Rumor has it that everything Apple does and the way they do it is based on what Steve Jobs thinks is best.  Well, it’s obvious that ol’ Stevie-boy only owns one Mac because it’s impossible to keep more than one in sync.

I am convinced that there is a lot of money to be had for anyone who can come up with the solution to this problem.  It is nearly as prevalent on the Windows platform as it is on the Mac, but I think the problem is worse on the Mac.  And if anyone can help me with a solution to this problem, I would be much indebted.

Let me explain.

If you follow this space at all, you know that I am a fan of OSX, the Mac operating system.  I love my PCs, don’t get me wrong, and I am far more familiar and comfortable with the Windows platform.  But OSX intrigues me.  It has many clever and cute elements about it that make it fun to use.  And, since I am a road warrior, it is far safer to connect to the Web through a hotel’s LAN with OSX than with Windows.

I recently purchased a Macbook Pro because it was the best mobile gaming hardware I could get in a 15″ size for less than the cost of 2 new kidneys.  As such, I have determined to move my base of Mac operations to the Macbook from my Mac Mini.  But that is far easier said than done.

The big problem I am experiencing is disk space.  This comes at a premium in platforms such as the Macbook and the Mini.  Mac apps default their save locations to the /Users/ folder structure, which is fine, to a point.  And syncing two Macs should be as easy as syncing all files and folders in this directory tree.  But what happens when you have to break out of that mold?  What happens when you have to go to an external drive because that’s all the space you need but can’t get?  I’ll tell you what happens…

Chaos!

Many of the standard Mac apps, which are pretty nice and good to use, store their information in databases: xml files and the like.  So syncing files only works if you are assured of only making changes on one platform at a time.  Case in point: iTunes.

This is my biggest nit.  The web is teeming with sites that tell you how to MOVE your iTunes from one Mac to another.  I followed their advice and it didn’t work.  iTunes stores much of its data in its xml file, things like track rating.  Anyone who uses an iPod and iTunes knows that track rating is very useful.  Why can’t iTunes just write the rating to the file itself in its ID3 tag, like the album art?  That way, wherever the file goes, so goes the rating!

But I digress.  It’s one thing if you have a bunch of songs in iTunes, a few GB or so.  That’s not much of a chore.  But what if you have a monstrosity of files?  I don’t have as much as many of you, but I am pushing 30GB of music.

As well, I like to have my podcasts (after all, the name comes from the iPod) in iTunes so that I can have them on my iPod and iPhone.  Managing podcasts is pretty much a nightmare in iTunes on one computer.  The automatic methods that iTunes offers are horrible.  It is easy to miss episodes, especially when you travel away from your Mac for days or weeks at a time.  So managing them manually is the best option.  But that exacerbates the problem when there are 2 or more Macs in the picture.

So, I put all my music on a portable drive and then imported it into iTunes on the Macbook and then used the “import” feature of iTunes to bring in the xml file that I copied from the Mac Mini.  Well, suffice it to say, no tracks on my Macbook have a rating now.  And of course, the movie files are nowhere to be found (mostly because the backup I made excludes the videos because I back them up separately… after all, I don’t want to keep duplicates of every podcast I watch, just the movies).

So what of the podcasts?  Well, they are being downloaded to my User folder, which then makes many sources of iTunes data in many places… and the syncing gets ever more difficult.

Okay, enough about iTunes; what about the other applications?

Obviously, it would be nice to keep calendar events and contacts in sync.  A .Mac account will work well for this for only $99 per year.  But that is far too much to pay for this service.  As someone who is interested in only a few of the offerings in the .Mac subscription, it’s just not worth it.

As it is, I don’t use iCal anyway, except as a conduit for placing my Google Calendar events on my iPhone.  Of course, that’s a one-way trip.  I can’t change my Google Calendar by changing events on my iPhone.  And when I do change events in Google Calendar, I have to sync again to get them to my iPhone.  Obviously, Steve believes that iPhones should be synced every day, or even more often.  Someone who leaves town for a week or more at a time is just S.O.L.  Or else they are stuck using iCal.

As for contacts, well, I haven’t found much of a solution there either.  It is possible to back up the contacts.  But again, restoring them to another computer will wipe out any changes made there.  I could sync contacts to my iPhone and then sync with both Macs, which would work fine, except that syncing my iPhone monkeys with everything else: podcasts, music, videos, calendar, photos, etc.

I suppose it might be possible to only do manual syncing with my iPhone and iPod, but that still doesn’t solve the problem of keeping two Macs in sync.

There are other applications that are a problem too.  Like Keychain data, which can by synced with .Mac.  Or bookmarks.  But the most usefulness in these is if you use Safari as your web browser.  I don’t because it’s not supported as much as Firefox, which is what I use.  So that adds another level of complexity, since Firefox keeps its bookmarks separate as well as its list of usernames and passwords.  But there are many Firefox extensions that could help; I just wish every update to Firefox didn’t break most extensions.  And as for bookmarks, well I use Google Toolbar and keep my bookmarks there.  That way they follow me wherever I go, even to other computers outside of my Mac farm.

All in all, I don’t see why this is such a problem.  After all, most Mac users use the basic suite of applications that come with their computer.  And surely some enterprising geek out there has run across this problem and has devised a way to solve it.

Right now, I would be happy with a way to keep iTunes in sync between two computers.  As well, if it could be synced across the internet, well then that would be a huge bonus!  After all, if I was home all the time, this wouldn’t be a problem.

Is there a solution?  Also let me know if there are ways to keep two Windows PCs in sync.

Related Posts on This Topic:
AppleTV Redux Revisited Take 2 Another Time Around
AppleTV++
iPhone Woes and Oddball Fixes
TV On the Go
iPhone 2.0 3G And Sometimes ‘Y’

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 12th, 2007 at 7:12 am and is filed under Apple, Software, iPhone, iPod. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.