Randomize

Apple usually hits the nail on the head when it comes to usability, but iCal just plain sucks. The user interface is completely unusuable, even for adding simple calendar items.

Turns out, the calendar app I enjoy using the _most_ is Google Calendar, followed by Outlook.

Apple, with all their slick UI frameworks and latte-sipping HCI engineers, is simply _years behind_ the free web-based app from Google and almost as far behind Microsoft’s old and crusty email application.

So I’ve been stuck… the iCal app on the iPhone is great, but the OS X version sucks. Google Calendar is tops on the desktop, but the iPhone version blows.

And then, there’s the synchronization problem…

I think I have a pretty common situation. I have Outlook at work, two Macs at home (one for me, one for Delanea), and two iPhones (ditto).

• I want my _work_ calendar synched from Outlook to my iPhone, and ideally, to Google Calendar and iCal.
• I want our family calendar synched between both home computers and iPhones and both Google Calendar accounts, but not back to Outlook at work.
• I want Delanea’s business calendar and my photography calendar to only be synched between our respective phones, computers, and Google accounts. I don’t need to see her client schedule, or vice versa.
• Obviously, I want both of us to be able to use Google Calendar while on the desktop, the iPhone Calendar when mobile, and Outlook (for me) at work.

I’ve almost, but not quite, figured it all out:

• Hourly, Google Calendar Sync (free Google app) does a two-way sync of my Google “work” calendar and Outlook.
• Hourly, Spanning Sync (shareware) handles synchronizing iCal and Google Calendar for me and Delanea, takes care of the iPhones and Desktops, and thus also pushes Outlook events to my iPhone.
• In Google Calendar, I’ve shared the “Tallent Household” calendar from my Google account to Delanea’s, with full write privileges. This gives us a common place to note the stuff we’re both interested in.
• Also in Google Calendar, we can share our free/busy schedule with one another without tripping over each other’s client names, locations, etc.

For contacts, we have a similar setup:

• iTunes keeps our phones in sync with Address Book on our respective computers
• Address-O-Sync keeps our computers in sync with one another for certain address book groups (family, etc.) while keeping our work/hobby contacts only on our own devices.
• Spanning Sync keeps the Contacts on our machines in sync with the Contacts in GMail.

If only Google supported the concept of a shared contact group, we could forego Address-O-Sync and have one fewer link in the chain.