New Competition
Certain parts of the internets have been abuzz with news that OS X 10.5.3 adds Gmail sync to Address Book. Yes, it’s true… there’s a new gorilla in the room. However, I believe there are some very convincing reasons to use Syncman instead of this new competition:
- For whatever reason, Apple requires that you have (and sync) an iPhone or iPod Touch to take advantage of the built-in Gmail syncing. Syncman of course makes no such requirements.
- Syncman respects the effort you’ve put into maintaining your Address Book, and therefore gets your confirmation before making any changes that could potentially cause you a whole bunch of headache. I’ve read a few reports of disgruntled users unhappy with Apple’s offering.
- Wateree Software is a small and agile company that can adjust quickly to our customers needs and desires. We already have a nice list of upcoming features for 1.1 based on user feedback.
So there you have it. Of course, I welcome any further suggestions on what will set us apart from the alternatives. Just drop me an email or leave a comment here. Competition will only make us better!
May 29th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
Some enhancements I can suggest to justify the $15..
1. If you can sync with an LDAP server - like freeldap.org - their developers are vry responsive..
2. If you can sync groups - mobile phone etc.
AM
May 29th, 2008 at 8:28 pm
This looks promising, and the price is about right. I have a few issues:
1. Please make the results windows resizable! I have lots of contacts and it’s a pain to view them in a little box.
2. Add a way so it’s possible to manually “link” two contacts, and run the sync algorithm again. I have lots of contacts under slightly (or wildly) different names, and I’d like to be able to map them at sync-time, rather than sync, fix, re-sync.
May 29th, 2008 at 8:40 pm
Thanks for the suggestions!
@AM
1) Do you mean uploading to Gmail contacts that are available through LDAP in Address Book?
2) Groups sync has to wait until Google supports that. Not sure what you mean with mobile phones… Syncman syncs all types of phone numbers.
@Orestis
1) True, you kind of forget that this might be an issue once things are “in sync” and there are only a few changes now and then.
2) Good idea, but that’s a pretty complicated feature. A first step in that direction will probably be to offer editing of contacts from within the changes list.
May 29th, 2008 at 10:50 pm
Hey, good stuff so far but a few ideas for improvement.
1.) Checkboxes for each contact, pick who will actually be synced.
2.) Editing of contacts within the sync view
3.) Show what data is being added/merged. A contact is being pdated, what is it updating?
This has some good potential, will be keeping an eye on it ^_^
May 30th, 2008 at 10:17 am
With regard to group syncing.
It would be really handy to only sync a particular group of AddressBook contacts to my Gmail account.
So for example I have a Gmail account for work and one for Personal use. I would like to setup two groups in Address Book so that one syncs with my work Gmail account and the other syncs with my Personal Gmail Account.
If you could do this I would be very interested in your product.
My take on the Apple offering is that its a beta feature at best. I did the sync and I now have a whole bunch of blank named contacts in GMail for each of my organisation entries in AddressBook. Clearly GMail does not support this type of entry yet so why would apple choose to push them up. Very silly. And they also will sync all or nothing. Not good.
Just so you know, I am looking for the killer Address Book sync tool that will give me a proper shared address book in a Mac only environment that does not require .Mac or any other third party server infrastructure. There is nothing out there that quite does this right yet.
Good luck with you app its certainly needed.
May 30th, 2008 at 11:13 am
@Phil & @Jason
You guys pretty much just nailed my comment about “a nice list of upcoming features”. Maybe not all in 1.1, but down the road at least. So be sure to stay tuned!
May 31st, 2008 at 2:27 am
Syncman rocks, no question it’s better then what the 10.5.3 update provides.
In addition to Phil and Jason’s suggestions (a couple which I’d also suggested to Jeff previously), I’d love the option to run syncman from the menubar instead of the dock (seems more appropriate for a syncing app).
Keep up the good work Jeff.
June 1st, 2008 at 12:14 pm
Syncman can’t sync postal address. This is a serious limitation.
June 1st, 2008 at 3:44 pm
Hi Pere, you’re right, for a certain set of users this is probably a deal breaker. Converting between a free-form address (Gmail) and address components (Address Book) is a very difficult task. That doesn’t mean it won’t get added to Syncman, just that there are a few other features which I think are more important and therefore have a higher priority. Thanks for your feedback.
June 6th, 2008 at 7:55 am
Bought Syncman yesterday after weighing it against the competition. You win.
Today the SpanningSync people claimed they have contact pictures added to the sync. Has Google enhanced its API to allow for that? Do you plan on adding picture synchronisation, too?
Just curious.
Thanks, and keep up the good work!
C.
June 6th, 2008 at 9:33 am
Hi Carlo, thanks a ton! The short answer is ‘yes’ and ‘yes’.
The only downside is that I can’t tell you exactly when. Google decided to enhance their API right when I was in the middle of some other major changes, so I have to finish those up before starting with photo sync and a few other things that are now possible. But I can guarantee you that it will come eventually, as I’m dying for photo sync myself.
June 20th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
[...] developers of third-party Address Book-Gmail syncing apps are soldiering on. Both SpanningSync and Syncman developers point out that 10.5.3 offers this only for Leopard users and, even then, only for [...]