Apple improving Mobile Me synching in Mac OS X 10.5.6

[AppleInsider]

One of the primary focuses of Apple's upcoming Mac OS X 10.5.6 Update will be to improve the reliability of data syncing between the company's MobileMe Internet service and users on notebook computers or slower networks.

"Please help test MobileMe automatic syncing," Apple told developers in release notes accompanying Mac OS X 10.5.6 build 9G35, a copy of which has been plastered online by HMBT. "We are particularly interested in testing automatic sync on portable computers and on networks with medium to high latency and or constrained bandwidth."

The Mac maker also requested feedback on MobileMe syncing from users who may reside behind firewalls, asking they watch for excessive syncing and file radars for any abnormal syncs.

"If you have auto sync turned on, and you make a change from me.com, or MobileMe website, does that change sync within a reasonable amount of time?," the company asked. "Also attempt general syncing of Contacts, Calendars, Bookmarks and other sync data."

As AppleInsider noted last month when Apple first began testing Mac OS X 10.5.6, the list of focus areas for developers is the most extensive yet for a Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard maintenance release. The leaked seed notes reveal a whopping 80 system components in which testers have been asked to pay special attention.

With Tuesday's seeding, the list of bug fixes expected as part of Mac OS X 10.5.6 has grown to nearly 90. The most recent corrections address issues with multi-touch commands in the Finder, USB device disconnects, MobileMe syncing preferences, Keychain Access and File Sync.

[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]

[Quine]

I wonder if this means it'll actually work somewhat decently.

Oh, and did it mention anything about connecting to windows computers on a LAN? 10.5.5 still doesn't do that reliably for me.

Dropbox works a thousand times better than iDisk ever has, and that's what I'll be sticking with.

[edorf]

The only solution for me right now is to turn of mobile me sync.

I used to sync between my iMac, Powerbook and iPhone but after a while it started to act strange. After trying out all tips you can think of I have now turned the thing of.

An expensive solution that does not work!

[MartiNZ]

I want to see the menubar and the iTunes dashboard widget added as focus areas; they're the main bugs I'm still aware of. Oh and display updating in Word 2008; I don't know what is at fault with that but it irks me rather.

With Snow Leopard and Exchange support it might be 'ditch Office' time .

[Lafe]

Originally Posted by edorf

The only solution for me right now is to turn of mobile me sync.

I used to sync between my iMac, Powerbook and iPhone but after a while it started to act strange. After trying out all tips you can think of I have now turned the thing of.

An expensive solution that does not work!

I hope this update clears up the bulk of their problems. We all knew that they launched
at what they considered the perfect timing, despite the fact that more bugs than usual
were in the mix.

I've been lucky, and mine has worked very well . . . until last week when about two hundred
calendar entries decided that the category they were in needed to be duplicated,
and some of them sync'd to one copy and some to the other. I had to manually set them
to the correct category (which you can only do in iCal or online, not on the iPhone, for some
reason) and delete the rogue category. VERY ANNOYING! (And it made
my wrists hurt!)

[JohnnyKrz]

Sorry to sound like a snit, but I consider myself very lucky that most things really do 'just work' for me. Even during the height of the MobileMe disaster, I found it to be a very reliable service. I have two computers and an iPhone, plus my wife's computer and iPhone that all sync very well and near instantaneously. I've checked out all the other services that people say are supposedly better, and I guarantee you that when MobileMe works (and always has for us), those services are NOT better.

[jabohn]

I hope they will finally fix the compatibility problems with InDesign CS3 once and for all. It's been over a year and there are still glitches (InDesign won't hide, or hides on it's own and you can't get it back) and the 10.5.5 update causes printing problems for large format printing such as film RIPs.

[razorpit]

I've been pretty lucky with MobileMe. Mail has been my big pain. Lately Mail likes to rename the files I send by changing the extension. A PDF file may become PDFDF, or a DOC file could become DOCOC for no apparent reason. Not good when you are sending your resume out to a perspective employer.

[chadisawesome]

worst thing about mobileme. the web email cleint.

I'll compose an entire email. press send, and then the mobile me inbox is refreshed in the message window... the parent window which used to contain the inbox, now has an error that "the mailbox has moved" and then it never sends the email. it also doesn't save it in drafts, forcing me to retype the email again. this is a total pain if for instance you have a few paragraph email composed. I have started to copy all my email messages before sending the message now in case of this error. Apple needs to address this. the phone client and the mail.app work fine with mobile me, but I'm forced to use the web client at work

[mstone]

Deleted

[hezekiahb]

Originally Posted by MartiNZ

I want to see the menubar and the iTunes dashboard widget added as focus areas; they're the main bugs I'm still aware of. Oh and display updating in Word 2008; I don't know what is at fault with that but it irks me rather.

With Snow Leopard and Exchange support it might be 'ditch Office' time .

I second that motion, Entourage is a flaming piece of poo! It's slow, search doesn't work right, interface is crap to use, & it screws up my laptop on occasion when I put it to sleep! I've started quitting it before closing my lid.

Funny how I can leave VMWare open running Windows Vista & my laptop will go to sleep instantly, leave Entourage open (even alone) & it takes like 2 - 10 minutes to sleep!

I've reloaded, run permissions repairs, moved Macs. I can't even begin to express how ready I am for snow Leopard & Exchange support.

[stokessd]

Will Safari, Mail and iCal now have push? If not, they are still broken.

Sheldon

[Virgil-TB2]

Originally Posted by stokessd

Will Safari, Mail and iCal now have push? If not, they are still broken...

yeah, I don't understand how they can be testing MobileMe sync until the whole push issue is worked out with the iPhone anyway. If they have that solved, they should release it for the current OS first, if they haven't, then what's the point since it is all changing soon anyway?

[bloggerblog]

Keychain is the flakiest app ever. It is a crucial app especially for companies that use multiple sharepoints but Apple can't get it to run properly. I can't believe this app has been causing migraines since Mac OS 8.

[mikep123]

Synching Mail accounts between my MBP and Mac Pro has never worked for me. I can reset the sync history on both machines, replace my MobileMe data with the data from my MBP, immediately follow this by replacing the data on my Mac Pro with the data from MobileMe, then sit and wait. Without touching either machine, I'll soon get a message stating that more than 5% of my Mail accounts have changed and asking me what I want to do. The pop-up window with the message lets me compare the two versions of the Mail account so I can make my decision. Both the before and after versions of the account are absolutely identical. This is driving me up the $^%&ing wall. Synchronization of the address book, keychains, etc. all work as expected; only Mail accounts fail to synch properly. Again, this has be a problem since before MobileMe.

[jpellino]

Showing up god-knows-where and having all your bookmarks in a web window on that machine was priceless.

[theBigD23]

Any mention of the screen sharing issue with dual monitors in .6? That has been a longtime issue that needs fixing.

Also, the constant Entourage errors. Don't know if it's Apple or Microsoft that needs to fix this:
11/12/08 2:12:58 PM /Applications/Microsoft Office 2008/Microsoft Entourage.app/Contents/MacOS/Microsoft Entourage[3211] Warning: accessing obsolete X509Anchors.

I get this error hundred of time per day.

[dellar]

I could never get the calendar syncing to work with more than one of my three macs and my iPhone. I use iCal to run a small practice, and the downtime in trying to get this to work was significant. I had to go back to SpanningSync in the end.

[_mikk]

Originally Posted by theBigD23

Any mention of the screen sharing issue with dual monitors in .6? That has been a longtime issue that needs fixing.

Also, the constant Entourage errors. Don't know if it's Apple or Microsoft that needs to fix this:
11/12/08 2:12:58 PM /Applications/Microsoft Office 2008/Microsoft Entourage.app/Contents/MacOS/Microsoft Entourage[3211] Warning: accessing obsolete X509Anchors.

I get this error hundred of time per day.

X509 refers to the X509 digital certificates used in TLS/SSL, so it is usually a responsibility of the vendor to ensure the correct manipulation of those.

[MartiNZ]

Originally Posted by hezekiahb

I second that motion, Entourage is a flaming piece of poo! It's slow, search doesn't work right, interface is crap to use, & it screws up my laptop on occasion when I put it to sleep! I've started quitting it before closing my lid.

Funny how I can leave VMWare open running Windows Vista & my laptop will go to sleep instantly, leave Entourage open (even alone) & it takes like 2 - 10 minutes to sleep!

I've reloaded, run permissions repairs, moved Macs. I can't even begin to express how ready I am for snow Leopard & Exchange support.

Yeah Entourage first came out in v.X the interface was actually nicer than what it has become now! Interesting what you say about it delaying sleep; will have to test that on my machine!

Entourage is also my main source of the ever-present "menubar doesn't follow app focus" bug. It never once happened before Leopard, but can be easily invoked now by clicking one of Entourage's desktop alerts; I have now turned them off because it's hard to resist clicking them , and my iPhone dings for new mail before Entourage does, and then I know to go check. The new mail badge for Entourage is also annoying; it doesn't properly update if you delete messages straight from the desktop alert - thankfully with 2008 you can disable it by renaming the file in the app package.

[BeyondYourFrontDoor]

I am on a satellite connection (512K down, 128k up) and would LOVE to see smarter (any?) resume up/downloads on MobileMe and iDisk. I had a 45mb file just stop at 25mb... had to restart... when 45mb takes 2 hours to upload - it would be nice to have resume.

Unfortunately, I don't belong to the test group, and how would I download a 1gb+ test file anyway? That would take 2 weeks if I could keep a connection that long.

I miss DSL...

[mdriftmeyer]

It's vital and sad that today's world is a portable world once reserved for housewives and old maids--life on the phone.

The once cornerstone to a housewife's daily existence to chat with their friends over the phone has turned into a global epidemic of self-importance about every pissant little daily thought that must be sent to your friends.

What a boring existence to revolve your life around talk, Talk, taLK, TaLk, and more talk.

[razorpit]

Originally Posted by mdriftmeyer

It's vital and sad that today's world is a portable world once reserved for housewives and old maids--life on the phone.

The once cornerstone to a housewife's daily existence to chat with their friends over the phone has turned into a global epidemic of self-importance about every pissant little daily thought that must be sent to your friends.

What a boring existence to revolve your life around talk, Talk, taLK, TaLk, and more talk.

Or, in your case, post, post, post...

[junkie]

I use MobileMe between iPhone and Powerbook - works fine for me. I am getting an amazing utility from it.

[Mr Macintosh]

Originally Posted by JohnnyKrz

Sorry to sound like a snit, but I consider myself very lucky that most things really do 'just work' for me. Even during the height of the MobileMe disaster, I found it to be a very reliable service. I have two computers and an iPhone, plus my wife's computer and iPhone that all sync very well and near instantaneously. I've checked out all the other services that people say are supposedly better, and I guarantee you that when MobileMe works (and always has for us), those services are NOT better.

Johnny,

I have to concur with you. I have had no problems with mobile me and even when it was .mac I had not occurred any problems. Funny thing is that when my iPod touch is on in the house, and my desktop systems are running wit hteh mail app running, the iPod gets mail notification first and then the desktops report it about 30 seconds later. Not a big deal to me but I have noticed it funny that mail is pushed to it faster than the desktop systems which are connected via Ethernet cable and the iPod is doing WiFi...

[wizard69]

Actually I hope this update comes real soon now and that 2.2 for iPhone comes with it. The problem of course is reliability in syncing for the two combined. The system simply doesn't work well if you have anything other than perfect connections at all times. Just the simple act of editing or adding a contact when you are out of range of any network with your iPhone can generate issues. IDisk also seems to be screwed and that is putting it politely.

However don't let my clamouring for an update lead you to believe that I'm totally un happy with Mobile me. I do expect better from Apple and frankly expect them to slowly clear up the mess while keeping the current service viable. It is the mixture of being very pleased with what does work well and disgusted with what doesn't work well that is frustrating.

It is what seems to be the simple things like IDisk that one has the most frustration with as why would saving a file to a server be an issue these days? I will be perfectly honest here one of the reasons I went with Mobile Me was iDisk. It is a feature you would think that Apple could offer easily with modern performance yet that is far from what one actually gets. When it comes time to renew iDisk will be part of the decision process. The problem with that is that the other features of Mobile Me and its iPhone integration are becoming more and more a part of my life. As like wise with a lot of other people I suspect, so I hope Apple has plenty of internal incentive to forge real, modern performance in iDisk. Otherwise I will just scratch my head wondering why iDisk sucks so bad.


Hopefully networking will get lots of attention too. I was fairly happy with it until the last update, which fixed some things but reduced overall reliability.

In other words I'm a user looking forward to this release. There is enough that needs fixing to justify it. However I'm really hoping for no regressions.

Dave