Comments on: Google Sync Beta Now Available for iPhone

By: James

James — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 09:37:22 +0000

Yeh, the obvious – you don’t have Outlook installed. In order to sync iTunes with MS Outlook, it has to be installed on your computer.

Here is what you need to do:
Setup Outlook with an email address (OutLook does most POP3/IMAP emails as well as Exchange).
THEN sync to Outlook, then to BB.

As for the Gmail Contact sync issue, check your settings again (try deleting and recreating).

To be honest, a detailed explanation would be something like this:
Stick with the iPhone. Ditch the BB. :P

By: Lisa

Lisa — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 05:00:20 +0000

have an Iphone 3G and I’m wanting to switch to the Blackberry Bold but need to be able to transfer my contacts form the iphone to the BB. Everywhere I look it says to sync it on itunes to outlook and then use the BB to sync to outlook as well. But im having trouble doing this. I synced my iphone contacts with outlook, but i dont have an actual outlook acct on my computer will that matter? (i have a regular old Dell with windows XP). I got the Google sync on my iphone now but arent my contacts supposed to show up in my Gmail account now? I logged onto my gmail on my laptop and no contacts have been added…please advise! Also in itunes i put that it should sync my contacts with outlook. Was this correct? I tohught I had to to go with the google sync?

an anyone give me a very detailed explanation on how to do this?

By: macguitarman

macguitarman — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 12:18:43 +0000

The iPhone only allows (one) MS Exchange Active Sync account at a time, so if you already have one set up for work (for example), this is not going to work

By: Google Sync Gets Push Gmail Support On the iPhone

Google Sync Gets Push Gmail Support On the iPhone — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 16:10:19 +0000

[...] Google Sync? It’s the service from Google which allows you to synchronize your contacts and calendar with [...]

By: Aamy

Aamy — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 13:47:13 +0000

Hey guys, check this iphone app for less than 1000 contacts – syncs groups – sync in a blink

By: James

James — Thu, 28 May 2009 18:53:45 +0000

Hey Tom!

Nice post! I’ve been doing this for around 2 months and noticed all those issues Matt mentioned. Just thought I’d say that to get Next-Generation CP you need to set your language to English US. I’m in the U.K., but due to “americanization” everything I say is practically American anyway!

But hey, nice post! I did a tutorial on howto setup Google Sync on YouTube (see my site for details of my YouTube account!).

As for the Mail, I know that doesn’t work but you can set it up so your mail comes every 15 mins via Fetch and the Calendars and Contacts push. It’s almost MobileMe. I’m surprised Apple have allowed this! But it’s none the less awesome! Saving me $99 a year!!

By: Free MobileMe Alternative: How to Set Up Google Sync for Mac and iPhone

Free MobileMe Alternative: How to Set Up Google Sync for Mac and iPhone — Wed, 13 May 2009 21:02:03 +0000

[...] like Microsoft Exchange (what you unfortunately probably use at the office). This new service, Google Sync, offers the same seamless integration between your computer and mobile phone. It’s fast, [...]

By: Tom

Tom — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 06:47:09 +0000

If you’re a Google Apps user, you’ll need to enable Google Sync in the control panel. If you don’t have an option called “Mobile Settings” under “Service Settings” on the control panel, you need to set your control panel to “Next Generation”.

By: Bertil

Bertil — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 13:05:36 +0000

Brian: sorry, but when I click on that link, I end up with a page that says that my phone (iPhone 2G, OS 2.2) isn’t supported. :(

By: Matt Hoult

Matt Hoult — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 23:05:42 +0000

Thanks for the comments Brian. I had been told earlier today about the 5 calendar thing; I missed that thanks to the poor layout of the Google help/promo. That makes more sense.

Photos still don’t sync though. I mean, I know they sync from the cloud to the phone, but they don’t sync from Address Book to the cloud. I know this isn’t an issue with the new service, but it didn’t matter before. For me, it’s all about Googles services working with rich local apps. It’s still a fail for me.

By: Brian Weith

Brian Weith — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 21:27:17 +0000

Matt… Multi-calendar syncing is supported. It currently supports up to five Google calendars. You need to visit http://m.google.com/sync on your iPhone to choose which calendars to sync. It works great. You can create new events on your iPhone and choose which calendar it should be added to. Google/Apple is working on overcoming the limitation of five calendars.

Photo sync for contacts is supported if you upload the photos to your Google contacts. Not bad.

The lack of synchronizing contact groups is a huge show-stopper for me. Fortunately I can use the calendar functions separately from the contacts.

Looking forward to future enhancements…

By: Matt Hoult

Matt Hoult — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 21:35:25 +0000

I have been hoping (I thought in vein) for this to come to the iPhone ever since I moved to Google Apps for my personal domain a while ago. It’s not quite as expected however. I found the following issues in testing:

* No email (this feature is currently not turned on server side)
* No contact groups syncing to the iPhone
* No photo sync for contacts from Apple’s Address Book application
* No multi-calendar syncing support to iPhone (everything is pulled down as one single calendar who’s colour is always red as far as I can tell)
* No search results appear (iPhone or web) when searching for something from the notes section of Address Book synced contacts

Some of this (such as the calendar thing) doesn’t compare to MobileMe or true ActiveSync Exchange and appears to be a limitation of NuevaSync which Google is using to get the data back and forth. I don’t expect fixes for this soon.

I was surprised to find that my Favs (in the Phone app) have remained in tact even though I removed MobileMe syncing. The Google contacts simply took their place which was pretty cool. SSL is also on by default which is nice. Other than that the service seems stable and reliable not to mention fast. Quite impressive but still missing key features.

Oh, and you can set up MobileMe and then add Exchange or the other way around without issue. I have had this setup with our corporate Exchange at work for months. Email, contacts and calendars all appear separately, though you can show an “all” view for contacts and calendars which integrates all calendars on both services.

By: Prasant

Prasant — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 20:03:00 +0000

“which is now available for the iPhone (and Windows Mobile, but c’mon, honestly)”

There are many full Apple users that have Windows mobile phones, me included (htc touch pro). For me, this release was big because it supported windows mobile (and for others Syncml phones for contacts only). I know this is the Apple Blog, but Apple products work/interact with non-apple products as well and it would be nice to have those mentioned for the many of us that use them.

As far the google sync goes, it seems to work very well. One less thing to worry about.

Thanks.

By: MacSheikh

MacSheikh — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 01:09:10 +0000

While i agree with Tom that MobileMe offers so much more, having these kind of services on the cheap or free makes MobileMe’s asking price so much more difficult to swallow. And these cheap/free offerings are only going to get better.

I know there are lots of people who are already paying for MobileMe. All I’m saying is that the current price doesn’t seem to be anywhere near the sweet spot for most people I know.

By: Tom Reestman

Tom Reestman — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 22:49:15 +0000

“Have no fear, Google’s here.”

Actually, I tend to get a little more “scared” when Google shows up. Just last week I blew away Picasa beta from my Mac because the fine folks at Google installed an update app, without asking, and if you track it down and blow it away it just reinstalls itself. No, thanks.

“if Google builds this out a little more, and manages to add support for any of its other web services, I’d say MobileMe has good reason to shake in its proverbial boots.”

I’m sure it’ll stay “beta” for years, and so absolve Google of any issues it may have. Besides, MMe is so much more than contact, calendar and mail sync that the two are only comparable for those who use only basic mobile syncing.

Of course, those are just my views. YMMV. :-)