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Syncing iCal on multiple machines

S

SamNeeds

macrumors regular
Original poster
Dec 28, 2007
178
0
Evening all,

I've got a Macbook and iMac and on both I use iCal. The problem is that the iCal's on both don't match up! Which is a problem as often I'll be wandering about the house (away from the iMac) and I'll use the Macbook. And vice-versa.

So then; is there a way to have both the Macbook and iMac to sync up? So that when I edit one, the other matches up. Not necessarily immediately, but say, after an hour.
 
SamNeeds said:
Is there a way to have both the Macbook and iMac to sync up? So that when I edit one, the other matches up. Not necessarily immediately, but say, after an hour.
Click to expand...

A free way to sync macs does not exist yet i believe.
I am trying two options at the moment, they both have free trial downloads, so see what fits your needs most.
One is BusySync (http://www.busymac.com) which syncs iCal directly over LAN or WAN. The other is Spanningsync (http://spanningsync.com) which allows you to sync Google calendars with iCal, which i like best so far because it allows you to edit your calendar with every mac you have, from wherever in the world, even if you don't have your computer at your disposal.
They will do what you want without the need for a .mac account ;)

Addition: i found a free one: try http://www.plaxo.com. Does the same thing as Spanningsync, but uses their own webcalendar to sync with, not Google calendar.

CHeers.
 
Europe calling said:
A free way to sync macs does not exist yet i believe.
I am trying two options at the moment, they both have free trial downloads, so see what fits your needs most.
One is BusySync (http://www.busymac.com) which syncs iCal directly over LAN or WAN. The other is Spanningsync (http://spanningsync.com) which allows you to sync Google calendars with iCal, which i like best so far because it allows you to edit your calendar with every mac you have, from wherever in the world, even if you don't have your computer at your disposal.
They will do what you want without the need for a .mac account ;)

Addition: i found a free one: try http://www.plaxo.com. Does the same thing as Spanningsync, but uses their own webcalendar to sync with, not Google calendar.

CHeers.
Click to expand...

For the love of all that is holy, do not use Spanning Sync! They store your Google login information on their servers, and force all your sync data to go through their servers. There is no reason for this other than greed, so they can continue to charge you every year as a "service". There is absolutely no technical reason why it should have to go through their servers. Not to mention it introduces an additional point of failure, because if their servers are down you lose your ability to sync.

Gsync does the exact same thing, but you just buy it once (for less than the yearly fee for Spanning Sync, I might add) and they don't store your Google login data...because it just communicates directly between you and Google.

I really hope more people can get the word out about Gsync, because I think what the Spanning Sync developers have done is sketchy and unethical. I was part of their beta back before they launched, and was involved in some of the conversations with the developers about how the customer's data was handled. Let's just say I found them evasive and their scruples questionable, and it appalls me that Spanning Sync is recommended so often without any mention of the fact that your Google username and password are being stored on their servers! If you try both Spanning Sync and gSync and decide you prefer Spanning Sync, I can respect that (it does have a better user interface, I'll give it that), but I at least think people should be aware of the security implications of Spanning Sync...and the greed of the developers.
 
boast said:
um..

what I have is a web server running webcalendar. and ical syncs to it.
:confused:
Click to expand...

Err - how on earth have you managed to get this working? I have been tearing my hair out. The nearest I can get is iCal v2.0.5 (Tiger version) publishes to Webcalendar if you have it running with PHP5 but no other combination will work for me (specifically iCal v3 (Leopard) is totally broken in its publishing)

Also there seems to be no way for iCal to do a two way publish and subscribe to the same Webcalendar.

Please post details of what you have done and what is working.
 
I also have used Webcalendar a couple of months ago. The thing is it syncs only one way. You can see your iCal appointments on the web, but you cannot edit or add things with WebCalendar.
I'm quite happy with Gsync so far. It syncs both ways.
 
If you are a bit techie and comfortable with installing services etc on your Mac then GCALdaemon looks interesting.
http://gcaldaemon.sourceforge.net/usage.html

Looks like you might be able to use it to sync (bi-directional) multiple calendars (iCal, Sunbird etc) through a free private google calendar with the clients on Windows as well as Mac.
Haven't had a chance to try it yet though...

RogerCO
 
it may be less expensive(depending on how you value your time) to bite the bullet and take out a .mac subscription. try it for a year; you can always cancel your membership.
 
I've been using Plaxo for a couple of weeks and it does a great job syncing between my gMail calendar, iCal and Outlook 2007 (Windows).
 
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