MobileMe iCal upgrades, causes Google calendar sync to fail

[Bill.Holland]

Good morning everyone,

Last night I affirmed a dialog box on one of our MBPs to upgrade
MobileMe's iCal, not thinking it would make me spend hours the next
morning trying to fix it.

We use Google apps for hosted email, calendar, docs, etc. I had in the
past used BusySync in the past to keep the Google calendar talking to
my local iCal calendar, which subsequently syncs with MobileMe.
MobileMe keeps our two iPhones' calendars in sync.

As of this morning, I have only the MobileMe calendars listed on iCal,
and while I can one-way sync them to Google, any changes made on the
Google side are not reflected in iCal.

Wondering if there was a new incompatibility with BusySync, I tried
Spanning Sync. I haven't had much better luck, although I have a more
informative error message when trying to sync:

Read-only calendar
The selected iCal calendar is not writeable so syncs will only work
one-way. Are you sure you want to do this?

I tried exporting a sample calendar from iCal, deleting it, and re-
importing it, to no avail. Moreover, I can't find a particular dialog
box that makes a calendar "read-only".

So I'm kind of stuck. So any thoughts as to how to bypass Apple's
infinite wisdom and get back to where we were?

Warmly,
Bill

[byron.shaheen]

H Bill,

The new MobileMe calendars are CalDAV calendars and Apple only
supports read-only access of CalDAV calendars through its sync
architecture. We're working on a solution to this restriction, but
can't promise anything yet. You can regain two-way sync functionality
by downgrading to the old MobileMe Calendar. You can do so by going
here:

https://www.me.com/calendar/downgrade

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks,

Byron

---
Byron Shaheen
byron....@spanningsync.com
http://spanningsync.com

[Cass]

Byron:

Can you give us a sense to timeline and likelihood that you can fix
this. I just discovered that I've not been receiving updates from
Google to my iCal for a while now due to this problem. But, un-
upgrading isn't realistic, as you apparently lose all calendar changes
that you have created since the you did the upgrade, which would be a
real mess for me. Also, the new mobleme is way better than the old
version.

Thanks,

-Cass

[Larry Hendricks]

Hi Cass,

CalDAV syncing would be a major new feature in Spanning Sync, not just
a bug fix. It's something we're actively working on and *hope* to have
ready, at least in beta form, by the time Apple stops supporting local
MobileMe calendars which, as they've publicly stated, is May 5.
--
Larry Hendricks
la...@spanning.com
http://spanningbackup.com
http://spanningsync.com

[bthom]

What's the status on this becoming a reality?

Thanks

--b

On Mar 22, 3:39 pm, Larry Hendricks <larh...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Cass,
>
> CalDAV syncing would be a major new feature in Spanning Sync, not just
> a bug fix. It's something we're actively working on and *hope* to have
> ready, at least in beta form, by the time Apple stops supporting local
> MobileMe calendars which, as they've publicly stated, is May 5.
> --
> Larry Hendricks

> la...@spanning.comhttp://spanningbackup.comhttp://spanningsync.com

[VidGizmo]

Mobile Me is now giving a countdown to indicate that the old calendars
will be discontinued in 30 days. Any chance of a fix by then?

-Mike

On Mar 22, 1:30 pm, "byron.shaheen" <byron.shah...@gmail.com> wrote:
> H Bill,
>
> The new MobileMe calendars are CalDAV calendars and Apple only
> supports read-only access of CalDAV calendars through its sync
> architecture.  We're working on a solution to this restriction, but
> can't promise anything yet.  You can regain two-way sync functionality
> by downgrading to the old MobileMe Calendar.  You can do so by going
> here:
>
> https://www.me.com/calendar/downgrade
>
> Please let me know if you have any questions.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Byron
>
> ---
> Byron Shaheen

> byron.shah...@spanningsync.comhttp://spanningsync.com

[Vick Khera]

On Apr 5, 10:28 am, VidGizmo <vidgi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Mobile Me is now giving a countdown to indicate that the old calendars
> will be discontinued in 30 days. Any chance of a fix by then?

I'm not very optimistic they will have a solution. This issue has
been ongoing for many, many, months. This change is basically going
to mean the end of their existing product, and just telling people to
downgrade their calendars is like sitting there with blinders on
watching the end come and not making a proper solution that will
survive long-term. There is no way anyone can claim that they
reasonably expected the old version of the MobileMe calendars to be
available indefinitely.

We are under 4 weeks away from the cut-off, and there is not even a
beta test release available to iron out any issues. I'm just not
going to hold my breath waiting for a solution. I really do not know
what I will do... perhaps there is some generic software out there
that will sync two CalDAV servers with each other...

[doogald]

Since I'd rather have Google Calendars than Mobile Me calendars, I
just turned off Mobile Me calendars and just sync to Google Cal
instead. If you have an iPhone, it's quite simple to turn off calendar
sync on the iPhone and turn on either Google account calendar syncing,
or set up a Google account as an exchange client and get push sync
calendars (that's what I use on my iPod Touch.)

[Vick Khera]

On Apr 12, 8:59 pm, doogald <doog...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Since I'd rather have Google Calendars than Mobile Me calendars, I
> just turned off Mobile Me calendars and just sync to Google Cal
> instead. If you have an iPhone, it's quite simple to turn off calendar
> sync on the iPhone and turn on either Google account calendar syncing,
> or set up a Google account as an exchange client and get push sync
> calendars (that's what I use on my iPod Touch.)

Then what exactly is the point of having SpanningSync at all in this
scenario? Just use Google as your CalDAV server from all clients.
The address book on the mac will already sync with google contacts
reasonably well.

[Jerry Withers]

I came to the same conclusion. That is why I dropped spanning sync
when my one year expired.

Sent from my iPhone

[raubin]

The use scenario is having client-side apps that use Apple's sync services and iCal.  I have a few programs (Daylite is one) that don't have caldav support.  In order to get calendar syncing with google (I share a calendar with someone who does not use Daylite), I sync to iCal and the, using Spanning Sync, to Google.  I also use MobileMe, but will discontinue calendar syncing there - Daylite Touch has calendar sync, so the mobileme is somewhat redundant.

[Bert Shure]

hello raubin:

i use daylite as well on my mac. i have been syncing to google for
google voice and my android phone with spanning sync. it works great.

i have been syncing to mobileme for my iPad. i agree that daylite
touch and syncing to the iPad are redundant. i think i might dump
daylite touch. i rarely use it.

while i'm at it, i think i can turn off syncing to mobileme. i really
dont' use it either.

i love spanning sync's tools that check my address book and calendar
for info that will have problems at google.

cheers,

bert

[patrickm2]

Very same here. I've been dreading this day, logged into mobileme and
got the countdown message, so upgraded. I had upgraded months back as
part of the beta, but noticed this spanning sync issue, so downgraded.

As a result of this, really mobileme isn't an option anymore. I'm
going to use google calendar directly on the iPhone and Mac. This
means I no longer need spanning sync. Very sad to say I no longer need
these services, but Google offers more then Apple. It's Apples fault
really for read only CalDav calendars.

P

[David Nash]

Just got the expected message from apple:

"Upgrade to the new MobileMe Calendar to restore calendar syncing and
web access

Over the past few months, we let you know that a new version of
MobileMe Calendar was available and that it was important for you to
upgrade to it. Because you have not upgraded to the new MobileMe
Calendar, you currently can’t sync your calendars to your devices or
view them via the web at me.com. Please click the Upgrade Now button
below to upgrade to the new version of Calendar and restore syncing
and web access. We recommend upgrading immediately since any calendar
changes made between now and upgrading may be lost.

We hope you enjoy the new MobileMe calendar.

The MobileMe Team"

So - do you have a solution yet?

[byron.shaheen]

Hi David,

Please read here:

http://blog.spanningsync.com/2011/04/update-spanning-sync-and-the-new-mobileme-calendars.html

Thanks,

Byron

---
Byron Shaheen
byron....@spanningsync.com
http://spanningsync.com