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Notes in iPhone OS 3.0: getting rid of that syncing feeling

When I heard that OS 3.0 was going to enable syncing of notes between the iPhone and the Mac, I was overjoyed. I use the notes app on my iPhone all the time for everything: reminders, grocery lists, and figuring out the monthly budget while I'm away from home. Having those notes sync back and forth with the Mac was something I very much looked forward to, because it made the notes app far more useful.

The first few times I synced notes between my iPhone and Mac, however, I'd get a message like this one:



Since I don't have many notes on my iPhone to begin with, this alert would come up every time I changed, deleted, or added a note on the iPhone. This would also hold up completing the iPhone's sync with my Mac until I confirmed that syncing notes was okay.

After a few days of this, it was starting to get irritating. I racked my brain trying to figure out how to stop it.

Then I remembered: iSync is still its own program (though one largely restricted to the background these days), so there ought to be a preference in it to stop this behavior.

And there was. In iSync's preferences, you can set the threshold for the alert message that appears on syncing with your iPhone:




You can disable the alert entirely, or you can set it to go off if 50%, 25%, 5%, or any data on your Mac will be modified by syncing with the iPhone.

I'm not sure if this was set to 5% by default, or if years ago I'd set it that low out of paranoia and just forgot about it. Now I have it set at 50%, and the irritating alerts have gone away.

When I heard that OS 3.0 was going to enable syncing of notes between the iPhone and the Mac, I was overjoyed. I use the notes app on my...
 

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Jimmy

please sign me up. Having difficulty with syncing notes. all options correctly selected but no syncing except notes I create in Reminders under notes for mobile me "sync" to my email!!

June 29 2009 at 7:39 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
iCEK00L

So how exactly do you sync notes on the iphone with Mail on the Mac??

June 29 2009 at 11:06 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
shane

You can do this directly in iTunes as well. You don't have to go to iSync.

So for Windows users without iSync, it can still be edited.

June 22 2009 at 7:18 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Thomas

I really don't understand why the phone can't sync notes via mobile me. Notes are actually synced to it already since you can use it on multiple Macs, the iPhone just can't read them.

June 22 2009 at 4:40 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
rei_vilo

Chris,

Thanks for the tip! I was annoyed too by the message. Now it's history.

It seems thant the Notes app syncing was poorly implemented. Where is the To-do list and syncing? Shall we wait for iPhone OS 4.0 to have this very basic feature implemented in all PDAs?

June 22 2009 at 4:10 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Big Al

Wow, that is really old information, any one who had used the iSync conduit with their palm T3 would know that. Who writes this stuff, 3rd year high school students?

June 22 2009 at 2:41 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Scott

The phrase is actually "Tuesday's coming, did you bring your coat?" However your implementation is equally humorous.

June 22 2009 at 1:48 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
robogobo

MobileMe is still a lame attempt at something that could be really powerful- and worth $99/year. It has been ever since the .Mac beginnings. I only have it for the convenience of over the air syncing, but I'm always on the verge of canceling. We waited over a year to be able to sync notes? oooooh what an accomplishment. How long do we have to wait for todo syncing? This should all be a given, and yes, all over the air. All they have to do is treat them like another mbox or calendar, and allow the iPhone to read the database. It's THAT simple.

June 22 2009 at 1:41 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Joker

Yes 5% is the default. I see a lot of good ides on here that would be nice to see implemented. You do all realize that you can voice your feedback ideas to apple at www.apple.com/feedback ..... Right?

June 22 2009 at 12:39 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
u2mr2os2

Another solution is to create several notes to sync up, then after that, one new note is a much smaller percentage of the existing number of notes. You can probably find several things that would be useful notes to have on the phone. For example, one note I keep is of dimensions of stuff around the house for reference when I'm at the store. With copy & paste, Notes can be a poor man's Birdhouse for Twitter. You could also just make a few blank ones even if you don't have content right now, like a grocery list, wish list, gift ideas list, or maybe everyone already has apps for all those by now I guess.

June 22 2009 at 11:52 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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