iPhone by Steve

As much as I love my iPhone, there are a couple of things that bug me. My main annoyance has to do with the iPhone’s limited support for Apple iCal. Here are the biggest problems:

1. First, the iPhone’s calendar does not support multiple calendars. Every appointment I make has got to be tied to my one, “default” calendar. This just isn’t how I do things. As you might know, iCal allows different calendars to be set up for different categories. I’ve got one calendar for work, another calendar for events shared with my wife, and still another calendar for my kids’ activities. These calendars are all neatly color-coded on the Mac and in Google Calendar, but, alas, my poor iPhone can’t handle this set up and forces me to sync all of these events to my default iPhone calendar. I was flabbergasted when I realized this after buying the iPhone.
2. It’s true that Google has greatly improved their iPhone integration, offering web apps for Gmail, Google Calendar, and even for Google Apps. In fact, Google Calendar looks great on the iPhone, and any events that you set up in different calendars show up beautifully, color coding and all. But on the iPhone, if you want to create a new event in Google Calendar, then you have to use your default calendar, just like you would with the iPhone native calendar.
3. The net result of problems #1 and #2 is that, if you use multiple calendars, you only have 2 choices: You can create events in your default calendar even if that’s really not where you want to put them, or you have to wait until you’re at your computer to use Google Calendar or Apple iCal to create your events (and then sync them to the iPhone). What a P-I-T-A !!!
4. Finally, there is no over-the-air syncing for iPhone. You need to connect and sync through iTunes. Also a pain!

Readers here know that I rely heavily on Gmail as my email and contacts manager, and I’ve been patiently waiting for Spanning Sync and others to create some decent options to sync Gmail contacts with the iPhone.

Well, look out Apple, because GooSync has beaten the Mac world to the punch!

Back in the day, that is, my pre-iPhone days, I was a heavy GooSync user. Simply put, this is great software, which allows over-the-air syncing of Google Calendar to your mobile phone. There is an extensive list of supported devices on their website, but—and here we go again—the iPhone is not supported for over-the-air syncing.

GooSync has now gone live with full syncing of Gmail contacts as well. So what does this all mean for users of Windows Mobile? It means that they have a huge advantage over iPhone users. With GooSync, Windows Mobile users can:

• Sync Gmail contacts directly to their phones, completely eliminating the use of Microsoft Outlook if they want to.
• Sync Google Calendar events directly to their phones and actually do it properly. Events created in different calendars (or different categories) will show up properly categorized on the phone.
• Finally, and this is a biggie, all this is done over-the-air. No need to hook up to a computer by wires at anytime. You can sync anywhere, anytime, and in my view, the productivity gain offered by this approach is just huge.

Here’s a practical example of how this can work for you:

• Let’s say that you own a Treo 700wx phone and your wife uses a Moto Q. Both of these are windows phones. It doesn’t matter who you want to share information with or how many people for that matter. This works equally well for your co-workers, your kids, or anyone you want to share calendar information with, if they use phones that run on Windows Mobile.
• The next step is to create a Google Calendar that is shared between you and your wife. Either of you can make appointments on this calendar.
• If you both have GooSync accounts, then you will be in complete harmony because your phones will have all calendar events synced to them, and because this is an over-the-air system, you’ll be up to speed no matter where you are. If you create an appointment on your phone or at your computer, then your wife will see it on her phone and on her computer as soon as she syncs with Goosync. Note: Goosync can be configured to sync at automatic intervals if that is your preference.

This is pretty much the system my wife and I used when I had a Windows Mobile phone. When I got my iPhone, I messed this up and now I’ve got to take the extra steps to keep my calendar in sync with hers.

GooSync has the right idea here, and it’s just killing me that I can’t do the same thing with my iPhone. I hope that iPhone firmware 2.0 can fix the problem or that somebody out there with the Apple SDK comes up with a solution soon.

Apple sets the bar pretty high for themselves, and I hate it when they let Microsoft one-up them on anything. As far as over-the-air sync and multiple calendars go, well, I want it, and I want it NOW.