Microsoft shows Apple how to do integrated work home calendars

Bravo evil empire!

It's good to have Microsoft in the game.

Microsoft Makes Calendar Sync Work - ReadWriteWeb

... For someone who uses an Outlook calendar at work, keeps a personal calendar in Hotmail, and perhaps has a shared family calendar in Live Calendar, this new sync tool will be incredibly useful. Whether you're online or offline, all your calendars are available from one place: Outlook....

Are you listening Apple?

The Windows Live Beta calendar will subscribe to ICS feeds (ex. Google Calendar). It can be shared as a web page and it will provide ICS and XML feeds.

Hmm.

I've been so annoyed by Apple's crappy support for iPhone calendaring, tasks and notes, and the corresponding MobileMe flop (which, even if it worked, would not suffice), that I've even thought of returning my iPhone. I won't, I'll give it a few months.

But maybe I won't spend those months trying to make Apple's feeble iCal work. If Apple does fix the currently broken iPhone Outlook sync (I think they will), then I could just sync my iPhone to Outlook 2007 at home and start using Live Calendar.

I could even start by synchronizing Outlook with Windows Live, then subscribing to the Windows Live calendar from our Google Apps family calendar.

Then if Apple continues to bury the iPhone, I might see what works with Windows Live...

Maybe I should buy shares in Microsoft. They're starting to look warm and fuzzy.

Update: gCal is published with the https:// protocol. To view in iCal or Windows Live Calendar (beta) change https to http. I also see it takes a very long time to get all the events to cross the feed.