Let’s face it, syncing your iPhone is a tedious process. No different then the crazy days of a Palm pilot, plugging in your device to your computer to sync is lengthy tedious and worst off – you have to remember to do it. I just made myself sound very lazy, but seriously those simple things make a difference when you are moving all around all the time. Syncing your iPhone with the computer is so 90′s….
There is no reason that you should have to worry about deleting a contact in three different spots, or having your main calendar on your iPhone. There are many ways to keep Mail, Address Book and Calendar all synchronized across every device you run. Whether it be a Mac or a PC, your data can be all sync in the clouds in a matter of seconds when you add, edit or delete items from Mail, Address Book or Calendar.
Sync in the cloud(s) (the new word for the internet). Corporate Blackberry and Windows Mobile mongers have been used to this for years with Microsoft Exchange and the Blackberry Enterprise server. If you aren’t already syncing your iPhone in the clouds somewhere, here are some options you need to take a look at…
MobileMe
Apple’s MobileMe service offers a very simple and easy way to keep everything in sync on your iPhone, Mac and PC. I recently started using it, and I can tell you its worth the price tag. Previously I used Google Sync and Spanning Sync; the second option listed below.
Apple used to market MobileMe as “Exchange for the rest of us”. The problem with that statement, generally “the rest of us” didn’t know what Exchange was or why that mattered; and by the rest of us I mean most of the folks who have been buying the iPhone and iPod touch are consumers. and not corporate Blackberry folks. Apple now simply markets it as “Everything in Sync. Anywhere you are.”.
I have my desktop Mac Pro, Macbook and iPhone setup with my MobileMe account. Since I have a family pack, my wife has the same setup (Mac Pro, iBook and iPhone) and she loves it. When a calendar event is added on my desktop, in as much time as it takes to goto the day on my iPhone calendar its already there. I have been very happy with how quickly this all works. The reason it works so fast is the push notification and syncing services all use XMPP. XMPP is a lightweight messaging protocol.
Another pleasant surprise is all alerts are synced up. The web interface which houses your Mail, Calendar, Contacts, etc is awesome. iDisk is so handy and is more than just a plus. In fact I have been using it so much, I reallocated my mail storage to iDisk storage. I don’t even use the mail account, I really only use MobileMe as a syncing service.
The only downside is the price. For a single user, Apple charges $99/year. Which considering the other syncing options that can do what MobileMe does, this is a good price. Still though, for a consumer it’s a bit steep. So don’t buy it from Apple.com and buy it from Amazon. For whatever reason everywhere else it’s about $69, which is a much more suitable price. Personally I think more and more people will use this service for 49$/year.
Google Sync / Spanning Sync
If you use all the Google services (GMail, Google Calendar and sync your contacts with Google) then Google Sync is perfect for you. You can use the built in option in iTunes to sync your contacts and calendar. Then use Google Sync to have the iPhone sync with Google. All free!
There were enough downsides I had with Google Sync that got me quite frustrated. For instance Calendar events don’t have reminders, can’t handle invites properly and won’t be able to know anything about meeting rooms/places. Contacts will sync, but will loose some fields and (for me at times) replace characters with ascii characters. The worst however, was that alot of times events would not show up on the other device (from the first device where I created the calendar event).
If you want a bit more quality syncing with Google, then use Spanning Sync. Spanning Sync is a third party syncing service that you can run on any Mac that is tied to the one Google account which you paid to sync. For instance, I paid to have andy@ninthdivision.com (which used Google Apps for your Domain). Then I loaded Spanning Sync on my Mac Pro and Macbook. I found using Spanning sync to sync my Contacts and Calendars to be more reliable!
Using Google Sync to get the Contacts and Address Book to my iPhone (and vice versa) and Spanning Sync on my Macs… it was a pretty good service. All that at $25/year. Compared to MobileMe it wasn’t as reliable, plus you don’t get iDisk, back to my Mac, find your iPhone and a few other bells and whistles. However, if you won’t care or want those… this is the next best option!
Yahoo Services
Yahoo Services, well I almost wasn’t going to put this on the list. Mainly because it doesn’t offer syncing of the Yahoo calendar. Which btw isn’t all that great to begin with.
Yahoo was one of the first services for using mail and contacts a iPhone customer could buy at the launch of the iPhone. I even remember watching the keynote where Yahoo came out on stage to introduce it. Honestly, I am pretty sure the service hasn’t changed since then.
If you buy their Mail service it will allow syncing and use of the native Mail client on the iPhone. The pay for service uses IMAP so your mail will be synced on your Mac or PC mail client as well as the iPhone. With the Mail service, you can sync Yahoo Contacts with your Address Book on your Mac and PC via their cloud.
Snow Leopard Server
Snow Leopard Server (aka Mac OSX 10.6 Server) is the latest server release from Apple. This edition of the Mac server is a huge jump from Leopard Server. You can read about all the big changes here, but in terms of iPhone syncing services Snow Leopard is a huge deal.
Included in Snow Leopard Server is a revamped Address Book Server, iCal Server and new mail services. That’s great and all, but now Snow Leopard has the same push notification services built in that MobileMe has. Snow Leopard Server is not a MobileMe for your business (yet), because it doesn’t have all the sexy web interfaces that MobileMe does.
I am eyeing Snow Leopard Server so this way I can have the ultimate way to share and exchange contacts (plus all the other great stuff server offers for Mac guys). MobileMe is really designed for Consumers, Families and single users. Where Server offers many of the great services that MobileMe offers, but with lots of other awesome software/technology for groups of people (business, schools, teams, etc).
Exchange Server
Most of the Mac and iPhone users who know about Exchange, already have it running on their devices. But just in case… remember your Mac running Snow Leopard and your iPhone connects beautifully to Exchange. Everything is insync across both devices as your coworkers Blackberry + PC is used to.
Buy it yourself? No way. Exchange is a very expensive way to sync everything. You’d be far better off buying Snow Leopard Server for the syncing capabilities at $499 for unlimited clients.
Roll your own – open source after all
All the services which make up Calendar Server, iCal Server, Mail Services and push are all open source. Apple publishes their code to MacOSForge.org. There you go, you know have a weekend project to do it all yourself for free. Good luck. 
Just remember, Push notifications use XMPP to communicate to devices.
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