Anthony Martin’s Weblog

My theory is that iSync trashed my Apple Address Book because I was monkeying around with the contact pictures before it was officially offered as a supported feature.  My contacts were fairly old by the time iSync came along, so the data structure was probably non-standard.  If I had started a new address book, it might have worked out better.  But being an early adopter has its risks.

Years later, I decided to start maintaining it again.  I picked the copy that was in the best shape and went from there.  Then I noticed that Apple was allowing sync (formerly iSync) between Google and MobileMe (formerly Dot Mac).  So I tried that out and it totally trashed both contact lists again.  At that point, many of my Google contacts had names but no e-mail addresses and there were massive duplicates.  I was rather unimpressed.

Then I got an iPhone, and I decided to start messing with it again.  That's when I discovered the "Look for Duplicates..." feature that was probably there for quite a while before I noticed it.  So this really didn't solve all of my problems, but it made me feel better that duplicates were being mitigated somewhat.

Until I noticed I was having another problem.  The "Look for Duplicates..." would merge contacts with empty names.  For some reason, Google contacts with empty names were all seen by MobileMe as the same contact.  So "Look for Duplicates..." would result in five or ten distinct contacts being clumped together as one.  The more I would sync, the more of these contacts would clump together.  The contacts had e-mail addresses and that's it because Google would add them as "Suggested Contacts."  So I separated them and plunked the name in or at least copied the e-mail address to the name field to make them distinct from the standpoint of the "Look for Duplicates..." feature.  This solution worked.

At this point, my contacts became stable and I was starting to get comfortable.  Over time, both Google and MobileMe became one address book.  Only problem was that MobileMe contacts were more versatile.  For example, I could label a phone number or an e-mail address any way I wanted while Google was limited to only "Work", "Home", or "Other" labels.

All this time, I had backups of my MobileMe address book in case anything went catastrophically wrong.  So I decided to try synchronizing with Yahoo!.  Why?  I have no idea.  But it worked pretty well from the standpoint of Google and MobileMe.  When I merged with Yahoo!, I had massive duplicates again, but the MobileMe "Look for Duplicates..." feature fixed it for both Google and MobileMe.  Yahoo! was completely screwed up with massive duplicates, but I didn't care.  I rescued my contacts out of Yahoo!, so I was happy.

After about two weeks of zero complaints, Google Sync of iPhone became available.  So I decided to dive into using it for contacts (I'm not using it for calendars as of yet).  I noticed that the backup method they recommended was to just sync the way I had been all along, through MobileMe.  That means my backup was already created.  Yay.  When Google Sync was enabled, all previous contacts were deleted as expected (this is normal when activating Microsoft Exchange on iPhone, and Google Sync implements Microsoft Exchange).  But since I was just moving to the same address book, I should be fine, right?  Nothing could possibleye go wrong.

And in fact, so far nothing has gone wrong, for the most part.  Although I did lose my MobileMe custom labels, all of my contacts came in just fine.  There was a slight problem with some of the phone numbers.  If I tagged them with a custom label, they didn't appear on my iPhone.  So I had to go in and label them as "Work", Home", or "Other" and they came right up in my iPhone.  There are some cases that setting the label doesn't seem to matter.  There are still bugs here to work out for sure.  I'll be watching the forum.

So yes, my address book is dumbed down a little more due to Google's limited fields and labels support.  Some of my contacts have screwed up mailing addresses.  But most of them are fine.  Not only that, but even though my iPhone is going right to Google now for all contacts, MobileMe is still synchronizing to Google, so my Apple Address Book is still up to date!

It's not perfect at all.  No synchronization solution ever is.  But I'm happy with it.  Both Apple and Google keep improving it.  Just a few days ago Google improved the search feature, so I hope this means they will keep improving it over the long haul.

Now, I fear someone will sue Apple and Google for unfair business practices.  Usually, when two companies cooperate like this, they are accused of trying to manipulate the market or not offering proper support.  In information technology, the usual way to avoid this is to create a consortium that anyone, including competators, can join.  The IDE hard drive was developed this way.  Sun Microsystems adds features to Java this way.  If Apple and Google don't start doing this, they will get shot at.

I don't want them to get shot.  I think they should be free to do this without a consortium if they choose.  It depends on whether or not they are themselves litigious or not.  But the European Union will probably force them into it if private US litigation doesn't get to them first.