To test my MobileMe account’s syncing ability, after getting it up and running yesterday, I ran a simple experiment: schedule a reminder on the iPhone calendar (above, for a Chicago trip this weekend), and watch what happens.
You know what happened? Nothing:
The above screen shot is from iCal, one whole day later. Notice no event scheduled to remind me to “pack for Chicago.” Nope, just a few reminders that were already there. Despite telling MobileMe and the iPhone to sync every hour, MobileMe sent nothing to iCal. And that iCal reminder, the green one about the open house? That didn’t get pushed to the iPhone, either.
Things really started to get weird when I received a phone call. Instead of my contact’s name popping up, the iPhone displayed the number only. It turns out that 90% of my contacts were missing from my Contacts app. Where did they go?
Then, while browsing with Mobile Safari, I found all my book marks missing. All Mobile Safari gave me was the stock bookmark options:
So even though I told MobileMe to sync my contacts, my iCal events, and my Safari bookmarks, none of that made it to my iPhone.
Now, after I turned MobileMe syncing off on the 3G, I can’t get my Mobile Safari bookmarks to show back up – even though I told iTunes to do so:
MobileMe, on my iBook G4 running the latest Tiger install and synced with an iPhone 3G, doesn’t work as advertised. The web version is only a little better. That “pack for Chicago” reminder? It showed up in MobileMe’s web iCal. But my contacts made it from either my iPhone or my iBook just fine – but why wouldn’t they show up on my iPhone?
Surely these are all symptoms others have reported before – but MobileMe actually syncing with Tiger was enough of a treat to try the whole thing out. It turns out, though, that MobileMe probably isn’t for me. Not the way it’s working now, at least.
Odds are that you are having an issue with old sync setups. You probably want to stop all of your currently syncs and push out your most complete version. Then re-sync everything back to the good copy on the net. It appears that long term subscribers have dead sync computers and other issues that make the process, problematic.
When things are setup correctly, they work very well. Example:
I added an event on my phone with iCal and MobileMe Calendar both up. With in 1-2 minutes, without refresh both showed the new meeteing. Updating the entry on my computer (and not forcing a sync) caused me to wait about 10 minutes or until the next scheduled sync operation before I saw the change. A change on the MobileMe page showed up within a minute on both phone and computer.
Posted by Doug Petrosky on July 28th, 2008.
Thanks Doug. That’s my theory: something flaky with the “old sync setup” you mention. I do want to try it all again, just to give it a fair shake. But also, other Tiger users have been having problems – so that could be it. Hell, it could be anything.
Posted by davelawrence8 on July 28th, 2008.
Dave,
Apparently, my continued skepticism of MobileMe is warranted. After reading your experience, I think I may wait until Apple engineers get around to coming back from their collective vacation.
Posted by Keith on July 28th, 2008.
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Mobile Me and iPHONE sync great. Mobile and iCAL DON’T SYNC at all. WORST. Mobile Me continues to be a joke.
me: MacBookPro running Tiger 10.4.11 — I realize Apple prefers to force people to upgrade. but it’s sad they don’t give a sh-it about the rest of us. Lame-O!
Posted by Paisley on April 25th, 2009.