One thing that hasn’t been discussed with the upcoming iPhone software update and the new sync services of MobileMe is how the two sync services will cohabit.
Generally speaking, sync services are complicated and potentially fragile. The more potential sources and destinations, the more complicated the situation. The current .mac sync services are good, but far from perfect as evidenced by the 150 entries that show up in the logs after :
AddressBookManager[10531] Metadata without a record:every time that .mac syncs my address book.
But I have high hopes for this next generation, since much of the information will be based on a push/queue model which I think will be easier to manage. But this begs the question of how you can have two services that are potentially touching the same data.
Will my Exchange synced calendars be visible to MobileMe? Or will they only get as far as the iPhone? I foresee very complicated issues surrounding multi-source syncing where updates for the same calendar are coming from MobileMe and then pushed up to Exchange. Or in the other direction, an change on an iPhone that needs to be pushed out to two different destinations? Conflict management starts looking like a pretty interesting technical and UI issue.
If I’m a registered enterprise iPhone, will I be able to use MobileMe at the same time? What if any restrictions will apply? Will there be a split of responsibility? If so, will there be any alternative means for me to push data between the two clouds?
Currently on the Mac I’ve had to fall back on using Entourage to iCal syncing in order to consolidate my calendar data effectively. So if I leave this in place I can see that I might have an Exchange managed calendar that Entourage picks up and pushes to iCal, which then pushes it to MobileMe where it gets sent along to my iPhone where it resides next to a calendar that is fed directly from Exchange. Ouch. That looks pretty ugly.
The other question that is still outstanding is what happens to our current SyncService APIs. Do they get replaced completely or will they still continue to work the same way they do today?
What about my PC where I use Outlook connected to Exchange as opposed to a standalone copy of Outlook used with a non Exchange based POP or IMAP account? Will Exchange data be publisheable to MobileMe?
On the email side of the house, this is much less of an issue since there will always be one “master” datastore on the mail server. But for calendar and address book data this picture is much less clear.
As an Exchange user and a .mac customer I’m very curious to see how this will play out.