Motorola v3i and iCal?

I searched for days trying to get a solution.. 😟

At least fill out the form at
http://www.apple.com/feedback/isync.html
so Apple becomes aware that lots of users are suffering from this lack of support.

I assume you're talking about the Razr, right?
If so, I've run across the same problem.. sometimes!
I can sync using iSync on my Dual G5, using bluetooth, but not on my Powerbook G4.
Haven't the slightest idea why one works and not the other.

I use a G5 so far, and it will only sink the addressbook and only via USB - after some XML hacking. And it doesn't do it very clean, just most of the length of the names, the number, but no images.

Making new entries for every phone number, no matter if one person has 2 or 3 numbers. So I get a real long list of persons if you know what I mean.

1) Contact Images can't be transferred between the mac and the RAZR. RAZR does not expose them
2) Contact application on RAZR is not as rich as Apple's one. It does not rely on "Contact", one entry is one phone number or one email. So if you have 2 phone numbers for John Doe, iSync will push 2 entries "<phone #> - John Doe".

However, RAZR can "cheat" and try to coalesce the entries that point to the same name. Go in Contact application's settings to set that (something like "only display primary number")

The RAZR V3i doesn't expose them because they are transferred. I definitly does support images with the telephone book contacts, though I can't tell if it's a lack of the RAZR or iSync.

Since iSync supports Contact images with some phones, this means that the people doing iSync did not find a way to manage them with that phone (and this is not just about transferring files from/to the phone, this can be achieved with Bluetooth Browse File). Motorola "remote" Contact management is very limited, it's not even sync (iSync does all the job for it).

I'm not involved with GSM's or OS X, but I did some web, ActionScript and XML programming.. It makes me wonder: How hard can it be to make some script synchronise such basic stuff?

Makes you wonder if the product managers Apple or Motorola care at all whether their customers can use their products in this way.

Wake up: This is what it's al about: Managing your information.

BTW I filed a bug report about this phenomena and got this confirmation:

This is a follow up to Bug ID# 4472139. After further investigation it has been determined that this is a known issue, which is currently being investigated by engineering. If you have any additional questions related to this bug or wish to check on status of the original issue, please send an email to <devbugs@apple.com>, referencing your Bug ID# 4472139.

"How hard can it be to make some script synchronise such basic stuff"

Much (much) harder than what you might think.... don't forget sync is about "synchronizing rich data with poor data using more-or-less poor data transfer protocol both ways".

Even harder if you want to do that for several all-different-but-sometimes-alike phones. And what iSync is trying to achieve is to support as much as possible what's technically possible with each phone and don't forget that the phone is always the bottleneck.

The major problem is:
1) Does Motorola care that the sync works on iSync totally properly? I guess not
2) Does Apple care? I guess yes
3) Is Apple able to know all different versions of the same phone (especially the ones crippled/modified by careers)? I guess not and I am even wondering if Motorola itself is able to produce a decent diagram of all the versions and possible bugs...

Obviously it is very complex, else we would having this conversation in the first place. I'm afraid you are more than right about your list of major problems too.

It's impossible for us to know, but it makes me wonder whats the real reason why there are so much versions in the first place. You'd think that since structuring and exchanging data isn't something new, there would be a long-tested, stable protocol by now.

Bluetooth may be something relatively (few years still) new, but most other stuff like datastructuring, GSM's, modems and the protocols connecting them etc. go back for decades.

What I really wonder about is that it takes so long to determine a standard for this. If Motorola alone has a dozen phones using a dozen firmware versions, experimenting with the possibilities, it will never become a workable situation for Apple and thus for us.

These moments make me feel so small, since I feel it's so hard to get something done about these kind of problems, while there is so much to be won by solving them!

G5 2x 2.5 Mac OS X (10.4.5) working with Macs since 1992

Well, you know, phones are still using AT (Hayes) commands for control... no wonder they haven't still embraced modern computing.

Note there is SyncML, but while it's marketed to be some sort of panacea, SyncML is in facts degrading things by putting a complex-to-correctly-support protocol that does not really solve the real sync problems.

You are facing limitations of Motorola phones (see <http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=1909637#1909637>)


Mac OS X (10.4.5)