Saturday, February 16, 2008

OS X 10.5.2 breaks sync services again: new upgrade rule

One of the benefits of reading the Spanning Sync blog is that it's the "canary in the coal mine". Apple routinely breaks everything, but the company seems to have special hatred for synchronization functions.

So it's not surprising that 10.5.2 fixes some sync services bugs, only to introduce new bugs:

Spanning Sync Blog: Mac OS X 10.5.2 Fixes Some Bugs, Introduces Others

This week Apple released Mac OS X Update 10.5.2, and while it fixes the notorious Leopard iCal bug present in 10.5 and 10.5.1, it introduces another bug with identical symptoms, plus others:

  • Synchronized events are not reflected in iCal
  • Endless sync conflicts when syncing with .Mac
  • Duplicate calendars

Our Mac software architect Larry Hendricks has posted a comprehensive discussion of the new problems caused by 10.5.2 and their solutions to the Spanning Sync Google Group.

Apple is aware of these issues, which affect not only Spanning Sync but also applications like Plaxo, Entourage, BusySync, and .Mac itself, and is reportedly working on fixes.

Lots of problems.

Synchronization is very hard to do right, and quite easy to screw up. Apple's been doing the latter, so I'm guessing they've got their "A team" working somewhere else.

I've long said I won't go to "Leopard" until 10.5.3, but now I'm adding a new rule: 10.5.3 or later with Spanning Sync blessings.

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