Back in the day (ahem, 2003), I was amazed when I hooked up my Nokia N70 with an account at Mightyphone and was able to bi-directionally sync my contacts. Any changes made through their web interface appeared on the phone and vice-versa. This was my first smartphone, and it seemed like magic. Unfortunately (owing to Orange’s data charges) it was expensive magic, and consequently I had to drop the service because of cost. But in the following 5 years, data charges have dropped. Over-the-Air (OTA) synchronisation is now not only technically feasible but actually affordable.
Currently, all iPhone synchronisation is handled by iTunes through a direct USB connection to your computer. At the unveiling of iPhone OS 2.0 and the SDK, Apple annouced that they had licensed Microsoft’s ActiveSync. Email will be pushed to the device; contacts (including Global Address List) and the calendar will also sync with an Exchange server. That’s great for corporate customers, for whom Exchange integration is a must, and where cost consideration of mobile data (at a personal level) is not a consideration.
But what about non-corporate users? What is synced now, and how can it be synced over-the-air? Limited OTA functionality is already available for email (using IMAP) and photos (a one-way push to .Mac Web Galleries), but what other developments can we expect? We should look to what .Mac currently offers, where it could be expanded, and what others could offer if Apple doesn’t.
Comparing Apple’s sync options
Apple provides a powerful schema in Sync Services, which allows their developers and third parties to enable syncing for their applications. There are two main ways in which Apple itself provides syncing: through the desktop using iTunes (1) and over the internet, using .Mac.
| iTunes syncs | .Mac syncs |
| Contacts | Contacts |
| Calendar | Calendar |
| Safari bookmarks | Safari bookmarks |
| Email accounts | Email accounts, rules, signatures, and smart mailboxes |
| Photos | Dashboard widgets |
| Music | Dock items |
| Video | Keychains |
| Full phone backup |
Not everything that .Mac syncs is applicable to the iPhone, and similarly, there are items that iTunes syncs that Apple won’t want .Mac to handle.
The small stuff
Email accounts, contacts, calendars and bookmarks don’t take up a lot of space on the iPhone (and so not a lot of bandwidth when synchronising), plus .Mac already has the capacity to sync thesen items between multiple Macs. OTA syncing of these items will be easy to implement for the iPhone.
.Mac also syncs notes between Macs – and notes sync is something that people have been crying out for since the iPhone was released. Along with “copy and paste”, I’d say the demand for this is very high, and would be an easy win. Oh, and it’s high time that this included To-Dos as well.
The big hitters
Music and video is another matter entirely. Even on a 3G iPhone, I can’t see the carriers allowing that much precious mobile bandwidth to be sucked up by iPhone users, and it would probably increase Apple’s own bandwidth and/or storage requirements for .Mac. Plus, sending that much data from the phone is going to kill the battery. All in all, it is unlikely to be a glossy Apple experience.
Full phone backup falls into the same bandwidth trap. Instead, Apple should extend remote wipe to non-corporate customers. Hey, my data’s precious too!
Somewhere in between
Photos lie in the middle. They do push OTA to the .Mac Web Gallery, but this is only one-way. Unless the iPhone gains the capability of syncing with Web Gallery pages as they do with iPhoto events, then I don’t see this changing. Look for a 3rd party app such as Shozu to fill the gap (they’re planning a native app).
NotMac
If Apple doesn’t implement OTA sync, then someone else will – and it could well be Google or Yahoo. Both have special privileges with regard to iPhone integration, so they may be able to get round the “no background processes” rule. Even if not, I’m sure that Google and Yahoo native apps are in the works – either with the blessing of the companies or through their open APIs. Their appearance will only show up the shoddiness of a non-OTA syncing .Mac.
And the outlook is
I can see a certain amount of Apple-provided OTA sync coming, with the bandwidth requirements being the main determinant, but any OTA sync is necessarily going to be limited. Evidence for .Mac syncing has already been uncovered by iPhoneAlley, so it’s very likely to happen with the release of iPhone OS 2.0.
Over-the-air syncing will need to maintain a distinction between low data stuff and media-rich items. Consequently, iPhone users will need to be carefully informed about how and what items will be synchronised, otherwise they will run into a problem of “sync dissonance” or “Why the hell isn’t it syncing my music this time?!”.
But overall, this is a no-brainer for me. Apple have to enable .Mac syncing – or someone else will tap into the power of iPhone OS’s Sync Services. Yes, they have the final say of what is allowed in the App Store, but there will be some disgruntled users (ok, bloggers) if .Mac is not extended to include OTA sync and 3rd parties are disallowed from writing their own apps.
Instant backup, wherever you are, is a nice additional selling point, bringing the power of corporate sync to the average user – especially if it all happens in the background. Lost your phone but been away from your computer for a while? It doesn’t matter, your critical data is waiting for you, up in the cloud…
Notes:
(1) Apple originally rolled out syncing in OS X using iSync, but this has been somewhat deprecated since iTunes has taken on more and more sync capabilities.
And: I’m not saying .Mac or Apple sync is perfect. It can be confusing or just not work in the way that you would assume. Check out this discussion of usability issues.