Lion's Address Book - A WARNING

Ok. I found a way to do this through the terminal: open -n /Applications/Address\ Book.app/

But it doesn't seem to work. In one instance I have list/card view. In the other instance I have group view. I drag a contact from list/card view to group, but it doesn't allow me to drop it in.

This is ridiculous.

I've tried both Contact Book and Addresses as alternative apps. Contact Book doesn't work with iCloud. (In fact their support guys called me this weekend to thank me for discovering this bug). And 'Addresses', although it looks really great, has very slow performance. And when I drag a contact from the list into a group, then it refreshes the list at the top of the page. At the moment I am going through a list of 2000+ contacts. So when I drag a name that starts with F, for example, it adds it to the group, but then the list bounces back up to the A's. So this doesn't help.

3-panes. Such a simple thing. Lion's address book truly is a disappointment.

Addresses is getting better, and the author is very good about considering user suggestions. I've mentioned to him the problem of selected contacts not staying selected when you initiate some action. A new version is coming out soon; maybe that will be fixed. Not sure about the speed thing, though. That could be more fundamental.

In its favor, iCloud functioning is just fine. Make any change in Addresses and it shows up immediately in Address Book and all iCloud devices, and vice versa. Addresses doesn't yet have Smart Groups (although I believe the next version will), so I just go to Address Book to create them, then they show and update just fine in Addresses.

I too hate the new Address Book, but I have finally found an useful tool. Check out Cobook. I am evaluating it now and it seems like it might just be the ticket to keep me out of that stupid Lion AB. It doesn't solve the 3-pane problem, but it's a nice Spotlight-like interface for searching and looking up contacts.

This feels so much like the single mouse button philosophy... who cares what the people want.

These new version of Apple app are unusable.

I am using Soho Organizer . It does allow to interconnect different computers on Snow Leopard or Lion through iCloud. The company is very reactive in case of bug that comes mainly from the bad handling from Apple on iCloud issues.

Any minute now there's a Mrs. Mulligan who'll be in here to say that the new address book is the most wonderful thing since sliced bread and that anyone who doesn't like it is evil and out to destroy Apple.

Cobook does look cool. Still in beta, though, and lacking some obvious functionality. But a brilliant approach. If it can pull profile pics, that would be amazing. You're right, it doesn't solve the 3-pane problem.

I've given up trying to solve the problem and settled for a workaround.

If I need 3-panes, then it means I am probably going to have the card open. So instead of dragging the contact into the group after viewing the card (as I would do in 3-pane view), I just paste a text code into the notes. Then I can run a search for that code in group view and drag all coded contacts into the group. Not very practical, but works for now.

In the meantime, keep the suggestions coming!

Your link to SOHO points to the wrong page. This should work: http://www.chronosnet.com/Products/sohoorganizer.html

Looks like this program has way more stuff than I need. I have everything working beautiful for tasks and calendar with the apps I currently use. Just the address book is crap.

I would consider SOHO for the address book, but I would love to see some screenshots of that function. Does it solve the 3-pane issue?

Hi Palmer108,

thank's for the proper link.

Yes Soho have a 3-panes view for the contact : groups, list of names and the view on the selected name.

It's like the old Adress book with more services.

Also there is integration with mail. You can see all the related mails with a contact.

You can download it for test for a month.

Thanks for these suggestions of apps that may solve this appalling Apple failure - but it really begs the question: why on earth should we dish out $99 to resolve an issue created by a useless upgrade to Lion we have already paid for? Sould we pay twice just to stay put? Apple should sort this out for free asap. All these apps offer a lot more and for very different and more elaborate needs. We only need to revert to the old simple app which was great (compared with the rubbish put together by Apple in Lion). A visit at the genius bar of a major Apple store was quite instructive: none of the "geniuses" had much good to say about Lion when asked discretely! This upgrade is to be avoided as long as these basic failures are not addressed.

You know what really looks like an address book and really looks like a calendar and has just about the same functionality? An address book and calendar available at your local office supply store. Just because you have minimal needs of these products, doesn't mean the rest of us have to settle for crap. Am using BusyCal and can't for the life of me figure out why Apple's entry is so lame. Would love to find a BusyCal-quality Address Book Replacement.

I see I am not the only one dismayed by the colossal design failure in the new Address Book. It is not at all obvious how to use it, especially with groups. Secondly there seems to be a bug, in which certain names added to a group are not included in that group when used. After some experimentation, I did get it to work, but only by changing the newly added name from a "home" email to a "work" email. Odd.

Seems like an apparent lack of user focus group involvement. "Hey, it looks like an address book, so let's pass it for acceptance testing."

Making everything on a computer look like the real world is not necessarily an advantage. As you then are limited by the physics of the real world instead of the alternate opportunities present by computers. I am sure you could think of many examples, but here is one: make the next iphone design look like a Western Electric telephone handset circa 1960, with the same weight and durability and plastic.

Yeah, right. But this is what has been done to Address Book.

Message was edited by: jasimon9

enricus28 wrote:

Thanks for these suggestions of apps that may solve this appalling Apple failure - but it really begs the question: why on earth should we dish out $99 to resolve an issue created by a useless upgrade to Lion we have already paid for? Sould we pay twice just to stay put? Apple should sort this out for free asap. All these apps offer a lot more and for very different and more elaborate needs.

I was so furious about this unprofessional attitude of Apple since several monthes. In fact Apple doesn't care for professional anymore.

You can see what happened to pro application :

• Aperture
• Final Cut
• Mac OS Server

These easy tools followed the same patern :

• AdressBook
• Calendar
• …

I think that is vain to hope to recover this old spirit of Apple : the respect for faithfull user or professional.

You will not get this respect anymore from a company that could repect its own word. Remember when Apple claim to keep compatibily with previous generation. This is gone since long time before that Classic is now no longer maintain !

That why I prefer to move on and pay for correct application.

enricus28 wrote:

We only need to revert to the old simple app which was great (compared with the rubbish put together by Apple in Lion). A visit at the genius bar of a major Apple store was quite instructive: none of the "geniuses" had much good to say about Lion when asked discretely! This upgrade is to be avoided as long as these basic failures are not addressed.

Apple became unsensitive and arrogant like Microsoft was.

You have to understand that to hav App with the same quality as before cost. Now a penny is a penny to make the margin even bigger.

Also see that Apple doesn't give much interest to Mac Os, the main interest is iOs…

I should add that event the iCloud system is a disaster.

We all know that Steve Jobs was angry with the MobileMe work. But the iCloud system is terrible :

• No compatibility between Lion and SLeopard
• If you are idiot enough to buy the mobile version of Number or Keynote then you are stuck with something unusable.

I did buy theses versions…

Silly of me !

Have you tried repairing permissions???

CT wrote: Have you tried repairing permissions???

Hummm, what for CT ?

It won't give a better adress book.

For the iCloud trouble, could be but I did tried and sorry, it's not an fix…