PocketMac for iPhone adds Entourage and Lotus Notes sync

Well it has been 2 weeks now and I sill cannot get Pocketmac for iPhone to work even with the help of the support people. They keep sending me fixes and I keep sending them sync manager reports. IT always appears to start working then hangs. First it was not accepting the serial number, then I had to eliminate a variety of items from my library and presferences and application support folders and do another clean install. Still.......not working. I have one more request in for a final fix Not worth my valuable time at this point and I am ready to throw i the towel.

Six days later, PocketMac has been able to get the application running on my Mac after several long delays in response from tech support.

The preferences don't work still, and I'm not about to blindly sync my iPhone to my Lotus Notes. "We've never seen that. We'll get back to you"

They refunded my money and offered to give me a second serial number for free. Since the first copy doesn't work I told them not to bother.

It's a real shame this application is so poorly written, tested, and supported. If it worked there would have been many copies purchased at my company.

Let me be clear in that I do not in any way hold TUAW or it's staff responsible for these problems. I am a long time reader and am grateful that they bring us the latest news and info for the Mac platforms.

The blame lies squarely with PocketMac.

RE: AnneMac said...
Was the PocketMac Support team unable to help you? If you haven't tried support, I really encourage you to do so. It's free, and the guys are all really nice. It's at http://www.pocketmacsupport.net

They do not respond to the support request I opened two days ago.

They do not let you talk to a person on their 800 #.

They are completely unavailable to help.

I have followed up on the support request 6 times and received no response.

If no resolution is available by Monday 26 September 2008 at 5PM Eastern the charge will be placed in dispute for FAILURE TO PROVIDE GOODS AND SERVICES PAID FOR.

If your using MeetingMaker, and have 8.6 or above, this product will not work. It'll sync with MM 8.5.3 and below but above that your out of luck and need to use the MM supported NotifyLink option

For my Lotus Notes needs, I'm using CompanionLink for Google. I sync my Notes calendar with my Google Calendar. That might be good enough for some, but I like the iPhone's calendar app. I jailbroke my phone and run NemusSync which does over the air syncing between Google Calendar and my iPhone to get everything over to the phone. You could also pay for something like Intellisync on the Mac and sync it down to iCal. When you sync your Touch or iPhone it would pick up the new calendar entries.

If you want my 2 cents, anything made by either PocketMac or MarkSpace (of missing sync infamy) has far more chance of being RUBBISH and MUNGING data than it does of being any use. A sync product is useless unless it is 100% accurate and ROCK SOLID. My experience of both these products over years as a mac consultant is that they are half baked solutions that never actually work. Blackberry, WinMo, Palm. You name it, I've tried it. I have never had one of these companies' solutions work even close to reliably for me.

I had tries the gobetween product for notes when that came out. It never worked. There was talk of an update due in Sept. But that hasn't materialized. I thought this may have been it. But sounds like more of the same. I'll stick with my bailing wire and duct tape approach for now.

Do not buy this if you are just looking to sync your Entourage contact/phone list info to your iPhone. You can already do that by setting your preferences in both Entourage and MobileMe. The only issue is if you change something on the iPhone, as I have my default as Entourage overwriting the iPhone, iCal and Address Book from Entourage. The method I am describing here already works like a champ. Sorry MarkSpace, but until you fix the bugs and offer multi calendar and multi-color entries, I just don't see any added value.

Tried that, same condition.

It installs, I register, iPhone icon never shows up and CallHistory...Backup fails.

This application is a complete and total pile of flaming dog poo. DO NOT BUY IT until/if they ever get it working.

I will be requesting a refund and will dispute the charge for "Failure to deliver goods or services" with my credit card.

I should have learned from early PocketMac products - I also installed it and had several issues - crashes on startup (fixed by clean re-install with all references to Mark Space Products removed, Mark Space product works out of the box), then it appears to accept activation (keyed in as system has not Internet access at work) but re-ask for it every time it starts or I tried to add iPhone connection and, worse, it breaks iTunes sync giving a backup error.....Had similar issue with PocketMac for Windows Mobile and Blackberry when they first appeared.