Google Sync: Better than MobileMe
February 10, 2009
Yesterday, Google unveiled a new service called (simply) Sync that updates your contacts and calendars between your wireless phone and the Google servers instantly and over the air. And guess what: it works! Guess what else: it’s free!
That’s more than can be said for Apple’s $99 per year MobileMe service. I tried MobileMe for three months, and it just never worked. I don’t care about the 10GB of web space (have my own servers, or something like DropBox), I don’t care about the email account (uh, GMail), and I don’t care about the fancy photo galleries (I’ve got Flickr and my own gallery). The biggest thing I need is my contacts and calendar data everywhere, on every computer I use, and on my iPhone. MobileMe failed spectacularly in that respect — syncs were inconsistent, would sometimes replicate data, and just could never be depended upon to replicate data reliably from one device to another.
Google Sync works on the iPhone, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, S60, and a handful of other devices. It utilizes the broadly adapted Microsoft Exchange wireless sync protocols (thank you, Microsoft) and is relatively easy to setup (Google has basic instructions for all devices). And after more than 24 hours on my iPhone, I’m quite happy with it.
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