Apple and Google Interoperability - Not!

If you are a user of Google products such as Gmail, calendar, contacts, etc and a heavy user of Apple hardware,  iPad, MacBook, etc, you know that these two worlds just don't integrate very well.  Basic poor interoperability which is very frustrating.  Apple pushes their solutions that compete with Google just like they push the ones that compete with Microsoft, e.g. Keynote.

Google release earlier this year a Capability, called google sync, that does address some of these interoperability issues with Apple software and account management.  Is does allow your contacts to stay in sync as well as your mail on their mobile devices, however it limits you to only one calendar.  Really!

If you are like me I have access to a number of calendars and need to see them on my iPad when I'm mobile.  Here is a good description from Google on setting up google sync on an iPad:  Google Sync Instructions for IOS.  For me I have enabled this from both my email and my contacts but have disabled it for my Calendar.  To get around the limit for only one calendar using this method I have gone through the typical Gmail account setup on the iPad and have only selected the calendar app not the email app.

All of this works without any issues but come on.  Google should be all about addressing this issue with Sync and Apple should be more responsive to working with other platforms.  Why can't they just get along? Oh right it's all about revenue.  I think that is a shortsighted quarterly view and they should know that if they work better together they can dominate in their respective areas instead of battling it out with these little annoyances.

So now let's move on to Apple's iCloud.  I was pretty excited about jumping into the iCloud world until I read the fine print.  This is from a google forum on how to set it up:

Full Blog The *Crucial Step* In order for your iCloud and Gmail contacts to remain synchronized with one another is to ensure that they are only ever edited on your iOS Device which is synchronized with iCloud and Gmail contacts. When you edit a contact on the Device, you will be warned that you are “editing 2 linked contacts”. This is how you know that your changes are being pushed to both accounts. If you edit the contact via iCloud or via Gmail directly, such as through their Web Contacts, it will only change that particular account’s “card”, not both. You will see changes on either iCloud or Gmail on your Device, but these changes will not have been, nor will they be synchronized across accounts. 

Only changes made directly to the contact on the iPhone or iPad will synchronize across accounts. You must also ensure that when you are editing the contact that you are editing the ‘linked contacts”. You will know you are looking at the linked contact when the contact says “Unified Info” at the top center of the screen. This is arrived at also by ensuring you are within the “All Contacts” group.

Oh come on! Really! This can't be!

I guess I'm staying away from iCloud and using my current setup for now.