Quote:
Originally Posted by Brian
Hmmm... if nothing else is syncing with iCal, this doesn't sound like something I've heard of before. We'd love to investigate it with you, though - if you send email to the support ninjas we can look into what's going on here. Sorry again for the trouble it's causing. |
Actually, you're not syncing with iCal. You're syncing with the Snow Leopard's built-in extensible Sync Services. This is why syncing with 'iCal' syncs with my preferred calendar too: BusyCal. Just with a slightly better result at BusyCal treats tasks better than does iCal.
This leads to another problem. The contents of the Sync Services are synced through MobileMe to other Macs, to iPod Touches and to iPhones. And to the iPad when it is released.
In OmniFocus you are thought to sync with 'iCal' but if you are using OmniFocus on more than one Mac you are in problems if you do just that. You should only sync with the Sync Services on /one/ Mac as the synced tasks are automatically synced to the other Macs through MobileMe. If you sync from OmniFocus to the Sync Services on two Macs [laptop and desktop] you will get circular syncs - and lots of duplicates. OmniFocus tasks synced to the Sync Services on Computer 1, synced to Computer 2 through MobileMe without the use of the Sync Service's extensibility, can simply not be recognized by OmniFocus on Computer 2 as the same tasks it receives through MobileMe's iDisk.
Unfortunately, OmniFocus will frequently notify the user when he has not synced to the Sync Services for some time. Fortunately it doesn't sync automatically once an hour as is the case with syncs to MobileMe's iDisk. But it should be possible to be able to turn notification off.
Even better had it been to use the extensible Sync Services to sync everything between different Macs. Drop the iDisk sync and extend the Sync Services to include tasks with start dates, projects, contexts, ... it should sync to other Macs directly through MobileMe if set up properly, and the calendar applications will be able to use the features they can use. And OmniFocus should perform this sync with Sync Services automatically
The only problem that I can see to such a solution is that the present iPhone OS doesn't allow 3rd party applications general access to MobileMe. But this may change with the upcoming iPhone OS 4.0.
With MS Office 2008 installed and after having installed a trial version of SOHO Organizer, in the sync portion of the MobileMe control panel I see that these applications use the extensible Sync Services and MobileMe to sync between different Macs. At least, I can see sync options for SOHO Notes, SOHO-tags and Entourage-notes. So it should be possible to set up the extended Sync Services to do so.
On the iPhone I use two 'organizers', Pocket Informant from WebIS with integrated calendar and tasks, and OmniFocus with tasks only. At present, Pocket Informant syncs with BusyCal [and thus the Sync Services] through Google Calendar - and no real sync of tasks to the Mac is done.
But I know they are working on a WebIS Desktop Sync application for Mac that will sync through WiFi [or the internet through port forwarding] to the extensible Sync Services. This means they have to define data structures for start date, project, context etc in the extensible part of the Sync Services. For sure it would be best for the customers of both products, OmniFocus and Informant, if you choose the same data structures enabling sync between OmniFocus and Informant. It is /extremely/ practical to have a today view with events and tasks together.
And in general to be able to see forthcoming tasks in your calendar. I can see OmniFocus tasks in BusyCal - but it is a nuisance to have to sync two sets of tasks manually, between OmniFocus and Informant.