The Syncing Apple An Exploration of Technology and Devices

Entourage Sync with Treo650

So I just switched yesterday from iSync & Addressbook/iCal syncing to Entourage. I'll miss Mail.app the most, but I'm tired of not having syncing Categories. Already I like having them back. The syncing works well, and I'm enjoying using Entourage 2004. Its project view is very helpful for the work I'm doing now. The only downside so far is that the Notes sync doesn't work, and the whole Entourage Conduit is all or nothing: I can't choose to not use its Notepad sync, and choose to use the Mark/Space Notepad, which was really nice.

I just noticed this interesting looking iSync module: e2Sync. It claims to sync Entourage with iSync, so you have use all these apps and keep them synced, even sync multiple Entourage installations via .Mac. This looks very interesting.

USB Sync and the Mac

I've been having an issue with my Mac and the Treo650 for a while now: the USB sync stops working. I know it's related to the Mac OSX doing something loopy with USB, because for the past two versions of OSX my USB has been flaky-- devices stop working, the T650 won't even charge (on a powered hub). After a reboot I can sync for a while, usually a day, then it stops.

So there was a nice new version of Chatter Email Client (which is almost ready for its 1.0 release) that I needed to install, and the USB flaked out. I didn't feel like rebooting my Mac-- since I've had it back with the new Power supply, I've been happy to be able to have it run for days and days.... but I needed to sync now. So I spent a few moments and got the BT Sync working, which turns out to be a breeze with MissingSync.

First I tried to stop and re-start the MissingSync 'usb watcher' process, which shows up as:

root      187   0:01.86 /Library/Application Support/Missing Sync for Palm OS/MissingSyncMounting

But no matter what I did, killing and restarting that would not kick over the USB and allow the T650 to sync.

So I quickly setup a new BT connection profile on the T650. In it I searched for an found my previousy bonded G5, which I bonded using the Bluetooth Assistant in OSX. But How to make MissingSync sync? The trick I found was to enable the Menu icon for MissingSync (a preference option). With that in my menu bar, I had a choice to sync. Choosing that after telling the T650 to sync started my sync going.

I had forgotten how slow BT syncs are on the Mac... they are slowwwwwwww. USB is at least 10 - 20 times faster. I'm still waiting here for this sync to finish up.