I’d heard reports of the new update borking people’s wireless Time Machine backups, and even totally crashing their machine, but I haven’t heard of iCal breaking yet. I know there were some significant iCal updates in the 10.5.3 upgrade, so I’m hoping that my upgrade wasn’t messed up. I had heard that the download for the upgrade would be in the 420 MB range, and mine only downloaded 198 MB. So now I’m totally paranoid that it didn’t do a full upgrade!

I haven’t backed up my Mac yet. I know, I know, bad, irresponsible computer geek. I just signed up for Amazon S3 (which I’ve been using with JungleDisk on the eeePC) but I haven’t set it to back up the Mac yet. I should probably do that, then tackle the iCal issue. I really don’t want to have to rebuild this Mac from scratch.

I spent a LOT of time last night updating my address book. I printed my contacts from GMail and updated Address Book accordingly, then I totally deleted my Google Contacts in anticipation of a nice, clean sync. Then I start downloading the update, which took a long time considering it was 198 MB. While I was waiting, I did a little surfing only to discover that the Google Calendar sync option was only for iPhone and iPod Touch users. ARGH! I was really annoyed.

Thankfully, Lifehacker also posted a workaround for non-iPhone users that allows you to access the sync function, although supposedly it may break after a couple of syncs.  I followed the directions and STILL got no love, so by that time I was steaming mad. Why should non-iPhone users be locked out of such a useful feature? Almost everyone I know uses GMail, not just the few of my friends who currently rock the iPhone.

After I recovered from my righteous anger, I exported my Address Book to Google-friendly CSV using the handy little tool A to G, then imported it into my Google Contacts. It worked just fine, and so I went about the business of syncing my Windows Mobile phone via Missing Sync.

Lo and behold, I get a bunch of conflicts when my contacts try to sync to the phone–Google Contacts conflicts! Apparently the Google Contacts sync is tied to Sync Services, so when I tried to sync my phone, it went ahead to sync my contacts to my Google account. Double ARGH!! I wish I’d known that before I imported all my contacts and then had to work through 134 conflicts.

So, seriously, Apple. I know you want people to buy the iPhone, especially with 2.0 right around the corner. I was briefly a convert to the iPhone kool-aid, before I realized that it didn’t offer a robust enough feature set for my needs. It’s a beautiful, well-done device, but let’s face it–not everyone’s going to own one. So why lock down such a universally appealing feature? I call weak sauce.