WizardHowl

Not exactly. If you have an Iphone or Itouch, the option becomes available for address book to sync with google contacts. However people have worked out a hack, which I haven't tried yet, but it seems pretty easy.

Hack:
Lifehacker - Enable Google Contact Sync Without an iPhone or iPod Touch - Address Book

EeZeEpEe

CalDAV is cool cause it's free but here are some of it's limitations:
Spanning Sync also supports existing iCal calendars, read-only Google calendars, MobileMe sharing, Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger", and true Mac-to-cloud "push", none of which are supported by Google CalDAV.

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WizardHowl

Hey eezeepee, what exactly does "true mac to cloud push" mean? Sorry I'm not amazing with this cloud stuff. How does it differ from caldav?

EeZeEpEe

Honestly, I just copied and pasted that from Spanning Sync so I'm not so sure what they meant by it. lol. Here's Spanning Sync Blog: Top 4 Reasons Spanning Sync is Better than Google CalDAV but if anything only the last one, Contact Sync, is important to me. I don't care about the making money, iPhone, and customer support.

Top 4 Reasons Spanning Sync is Better than Google CalDAV

We've gotten several emails asking how Google's CalDAV support compares to Spanning Sync. There are a number of important differences, but here are the ones that we think will affect the most people:

Cost
Google CalDAV is free, and what could be better than free? Simple: something that makes you money, which is exactly what the Spanning Sync does with our Save 5+Make 5 program.

Several people have already made over $1,000 just by including their personal referral code in blog posts, Twitter tweets, and comments. Brian Dusablon is one of those people, and here's what he had to say:

It's pretty easy to get four referrals, and if you get five or more, you're at a profit already. [Within eight weeks] I hit $1,000. I'm donating half to charity, and I'm buying a Drobo.
We think saving money is great, but making money is even better.

iPhone Support
Calendars synchronized using CalDAV become read-only on iPhone. One of our customers recently rolled out 700 iPhones and 200 iPod touches. This lack of iPhone compatibility makes Google's CalDAV solution a non-starter for them, and for anyone else looking for bidirectional sync between iPhone and Google Calendar.

Calendars synchronized with Spanning Sync are editable on Google Calendar, iCal, and the iPhone calendar, and changes made in any of those places will show up on all three (after syncing your iPhone using iTunes or MobileMe).

Customer Support
Sync is inherently complex, but when problems do crop up they can usually be solved quickly with just a little customer support. Unfortunately, Google doesn't provide any. They've even said publicly that it's "not feasible" for them to respond to individual requests for support.

At Spanning Sync, we provide support our customers have called "tremendous", "excellent", and "stellar", regardless of whose software is causing the problem: Google's, Apple's, or ours.

Contact Sync
Spanning Sync syncs not only calendars but also contacts, including contact photos. Click here to see a video. And of course contact sync works great with or without iPhone, just like our calendar sync.

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anotherjpeg

So how are tasks/todos handled if you go the CalDAV - Google Calendar route? Do your iCal todos show up in Google Calendar and vice versa? When Google announced CalDAV support back in the day, todo lists weren't a feature of Google Calendar. They are now but I'm wondering if they sync with iCal.

Thanks.

Mikest

Thanks for creating this thread. As a future Pre owner and Mac user I wondered about this as well. Google Calender already allows you to import .ics files from iCal and you can import contacts from Address book using a program called A to G. Im new to smart phones but those two options look like they'll just get your information in, to keep it constantly in Sync it looks like Spanning Sync is your best option. Am I understanding this correctly? The videos for Spanning Sync look pretty good.

Another question from a noob. Will your google gmail contacts be added to the Pre's contacts list? Ive seen the demos where it can pull contacts from Facebook but wasn't sure about Gmail.

Thanks.

EeZeEpEe

Yes it will. That's the whole point of synergy. It can take contacts from multiple sources.

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Mikest

My inner nerd craves synergy.

WizardHowl

Hey I've never used to do lists before, but I just tried making one, and it wouldn't let me sync with my google calendar.

Something else I just noticed with CalDav, I can't make any calendars on iCal and have it sync with googlecalendar. However, I can make a calendar on google calendar, and have it show up in iCal, and then everything works fine that way. So I guess if I want to use CalDav, I can only create a new calendar on GoogleCalendar.

Anyone else run into this?

ADGrant

Sounds like you should just buy an iPhone.

zmerahn

I am pretty sure Spanning sync lists this as a limitation of CalDav. I think Spanning Sync fixes this.

EeZeEpEe

RIGHT! That's the one thing I definitely didn't like when I tried out CalDAV. Plus all my current iCal calendars would have to be exported first into Google then synced back into iCal.

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EeZeEpEe

This is a "Pre + Mac users" thread you know. There actually are Mac users who want the Pre and not an iPhone. If the Pre shows up in iTunes that would good enough for me.

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rumz

Yeah. I've seen other mp3 players show up in iTunes before. You don't get the full range of options that iPods have with regards to syncing and what not, but if I could even just drag and drop mp3s onto the Pre from iTunes (and the Pre has an intelligent way of sorting my mp3s based on their tags), then I'll be fine. I don't plan on the Pre being my primary music device anyways (already use a 160gb iPod and iPod Touch on a regular basis). As far as phones and PDA's go, though, I'd much rather have a Pre than an iPhone.

As far as contacts and calendars go... I've looked at spanning sync in the past as a way to sync up my Palm 755p with my phone, but it wasn't important enough to spend money on it, so I've maintained 2 different calendars-- a personal calendar on my phone, and my work Calendar that I access via Entourage. I've never really made use of iCal or Address book, so I can't say I'm worried about syncing them with the Pre. If the Pre will let me grab my work calendar from the exchange server and then sync up with Google Calendar and Google contacts / gmail, I'll be in great shape.

zmerahn

Does anyone know if there is a way to stop gmail from automatically adding new email address that you reply to to your contacts. I want to give spanning Sync a try, but want to resolve this issue first. I dont want every address I reply to ending up in my contacts/ Address Book.

rumz

Yeah I took a peek at my Gmail contacts the other day and it's a ridiculous list of both outdated email addresses and people I wouldn't want in my phone contacts. I'll have to look into that...

ADGrant

Does a USB drive show up in iTunes? If so I would expect the Pre to behave the same way.

BTW I am aware that this is a "Pre + Mac users" thread and that some Mac users are interested in the Pre (perhaps because it is new). However, anyone who lists iTunes as one of their top three priorities and Web browsing as another should really be looking at the iPhone. Web browsing will be excellent on either phone, email on the Pre is unknown and iTunes/iPod functionality will be much better on the iPhone. Integration with Apple's desktop PIM apps will also work better on the iPhone. The Pre will work about as well with a Mac as it will with a PC, not well at all.

Urkel

I use Sync Mate to get my Mac and HTC Touch Pro sync'd. It does the job but it doesn't do it perfectly, and that's why native support is so important. Synergy seems cool but considering my Mac <-> Google contacts aren't syncing profie pics and screws up some fields then I'd much rather just connect directly without a 3rd party conduit.

Pre showing up in iTunes is my dream solution but Apple doesn't tend to play nice with non-Apple products. Even with the 12step solutions people will come up with, a problem I see is podcasts. iPods/iTunes knows where you pause which makes it easy to continue later but many mp3 apps just lose the positioning once you stop the audio and for podcasts that's a pain.

Merovingian

At this time we have no clue about any desktop sync software, so no news there. More details will arrive concerning this.

I can only assume that the Pre will support vCards (since that's how i've always exported from Address Book and imported into my Palm devices).

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EeZeEpEe

As I stated previously, Spanning Sync does syncing contact photos.

Screencast: Syncing Contact Photos with Spanning Sync v2.0

Note:
The video is old and Spanning Sync 2.0 is available now.

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