Syncing Calendars and Contacts to Macs and iPhones
Nov 26th, 2009 by Ben
I refuse to pay $119 to Apple to sync my desktop to my iPhone. I don’t use me.com mail, and iDisk (online storage) is virtually unusable.
So this year I looked into alternatives for syncing my calendar and contacts. There are a few options but I’ve settled on Spanning Sync, after some relatively extensive testing.
It’ll sync across multiple Macs as well as iPhones using Google calendars and contacts. You can also set it up to use Google Apps for your domain.
If you use my referral code below, you’ll get $5 (US) off the price and I’ll get $5 from the developers. The price is either $25 for a year or $65 for good. I’ve gone for a year at this stage.
Click here for Spanning Sync.
A free alternative is Google Sync:
http://www.simonblog.com/2009/02/14/how-to-sync-google-contacts-calendar-with-iphone/
Thanks Thomas (and Ben) for sorting out a vexing issue…
Thanks, Thomas, but I don’t see that that syncs iCal and Address Book to gCal and Google Contacts. If you use the Apple apps, you’ll need Spanning Sync or equivalent.
Thanks for this, Ben. Since we’re finally planning to be in the one country for the term of a natural contract, I’ll probably get the next iteration of the iPhone in the middle of the year. And the price of MobileMe is galling :/
P.S. Just saw your Mac page and I’m going to give Bookends a go. I’ve actually been looking to update my version of EndNote (so it’ll work with Pages and I can flick Word for good), but it’s exorbitantly priced and, yes, dog-like. Thanks for the tip