Q: How to locally sync an iPhone with OS X Mavericks? iCloud is NOT an option.

I'm sorry, but you missed an important case:

FACT: it is no longer possible to sync only a portion of the contacts (one or more groups).

I don't care how the sync is done (local/USB, WiFi, iCloud, other server, banana peels); no matter what you use, Apple has removed the functionality that allowed sync of a subset of contact data via a group (and groups are just a subsetting tool).

I'm sorry, but you missed an important case:

 

FACT: it is no longer possible to sync only a portion of the contacts (one or more groups).

No, I didn't miss it - that is included in and as a direct consequence of the first fact I posted.

Sorry.  No.

You missed my point.  It is not the method of sync that I care about.  I don't really mind that they removed the USB sync.  I don't care about that.

it would be possible to do two things:

1) allow me to keep some subset of contacts local (only on my mac), not sync'd to iCloud or anything else.

2) allow me to select on my device (iphone, ipad, whatever) which groups from icloud I want to sync to my device.

Either one of these would work for me.

Then tell Apple. Whining about it here won't do you any good.

petermac87 wrote:

 

Hahahahahahaha. Oh dear. Sorry! A petition????? You are not serious are you? You will probably need at least 5% of users. So that's .....ummm.... Who knows, but roughly 150,000? Hang on. No. Probably more at the rate it's being downloaded. So goouck with that.

 

A petition! Hahahahahahah

 

Cheers

 

Pete

Ah, Pete, who else.

Will ya stop spitting your acid around here. Thanx in advance.

Isn't here an admin around to stop this troll?

"Cheers"

Keksi

<Edited by Host>

Thanks for the really useful tip. 

I found "on my mac" as an "account" in Contacts, but I see no way to put contacts into that 'account'.  If I could, I'd move a lot of contacts to be local only, and sync to iCloud the ones I want to have on my other devices.

You missed my point.  It is not the method of sync that I care about.  I don't really mind that they removed the USB sync.  I don't care about that.

Maybe, but the ability to choose which groups to sync was only ever a feature of local USB syncing. It was never a feature of any other method of syncing.

What you're actually wanting is for Apple to add selective syncing to all the other methods of syncing - which is a different request altogether.

I found "on my mac" as an "account" in Contacts, but I see no way to put contacts into that 'account'.

You used to be able to drag contacts to the desktop as vCards, then re-import them, and when doing so you would be asked which account you wanted them imported into. That option now seems to be gone in Mavericks and I cannot find a way to move contacts into the 'On My Mac' group any more. Perhaps that is something else that has gone with the removal of SyncServices.

Drag the contacts from the iCloud account to the On My Mac account. Or export them to the desktop and then import to the On My Mac account.

Problem is that while the "on my mac" account appears in the Preferences -> Accounts, it does not appear in the sdiebar.  On iCloud (my other account) is there.  So, no way to drag...

I think they pulled this "feature" in 10.9 too.

Drag the contacts from the iCloud account to the On My Mac account. Or export them to the desktop and then import to the On My Mac account.

Csound1, have you actually tried that in Mavericks? As I mentioned above, it used to work that way in Mountain Lion and earlier, but doesn't seem to any longer in Mavericks for me.

Here is a way to get the On My Mac account showing again.

First, back up your Contacts.

Quit Contacts

Go into your user/Library/Application Support/AddressBook folder.

~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook

Triple-click the above line and copy.

In the Finder, Type cmd-shift-G.

Paste the path into the field and click Go.

It should look something like this (the files won't be highlighted):

If you open each of the Sources subfolders, they look similar to the root of AddressBook. One of those will be your iCloud folder. If you Quicklook the configuration.plist, you can see the "home" of the source which will tell you which is your iCloud account.

Go into the Metadata folder of that account and Option-drag one of the contacts cards into the Metadata folder that is at the root of the AddressBook folder. Use one named with ABPerson.abcdb.

Then, delete all of the highlighted files.

Open Contacts and you should have an On My Mac header with one group (All On My Mac) with the one card in it.

You can then move cards from your iCloud to the On My Mac account. It makes a copy, so you'll have to then delete from your iCloud account.

I haven't played around with it enough to know if it will have any ill effects.

Bigtzn wrote:

 

Out of all the 51 pages on this topic, you are the only one who has it the nail on the head!. let's forget about the security and iCloud for the moment and concentrate on the businessman who travels around the world in areas where internet is not readily available ...

You have NOT read past 50 pages carefully …

Myself, and many others who voice their concerns here, are in the same boat. Forget legalities, the cloud, any cloud, does not physically work for many people in many circumstances … period. So we are just trying to get around the roadblock with minimal detour ...

handsOFFmydata wrote:

 

Myself, and many others who voice their concerns here, are in the same boat. Forget legalities, the cloud, any cloud, does not physically work for many people in many circumstances … period.

None of which changes the fact that this is NOT a forum for whining about your paranoia or other reasons for refusing to use a cloud service.

So we are just trying to get around the roadblock with minimal detour ... got it?

The icloud works for you, makes you happy ... fine ... stop reading this discussion and stop being another roadblock here.