Replacing Mobile Me with Google Sync

Thanks to a fairly new project, Google Sync, I am now nolonger interested in a mobile me account.

It wasn’t the storage which interested me, and I am happy with picassa over Apple’s equivalent. But I use multiple computers, and I wanted the same calendar and mail on each computer and my iphone, and mobile me seemed the best way to do it. But now with Apple’s Address book able to sync with google, and Google Sync for the phone. I have all of my computers and iPhone syncing with the Google cloud, and staying in sync with each other.

Google Sync is also good news for linux users, allowing syncs without itunes. I think I’ll write a howto for linux users soon.

Read on for a how to.

First Steps

• Sync you iPhone to you Mac. Both now have the current Address Book and Calendar data.
• Turn off Address Book syncing and Calendar syncing in iTunes. We will no longer be syncing our data this way.

iCal Sync

This is probably the easiest step.

• Export your ical calendar to a .ics file on your computers
• Log in to Google Calendar go to your settings and import your just exported ics file. Your Google and Off-line calendars now match.
• Setup your ical to sync with Google Calendar. To do this I simply folowed the instructions here.
• You should now have 2 calendars setup. When you are happy that the Google one is correct you can delete the old one.
• Now all of your events entered in iCal will be stored on Google’s calendar server.

Address Book Sync

This one is a little more difficult. For a computer you have plugged an iphone into for syncing you can simply tick a box in the Address Book preferences. The point is I want this to work for computers who do not sync to my iPhone normally. Also it can only be initiated by syncing the phone.

• Open a Terminal and type:
  $ defaults write ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iPod Devices -dict-add foo '{ "Device Class" = iPod; "Family ID" = 10001; }'
• Now open Address Book. Now under Address Book preferences you can select to sync with Google.
• Back at the terminal type
  $ sudo defaults write /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/GoogleContactSync.framework/Resources/ClientDescription Type server
  This changes the way the sync behaves.
• Add the Sync Menu Bar app. Open the Finder and run: Macintosh HD -> System -> Library -> CoreServices -> Menu Extras -> Sync.menu
• Run a Sync from the Menu Button, You Google Address Book is synced with you Mac one. Clean it up, and sync again.

On The iPhone

• Follow Google’s instructions here.
• When asked, allow the iPhone to delete the existing contacts and events, otherwise you will have doubles of everything.

All Done! Now a change online, or from any computer or iphone will be synced to all others. Admittedly not quite as simple as MobileMe, but free is good.