Apple has changed the text on it’s MobileMe “features” page, indicating that sync from computer to cloud aren’t really “push” at all, but rather standard interval-based syncs. The textual change comes after a lot of folks complained about “false advertising” and “deception” on the part of Apple. The page previously stated:
MobileMe stores all your email, contacts, and calendars in the cloud and pushes them down to your iPhone, iPod touch, Mac, and PC. When you make a change on one device, the cloud updates the others. Push happens automatically, instantly, and continuously. You don’t have to wait for it or remember to do anything — such as docking your iPhone and syncing manually — to stay up to date.
As of today, it says:
MobileMe stores all your email, contacts, and calendars in the cloud and keeps them in sync across your iPhone, iPod touch, Mac, and PC. When you make a change in one place, MobileMe pushes the new information up to the cloud, then pushes the change down to your other devices. Choose a sync interval for your Mac or PC. On your iPhone and the web, sync happens continuously.
It’s good that Apple has made this more clear, but it doesn’t change the fact that they absolutely did misrepresent how the service works — not only on their site, but also during the WWDC keynote demo.
Form talking to someone inside Apple, it sounds as though “true” push is likely to come to the Mac with updates to iCal, Address Book, Mail, and Safai, but who knows when that will be. It’s good to hear it may be coming though, and is not entirely a lost cause.
Thanks to Bret for letting me know about the text change.
001 // Chris Griffin // 07.14.2008 // 3:11 PM
Have you seen this hack? It is possible to change the interval to as low as 1 minute. It’s still interval, but 1 minute is obviously better than 15 minutes.
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20080713174705717
002 // Jeff Croft // 07.14.2008 // 5:18 PM
Yeah, I did see that. As I said in my previous post, 15 minutes is probably fine for my use (I leave my Mac on all the time, so I don’t have to worry about it going off before it syncs), so I’m not terribly concerned about it, but it’s nice to know about for those who really do.