some time, I can figure out how to use the Google CalDAV to connect to MobileMe calendar).
It’s not Apple’s fault, it’s mine for wanting to sync multiple services together. I really wasn’t trying to imply it was Apple’s fault. If I did, it wasn’t intentional.
I confess to not really understanding the CalDAV issue fully. For instance, I presume you still have access to your calendar on your Mac when it is offline, right? But not in a format that can sync to the Palm? Does something like BusySync — which I used to use to sync calendars to my Treo — help in this situation? I got an email from them about the CalDAV switch, but I don’t use MobileMe so I ignored it.
I feel like I asked this before, but is there a reason you aren’t already just using Google’s calendar in place of MobileMe?
Yes, I still have access to the newly converted MobileMe calendar in CalDAV format when it’s offline, but the Palm Pre sync tool I use (The Missing Sync) doesn’t have write access to them. On when they are part of the “On This Mac” iCal group of calendars.
I have looked at BusySync and they do support keeping local iCal and MobileMe CalDAV calendars in sync. Not that I wanted to spend $50 to do what was working before the MobileMe calendar conversion, I am unsure if The Missing Sync will continue to sync with BusyCal, which essentially is an iCal replacement.
As for my not moving to Google Calendar, the lack of a Google Task API to sync tasks is currently preventing me (since each iCal calendar has tasks/todo’s attached).
Ah, Tasks. I had task syncing to the Mac at one point, but was never satisfied with how tasks work there. I’ve switched completely to Toodledo for tasks. At first I used Appigo’s ToDo app synced with Toodledo, but eventually I found it more convenient to use Toodledo’s app.
I use iCal on my work Mac to keep track of meetings/calls. But other than that I must admit that I don’t really use a calendar for personal stuff at all. I use the “ToDo” iPhone app which has all my reminders in it and that’s proved to be all I need.
My work calendar is on Outlook, which doesn’t sync to any of my devices (and I don’t need it to, either). All of these posts are for my personal and personal projects I keep.
I’ve used the 2Do iPhone app before and it uses local Sync Services to keep the tasks on my iPhone and iPad the same as my local iCal. Does the “ToDo” app sync to a Mac or do you just keep the todo items local to the iPhone?
For implementing GTD you can use this web application:
http://www.Gtdagenda.com
You can use it to manage your goals, projects and tasks, set next actions and contexts, use checklists, schedules and a calendar.
Syncs with Evernote, and also comes with mobile-web version, and Android and iPhone apps.
Thanks for the link, Dan. I will have to go check that out.