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Also I have used a wide range of programmes on my palm treo that synced flawlessly with my windows pc: bonsai, list pro, phatnotes all offered successful no-brainer sync between handheld and desktop. Thats all I was asking about. Sorry if I have ruffled feathers!!
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With the Treo example, Palm wrote some software that handles the basics of syncing data between the handheld and the desktop; every software vendor writes a plugin that handles the specifics for their application.
With the palm, you buy the Treo, and you get the sync software; you buy the application, and you get the sync plugin. Apple's gone a different route. You buy the phone and have the option of buying MobileMe, but it's not required.
(Of course, Apple's got a subscription model, whereas with palm, it's a one-time purchase. Would it be nice if iPhones came with a free year of MobileMe? Yep, but that's not our decision to make.)
The macworld article Dennis linked to does a good job describing how the iPhone setup is different, which is one of the reasons we're going a different route in moving data back and forth.
On the upside, our method has some advantages, in that the Palm generally syncs with a single desktop machine. With our setup, an iPhone, a work machine, and a home machine could all be synchronized. It doesn't sound like that's applicable to you specifically, but it's still a win for the larger population of users. :-)
Now, if your goal is to have everything 'just work' on day one, MobileMe is probably the way to go. From my quick froogle search, it doesn't look like there's a huge cost difference between iPhone + 1 year of MobileMe vs. a Treo, even at the higher price for the first generation iPhone. You're paying about the same amount for about the same services in both cases; you're just doing it a little differently.
If your goal is to spend as little cash as possible, then you may want to hold off for a bit. I have no doubt that we or some other motivated person out there on the internet will make setting up WebDAV on a local machine easier than it currently is, but I can't predict exactly when it'll happen. The odds that it'll be done before a 1-year subscription to MobileMe is up are pretty good in my opinion.
As it is, we're making an app for a device we've never worked with before, with a UI totally unlike all the other ones we've designed before, and we're doing so much faster than we've ever done so before, as well. Remember: before February, we didn't have any of the resources it takes to write an app for the iPhone. We ship sometime in July. What are we, insane?
There's an engineering saying that gets tossed around from time to time - "Faster, better, cheaper: pick two." In this case, it's more like "Faster, with a side order of better or cheaper - you pick."
Last edited by Brian; 2008-06-18 at 04:36 PM.. Reason: I have a poor grasp of grammar, apparently.