Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Software
.Mac syncing UI silliness
Today's "what were you thinking, Apple?" is brought to you by the .Mac System Preference pane, iSync and that "Sync Services wants to sync more than X% of your items" popup window.
In case you can't figure out the silliness that is the image I've included with this post (and I don't blame you), it's a combination of the .Mac System Preference Pane (on left), the .Mac tab of iSync (bottom right), and iSync's preferences that allow me to chose the Data Change Alert percentage threshold (top left).
I recently added about 200 notes to Yojimbo on my iMac that I exported out of an old copy of StickyBrain a while ago. On my PowerBook, this obviously triggered the .Mac Sync warning of "you're about to change more than 5% of your data, are you sure you want to do this?" dialog. I then thought to myself: "hmm, since I change a lot of my .Mac stuff on a regular basis, maybe I should increase that percentage so this dialog doesn't bother me again."
I haven't done this in a while, but since I came up through Jaguar and Panther I was used to tweaking .Mac stuff in iSync. So I strolled on over to the .Mac tab in iSync to - oh but wait! As you can see in the bottom right of my screenshot, it sounds like iSync is no longer used to manage .Mac information. Woops, my mistake. Maybe I should open up the .Mac System Preference pane to - wait a minute... I don't see any place in that preference pane to tweak the Data Change Alert setting!
By now you probably get where I'm going with this, so I'll just leave you with a question: how on earth did this happen, Apple? With Tiger, you said that you unified and improved the .Mac user experience... by sending me to three different locations and preference systems to get this figured out?
Here's hoping Leopard brings with it the Mac-daddy (haha) of updates to one of your most-pimped features of OS X.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Victor Agreda, Jr. said 9:45PM on 4-03-2006
Yea, verrily, Apple did give us the iSync.
And on the first rev, it was good.
On the second day, Mac fans rejoiced, and hardware makers made good on delivery of devices that worked with Macs.
On the third day, another iSync update added features and support.
And then, on the fourth day, it all went to hell in a handbasket.
Latest versions of .Mac synchro have killed sync with a few of my (previously working with sync) devices. To add insult to injury, now there's the arrangement of geegaws you're talking about.
It's a mess. Apple, fix this. Please. Either kill iSync as an application (boo, hiss!), or fix the Sys Pref panel (really, that seems silly).
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icerabbit said 10:56PM on 4-03-2006
Glad somebody finally brings that one out in the open.
Can't understand that one either. Plus I've had sync irregularities between systems & .mac which I didn't use to have.
Too bad we generally have to wait for another 10.x for things to substantially improve.
PS: May I ask to consider highlighting the issues with Fax next ? Since 10.4 it is nearly useless with a new autocomplete bug (from addressbook) which replaces typed numbers with the first letter of contact persons.
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Todd said 11:50PM on 4-03-2006
Though it's weird and off-putting, I think they left that part in iSync so that people wouldn't panic when they opened the updated isync and saw that .mac had disappeared. That said, a one time dialog box saying that the move to preferences had happened would have been a lot cleaner.
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starwxrwx said 4:59AM on 4-04-2006
The problem with the move to Sys Prefs is that it has a tendancy to hang on the .mac pane
Also, I find .mac syncing tends to go through various moods, where sometimes it will sync my RSS bookmark status and sometimes it won't. Sometimes it also asks me to change calendar events back and forth for a few days
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Raphael said 7:03AM on 4-04-2006
I wondered about that too. It certainly did happen when they split iPod, .mac and cell phone syncing to three different places with iTunes 4.9 and Tiger. But it's even weirder than what you found out:
The iSync preferences window has an option to show status in the menu bar which puts two spinning arrows to the menu bar. So far so good. Those spinnign arrows start moving whenever you start a sync process, be it with a cell phone, .mac or an iPod via iTunes. This icon also has a menu with three items (Sync Now, last sync and open .mac pref pane). Now here it comes: all those three, even though the menu was turned on in the iSync preferences, apply only to .mac. That means you can not start a cell phone sync (iSync) in that menu at all!
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Jer said 7:14AM on 4-04-2006
You guys are filing these bugs/requests with Apple, right?
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David Chartier said 7:46AM on 4-04-2006
#6: You betcha. I'm a huge advocate of submitting feedback to Apple. If we don't ask, complain or help stomp bugs, it'll just take them that much longer to do it themselves.
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matthew said 10:09AM on 4-04-2006
.mac syncing is very powerful and useful, but the way theyve split it between isync and system prefs is irritating and seems to leave non-ipod and non-.mac syncing (ie phones) out in the lurch. Id like to see Apple unify properly this soon, certainly before 10.5.
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SubGenius said 4:50PM on 4-04-2006
iSync.app should be eliminated.
iSync's (dis)functionality should be rolled into System Preferences right next to .Mac. This is the only logical place to put it.
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