MobileMe - calendar sync and the work-personal-family calendar triad

Grateful I am, to be still on the 60 day free trial of MobileMess. It is at least five months from stability, but at least I can see the skeleton of its future. It looks a tad ominous.

Consider the work-home-family calendar triad.

Last week I missed a haircut. I'd entered it correctly on my personal calendar, but the duplicate entry on my work calendar was off by a day. Both calendars live on my Palm (in different applications, which is one of the thousand cuts that killed the Palm), but I missed an alarm.

Typical. Two separate calendars are lousy, but putting my personal appointments on the work calendar is not optimal. Do I want my meetings with representatives of the Zorgonian trade federation to appear on my work calendar? Earth is not ready to learn of those.

Now imagine that synchronizing you work calendar with MobileMe was not a firing offense (at most companies it would be). Further imagine that synchronizing an Outlook Exchange Client calendar with MobileMe wouldn't trash the work calendar (it would [1]).

You'd still be in trouble. MobileMe is setup so that each user can have a single sync calendar per account. There may be multiple calendars on an account, but you can't sync to them from iCal or Outlook. You'd need to get the family account, and use a different username for each calendar, then share on the family account. I don't have an iPhone or a family account to test this with, but I'm guessing the iPhone would allow sync with only one of the family calendars.

What about Google Calendar, popularly known as gCal? Our Google Apps family calendar allows a very large number of users (100?), so there's lots of wiggle room. There's an open sync API, so vendors can, if they and Google ever get their act together, can implement unidirectonal sync from an Outlook/Exchange work calendar.

From what I've seen of Google Calendar and MobileMe, we're most likely to need gCal. What I fear is that I'll need MobileMe too ... More on that later.

[1] Maybe the iPhone calendar can sync with an Exchange server, but I'm pretty sure the MobileMe calendar can't handle all the eccentric metadata and relationships that are a part of an Outlook/Exchange appointment - including little details like meeting attendees and recurrence exceptions. This wouldn't be too bad if you could do one way (undirectional) "sync" - send work data to MobileMe. This is not supported however.

Remember The Milk - Tasks in the Cloud. Still in the running.

[The first time I wrote this I though RTM tasks had no notes. They can have notes when entered from the web UI. I don't think there's a way to import tasks with notes, the pro versions can sync with Blackberry or Windows Mobile, not Palm.]

My early experience with MobileMe has rekindled my enthusiasm for our familial Google Apps calendar and cloud services.

The missing links are Tasks and Notes.

I'll be tracking Evernote closely, and watching how OmniFocus matures from its rough start. Both promise some sort of application / service / iPhone integration.

So what about Remember The Milk? RTM has a Firefox plugin that provides gCal and gMail integration ...

Remember The Milk - Services / Remember The Milk for Gmail

...No need to check your calendar when setting due dates! Remember The Milk talks to Google Calendar when it detects that you're adding a task related to an event in your calendar, and automagically figures out when your task is due..

Ok, that sounds interesting. So what does RTM do for export? iCal and Atom. Not the easiest for me to process, but potentially useful.

What does RTM do for import? Not too darned much. You can email a list of "tasks". One per line. No due dates, not notes.

That's because RTM tasks are single line items.

Ok, that's not good, but it's not a complete fail either. I need to check out the Pro version.

Missing Sync for iPhone does Notes synchronization

So MobileMe ain't exactly wonderful. What about the alternatives?

For on, there's Missing Sync, which we've used with Palm devices and Blackberry devices on OS X:

The Missing Sync for iPhone - Synchronize Mac OS X and iPhone 

... The Notes application on the iPhone is great for jotting down everything from meeting minutes and brilliant ideas to reminders and shopping lists. But you can't organize notes into categories, search your notes, or copy and paste content. Unless you use The Missing Sync to transfer your iPhone notes into Microsoft Entourage, Bare Bones Yojimbo or Mark/Space Notebook (included with The Missing Sync)....

That sounds interesting.

The Mark/Space migration assistant will also move Contacts and Calendar from a Palm device to an iPhone on OS X.

That still leaves Tasks in the cold though.

This is all going to take a lot more work ...

Safe to try Blogger in Draft again?

Blogger may have fixed a nasty bug:

Blogger in Draft: New toolbar, AJAX saving, and other fixes for the post editor

...Line breaking is no longer lost when editing a post in the old editor that was first written in the new editor...

I think the bug also showed if you switched post editors from Safari to Firefox, so we'll see if it's really fixed.

MobileMe: Perspective of a crusty Palm veteran

I'll update this post as I explore the quirks of MobileMe. As I'd promised, I signed up:

Gordon's Tech:

... The 5 member MobileMe family pack is $130 on Amazon - a $20 savings. As usual, best to order via Macintouch.com to give them a bit of a boost...

I didn't take advantage of the Amazon option, I decided to get the process out of the way. Since it's possible to upgrade from an individual to a family account, I decided to only buy what I need for the moment. When I do that update I'll document how the pricing works.

I did opt for the free trial; Apple converts me to a paid account unless I cancel. I had a typo in my original user name so I had to cancel once -- I think Apple would be wise to provide a username review before they complete the signup! My account starts one month after the Free Trial signup, so it does look like this gives me an extra month.

My first question is whether I could get the username that was associated with a former .Mac account. I was able to do that. I checked the old address before and after signing up -- the old email bounces.

Interestingly my Apple Store account, through which I make Apple purchases, is bound to my old .Mac email address. Currently that email address cannot be changed without discarding my Apple account and its associated purchase data -- so Apple doesn't have a current email address for me! I think they've missed something here. I wonder if they'll figure out the problem or if I'll have to discard that account.

Notes follow. In general the PIM/PDA services in MobileMe are a close match to OS X Address book and iCal.

1. There's an order of declining support as follows:
   OS X 10.5 > OS X 10.4.11/Intel > Vista > XP > OS X 10.4.11/PPC.
   Yes, the absolute rock bottom support is Tiger, not XP. As of today only the iDisk works on 10.4.11/PPC Tiger (reports of Tiger success are Intel only).
   
2. Calendars can be organized into Calendar Groups, Groups allow toggling of all members. Calendars may be more robust than the weak Palm model, and may even have advantages over Outlook 2003 calendars.
   
3. I uninstalled the problematic Google calendar Sync before testing Outlook Calendar sync. There's no control of calendar synchronization direction, it's all or nothing. On initial sync when data exists the app does allow additional details.
   
4. Tasks are very weak. Tasks have a minuscule note field, plain text only (no RTF), capacity > 500 characters. They have a description, completion status, due date (no start date), calendar association and, oddly enough, a URL. Task filtering, sorting and organizing is significantly inferior to the earliest US Robotics PalmPilot. Tasks must be associated with a single calendar; checking or unchecking display of a calendar controls display of calendar-associated tasks
5. OS X iCal users have task synchronization, but Outlook users do not. Tasks in MobileMe (and iCal) are so weak it's hard to imagine being able to synchronize them with Outlook. Perhaps that has something to do with why there are still no iPhone tasks -- Apple's OS X Task management is so feeble compared to Outlook that Apple may be hoping the majority of users won't notice their absence! (They may be right.)
   
6. There are no Note equivalents.
   
7. Contacts are reasonably robust. Simpler than the baroque Outlook contacts, more complete that the simple Palm contact, exact match to the OS X address book.
8. Account options allow one to cancel an account, set time zone, change alternate email address, and allocate storage (I minimized email storage).
9. You can transfer a personal domain to MobileMe management and get iWeb '08 integration. It will be interesting to see what else they add to this.
10. There's no equivalent to the old .Mac web page services. Unless they add something else it's iWeb only, which means XP users will be shortchaged. (I even recall when .Mac had some blogging tool -- Apple used to add and remove services fairly frequently when I was a member.)
11. MobileMe email provides disposable aliases. This is a great feature. If you ever donate money to a political party, use a disposable alias. Parties are exempt from anti-spam laws.
12. MobileMe email supports forwarding. I am forwarding to Gmail for now.
13. Junk mail filtering is not enabled by default (weird). Junk mail filtering has complicated implications for Mac OX Mail.app.
14. The iDisk contains remnants of .Mac, including a "Groups" folder. Groups are not a part of MobileMe.
    
15. The iDisk also has an installer for the old OS X .Mac backup program.
16. The iDisk Public Folder access can be password controlled. There is only one public password -- you can't assign folder-level access. There's some confusion in the documentation about the public URL and webdav connections. There's no web UI for access control, you use the MobileMe Control Panel installed with iTunes/XP, the MobileMe Preference panel in 10.5, or the obsolete .Mac preference in Tiger (10.4).
    
17. iDisk supports Vista and OS X direct (webdav) access. XP direct webdav access is not officially supported. Some docs make mention of a MobileMe client, I don't know if the old XP iDisk client still works. I entered the string "http://idisk.me.com/[myusername]" into the XP "Add Network Place" dialog, and after a few false starts (user error?) my username and pw were accepted. Performance is slow, but it works.
    
18. When I tried synchronizing from my 10.5 machine after all updates, I got this calendar error message "MobileMe Calendar could not start because it was unable to load any calendars from the server. Try reloading Calendar. If this problem persists, contact MobileMe Support." After a restart I was able to load.
19. Safari/Window can't load my MobileMe calendar. It hangs -- probably too many events. Firefox 3.01/XP is able to load it. Safari OS X and Firefox 3.01/OS X can also load the calendar.
20. I miss Microsoft. Hell frozen.
21. When synchronizing multiple items (bookmarks, calendar, etc) with MobileMe a sync warning appears when any one of the items being synchronized is undergoing its first sync. MobileMe requests a user decision for the sync. Problem is, the UI does not allow the decision to be applied to a single item type, it applies to all item types.
22. The XP MobileMe Settings application is installed with iTunes 7.7 and cannot be separately uninstalled. If you decide, like me, to give it a rest, you can't uninstall. Instead, you sign out.
    

More to follow. Last update 7/19/08.

Pogue on MobileMe - best review so far

Pogue has the best MobileMe review to date: State of the Art - In Sync to Pierce the Cloud - NYTimes.com.

Since MobileMe does tasks, I wonder if can work with my tasks through the iPhone browser -- at least for now.

Well, I guess I'm signing up for MobileMe. Resistance appears futile.

It will give me something to do while I wait for the iPhone to resupply. As of yesterday there are zero iPhones in Minnesota. If we don't see phones by next week people are going to start muttering about the Wii supply story.

Update: The 5 member MobileMe family pack is $130 on Amazon - a $20 savings. As usual, best to order via Macintouch.com to give them a bit of a boost. By happy coincidence we are a family of five humans -- these days most family offers max out at four. Kateva will have to do without.

How to uninstall an OS X preference pane - as an admin user

Dang. I've always removed Preference Panes by hunting them down in the file system.

Turns out there's an official way (with one catch) that works in 10.4 and 10.5:

Mac 101: Remove unwanted System Preference panes - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) To uninstall System Preference panes, just right-click (or control click if you have a one button mouse) on the preference pane icon and select 'remove x preference pane.'

The catch is, you need to be logged in as an administrative user! If you're a non-admin user you don't see anything; there's not even a "gray menu" (tested in 10.4). That's why I never noticed it -- I don't run as an admin user. I'm used to OS X asking for a privilege escalation for admin tasks.

So this is not well implemented in 10.4. It should be a menu item for non-admin users, and ask for a un/pw when it's selected. I wonder if Apple fixed that in 10.5?

Physics hurts: the iPhone battery life and how to work around it

Physics is a pain sometimes. Jobs told us 3G was going to suck way more power than EDGE, but some were skeptical (I recall I was inclined to believe him).

AppleInsider | Apple's iPhone 3G battery good for about 3.5 hours of browsing

...While Anandtech's chart shows the Apple handset to last about 30 minutes more than Samsung's 3G Blackjack, the unsettling comparison exists between the iPhone 3G running on AT&T's 3G network and the original iPhone running on AT&T's EDGE network. In the site's tests, the original iPhone lasted 2 hours and 26 minutes longer while browsing over EDGE than the new iPhone did browsing over 3G...

I've found that the battery life on my low end 3G Nokia phone is similarly quite poor, even though that phone has no data services at all. 3G is bad on batteries even when the traffic is voice only; of course 802.11 is far worse.

We know the iPhone will function on EDGE networks if 3G is not available, I wonder if Apple and AT&T will provide an option to use EDGE when power is at a premium. (See comments -- in fact this is available now. So why do only my readers know to mention this?)

Meanwhile, a solid Tidbits review recommends the APC UPB10 Mobile Power Pack USB Battery Extender. These are $63 on Amazon; however there are newish airline regulations about carrying external LiOn batteries. The terminals must be covered and it has to go through security in a bin.

These regs are enough of a pain to make the $10 APC external USB AA battery charger very appealing; I would want to test in a store that it really charged an iPhone however.

At work it's easy to charge a phone from a USB source, on the road it's easy to carry a USB car charger. One does have to learn to treat a power supply the way long distance cyclists treat a shower -- get it while you can.

Update: disabling push email helps too,  Ars has a in-depth review of accessory battery packs.

How to wrap earbuds so they don't tangle

Life Hacks explains how to keep headphone wires from getting tangled (2/2006)

The attached image is missing, but the technique is simple. I just tried it and I like the results. The comments reference various organizing techniques for larger cables and ropes.

iPhone 2.0 development: it must have been a death march

iPhone 1.0 development must have been insane, but I'm guessing iPhone 2.0 development was a classic death march.

We can gather that from the things that were left out:

• cut, copy, paste: Apple has now admitted they wanted to put this in, so the omission must have been a desperate decision
• tasks: If they couldn't add tasks, then they were beyond cutting features and deep into slashing organs (emphasis mine):
  

More hints from early users:

Entirely Random Notes On iPhone 2.0 - Inside iPhone Blog

... There appear to be crashing bugs with both many third party applications themselves, as well as the OS itself. Prior to updating to 2.0, I can't recall the last time my iPhone reset. I've seen it a half dozen times already so far, however.

Searching in Contacts is nice. However, I find I still generally just scroll for the contact, and the search doesn't look inside each contact, just at the name...

Search only looks at contact names.

It must have been really, really, ugly in Cupertino over the past few months.

I'm definitely feeling sympathy for the iPhone development team. They must be toast. It's going to take more than a few months to get things patched up. Corporate customers are going to want to hold off on significant deployments until next year.

Update: More death march evidence

• camera probelms, accelerometer failure, bug fix update already pending
  

iPhone availability widget

Minnesota is among the 21 states with no current iPhone availability.

What a nuisance.

Apple has a widget that works only after 9pm (local time?) to check local Apple Store stocks:

Apple Retail Store - iPhone availability at the Apple Store

Check availability after 9:00 p.m. the night before you plan to visit an Apple Retail Store.

Get there early. Shipments arrive most days, but be sure to arrive early since iPhone 3G is sold on a first come, first served basis.

I'd prefer to buy at an AT&T store due to the tactical complexity of AT&T's deliberately evil contracts, but I suspect Apple stores are getting more shipments. AT&T is not offering a similar availability widget, they suggest payment up front and they'll hold a phone when it arrives. Fortune reports they have no phones anywhere, and no word on when they'll receive any.

I'd pay to reserve at an AT&T except I know AT&T is so Satanic that Hell itself could not abide them. (Apple, on the other hand, is merely a close confidante of Beelzebub. AT&T store staff, in my experience, are quite good btw.)

Update 7/15/08 9pm: no iPhones available in Minnesota. Ok, 1 8GB white.
Update 7/16/0810pm: none at all

Epocrates Rx is out for the iPhone (and iTouch)

Epocrates Rx is available for the iPhone.

Not the web version -- the true iPhone client.

Free medical PDA software: Epocrates Rx for iPhone / iPod touch:

• Apple iPhone/iPod touch with OS 2.0
• Minimum available memory 8 MB
• 20K per free health plan formulary selected

This is only for healthcare professionals -- Epocrates makes its money based on prescriber licensees.

It's a big deal for physicians, my wife couldn't switch from her Palm to her Blackberry Pearl until Epocrates was available for the Pearl. My friend Andrew keeps his Palm for the same reason.

The iPhone is going to be really big in healthcare; this is one important landmark. As soon as the line dies down and I can get my phone, I'll give it a try. It's distributed by the Apple Store (free), but you need an Epocrates account to use it.

Find unchecked songs in iTunes -- still need this workaround

Three years after this clever hint was written, there's still no other way to find all unchecked items in iTunes. You can't directly sort or filter on checked status.

This becomes important when your Library outgrows your iPod. Movies can do that to any iPod. (Note that the tip works up to 99,999 items and you need to first define all checked to find all unchecked.)

macosxhints.com - Use a Smart Playlist to see unchecked songs in iTunes

Part 1: Create a playlist with all checked songs in your library:

1. Create a new Smart Playlist in iTunes.
2. Uncheck "Match the following condition" in the new playlist dialog. This will cause all songs to be in the playlist.
3. Check the box by "Limit to" and fill it out with a very large number -- one that is much larger than the number of songs in your library (say, 300,000). Again, this will cause the playlist to include ALL songs.
4. Check "Match only Checked Songs" and leave "Live Updating" checked. This will only match songs that are checked.
5. Click OK and name the Playlist "Songs (Checked)".

This playlist now includes all the checked songs in your library.

Part 2: Create a playlist with all the unchecked songs in your library:

1. Create a new Smart Playlist in iTunes.
2. This time, leave "Match the following condition" checked.
3. As the condition, select "Playlist is not 'Songs (Checked)'"
4. Click OK and name the Playlist "Songs (Unchecked)".

Apple, please make the checkbox state a full fledged column/attribute.

PS. This tip surprisingly hard to find in Google. I first went through several forum posts that had no answers. Maybe this post will help. Comments also include an AppleScript alternative and some interesting workarounds to iPod management.

The problem with tabbed browsing ...

I'm used to applications containing related windows.

So at work Word has documents, Excel has spreadsheets, Outlook has email, Explorer has files, etc.

So I tab between apps, then navigate tabs within apps.

This breaks down in the world of tabbed browsers. Do I tab between browser windows, or click within a window between tabs? How do I mix browser tabs with applications outside the browser? How do I organize windows into OS X Space?

It doesn't help that even FF 3 hasn't learned from the OmniWeb example of hierarchical views of windows and tabs, allowing reorganization at least within a browser space.

I need a better conceptual model for organizing like this -- views of documents, views of spreadsheets, etc. The tabbed browser approach was a good start, but it's only a start.

There's nothing new here of course, but it really is time to think differently. I'm inclined now to think that we need to get rid of tabs and certainly, absolutely, get rid of the "application owns the window" model.

Just give me windows. Then let me use OS X spaces, and the ability to navigate and reorganize the windows within spaces. In any app I need to be able to see all windows owned by the app, to expedite finding and organizing what I'm interested in.

Moving Outlook/Palm contacts to the iPhone via MobileMe

iTunes reads in Outlook data (which can sync with a Palm PDA), then sends it to MobileMe. No mention is made of calendar, notes or task synchronization. iTunes by itself has some capability to browse calendar data, but I’ve never tested that.

TUAW Review: MobileMe - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

…Windows and MobileMe: Windows and MobileMe play surprisingly nicely together. MobileMe comes pre-packaged with iTunes 7.7 for Windows, and lives as a Control Panel item. You can then choose to sync contacts, email, and bookmarks. For bookmarks, you can choose which browser to sync with, and MobileMe works with Safari (of course), Firefox, and Internet Explorer 7. IE7, though, doesn't work a hundred percent with the web apps, so Apple recommends you use Safari or Firefox instead. For more information about how to connect your Windows computer to MobileMe, you can visit Apple's MobileMe support page.

I couldn’t find anything more on the MobileMe support page. I’ll update this post if I find more details in Apple’s kb or support. I’ve yet to purchase MobileMe – waiting until it’s been stabilized.