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When OF for the iphone came out, I was stoked, but even within the trial period of using the desktop software, I could not get it to sync reliably/quickly. Eventually, I gave up on it and tried many of the other iphone to-do app's (RTM, Things, etc).

I continued to try OF whenever updates came out, and with the latest one for the iphone the sync feature worked good enough. Occasionally it would hang, but it was enough to get me to purchase the desktop software.

After watching the Don MacAllister(sp) video - which should be directly linked to from OF web page!! - I really fell in love with this software and am in 90% heaven. The only flaw - MobileMe syncing. With everything else about OF working great, I got to the point of being nervous about tapping that sync button.

So I bit the bullet and set up my own webdav server using dyndns on my home computer to see if it was better. And holy cow, was it ever! I had used RTM & Toodledo as my "holy grail" of sync speed, and now I have that with OF. My iphone has never taken longer than 10 seconds to sync, be it on my home network nor out in the world over 3G speeds.

Finally, my point:
I wonder if it isn't viable for Omni Group to offer webdav sync services to OF users. It might eliminate the complaints about sync problems for many users.

Obviously, I have a "server" all to myself so speed is super-great, but I bet a lot of people would be willing to sign up to test a service that might provide something as easy to set up as MobileMe but as fast as a web-based to-do application sync.

It might even be viable as an optional service for those willing to spend a few extra bucks a month, or similar to RTM's $25 yearly fee. This might cover the costs of server maintenance.

I don't know - I just find this program combination (desktop & iphone) really outstanding, and wanted to share my frustrations and possible solutions. I consider myself pretty average, and figured there might be others out there experiencing the same frustrations I did...
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by chriswitt View Post
WMy iphone has never taken longer than 10 seconds to sync, be it on my home network nor out in the world over 3G speeds.

Finally, my point:
I wonder if it isn't viable for Omni Group to offer webdav sync services to OF users. It might eliminate the complaints about sync problems for many users.
Are a lot of people having trouble syncing with MobileMe? For me it's been very smooth and reliable. I haven't measured, but I would guess around 10 seconds to be about what I'm seeing. Sometimes it's longer if I haven't synced in several days; but usually it's shorter. Sometimes it's so fast, I think it failed until I actually check my other client and see that everything's there.

My personal experience leads me to believe that the majority of sync problems are with third-party WebDAV servers, not MobileMe. But I don't know. The Omni Group is probably the only one with any reliable data on this.

So if MobileMe really isn't causing any significant problem, what economic sense would it make for the Omni Group to implement and maintain their own competing service? I'd personally prefer to see them invest extra resources in future development and leave the hosting service to others.

-Dennis
 
I'm not sure that I agree that MobileMe isn't the problem, but I agree that there are only finite resources, and focusing on the app should be priority one.

My experience with MobileMe isn't as good as yours is. It actually effects not only the iphone sync, but also the idisk sync of the omnifocus database. When turning on my laptop, I will frequently experience something like this:

1. Laptop comes on, idisk starts syncing.
2. Sit and watch omnifocus file "sync" for a full minute.

The problem is realized a minute later when working in OF and it disappears and updates itself, making me wonder what happened. MobileMe should be a "zero-config" type of setup, and as a user, I don't want to spend time figuring out some complicated solution. I think OF is marketed as taking advantage of the convenience of MobileMe, but I seem to come across a lot of posts that don't seem to realize that convenience.

Since the webdav setup was trivial and takes up little resources, I thought the idea of a dedicated machine on Omni's site that is dedicated to this *might* be a solution worth looking into, as it could be built into the program and made easier for the end user to setup and experience.

Oh well, maybe I'm the only one having less-than-stellar experience with the idisk sync, so the problem is mine and not others.

Either way - happy holiday's everyone!
 
You might want to consider two options:

1) turn off the MobileMe iDisk sync feature entirely (my personal preference) if you don't really need it

2) have OmniFocus sync to a location on the iDisk that is not synced by the MobileMe iDisk sync feature. There's a thread about this here.
 
GREAT info on syncing - thanks for the link!
 
chriswitt, can you share a detailed prescription on how to setup such WebDAV? i am not linux guru, but i do have a asterisk server which i might be able to use for this purpose. i would hate to spend so much on mobileme for just this...
 
Hi msim,

I used the instructions here:
http://manas.tungare.name/blog/howto...cus-to-iphone/

The only option I needed to do that weren't in the instructions on that site were found on this board in the instructions here:
http://forums.omnigroup.com/archive/...hp/t-9416.html

Look at whpalmer4's settings on posted dated 2008-08-15, 07:27 PM.

I don't know why making my ServerName that of the local machine name worked, especially since I'm using dyndns to have a public server name for my work computer & iphone to connect to when not on my own network.

But it worked, so I'm happy.

Hope that helps,

-Chris
 
thanks for the quick reply! i do not have a Mac OS server. i guess on linux it will get hairy for me, and i might have to give up.

the next best alternative in terms of cost appears to be jungle disk plus option...
 
You don't need an box running Mac OS X Server, a plain old Mac running 10.4 or later will do.

It also shouldn't be too terribly difficult(*) to get a suitable WebDAV server running on a Linux box -- isn't Apache available for all of the usual distros? That's what you are configuring with the instructions mentioned above, the only difference being that there's a bit of GUI to control starting and stopping the server. The configuration file stuff shouldn't be any different, to the best of my recollection.

(*) he says, not having tried it :)
 
you are probably right. but i have a custom cent OS distro and am not too sure if i should meddle.

thank you! :)
 
 


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