The Kaptain on … stuff

One of the truly stellar features in Mac OS X Leopard is the ‘sync’ of information between computers. I use multiple computers in different locations and having the ability to access a common Address Book, iCal, etc is invaluable.

In particular, when I bought a new Macbook Pro not so long ago, the sync allowed me to turn on the laptop, plug in an ethernet cable and enter my MobileMe identity – and that was it. When the sync was done, I immediately had access to my wireless network at home (KeyChain passwords sync’d seamlessly) – no trying to find, copy down and manually transfer my encryption key! That in particular is handy since I have over a dozen wireless network configurations stored.

Another nice to have, since my employer uses an Outlook system for email, was the Entourage sync. Or at least it would be if the damn thing didn’t keep duplicating all of my calendar entries and contacts! When I noticed it the first time I said to myself : “not perfect, but I can live with it for the convenience it provides”. By the time I started getting calendar events showing up on my iPhone for the fourth time, I said enough was enough and went Googling.

Starting with this article on the Entourage support page, I ended up reading this over on MacWorld, which brought me to the iCal Dupe Deleter. That took care of the iCal problem in under 20 minutes with less than 10 button clicks. Not bad – tnx to the creator of that software John Maisey, it worked fast, correctly and exactly as advertised.

I haven’t yet done the same for the iPhone, but it looks like iTunes supports a sync option to just replace the info on the phone and start anew, so I anticipate no problems.

Seeing as how it appears that neither Microsoft or Apple have anything planned to address this obvious problem in the software interaction(strange that those two don’t see eye to eye), it’s fantastic that the community out there in intarweb land is so great at sharing ways to address it. So let Mac and Windows fight over my stuff, I still win. Nyah nyah!