I dug out my USB-serial adapter, installed Palm Desktop 4.0 on my iMac, and set up iSync. A little more complicated then it needed to be, but eventually I got it to work—by the way, why isn’t there a USB device class for serial adapters? It seems a pretty glaring omission. Luckily, mine has a driver for Mac OS X. Overall, iSync works pretty well, although it’s rather slow (this is probably due to my datebook having an average of at least one entry per day, dating back to the purchase of my first PalmPilot in 1997) and doesn’t synchronize some Address Book fields with my Palm.
I was very disappointed with iCal, though. Whoever designed it doesn’t appear to have had me in mind; that is, someone who doesn’t work regular days and for whom one-word calendar descriptions aren’t enough. I sent feedback to Apple; maybe a future version will be usable for me. It’s a very pretty application.
In the meantime, I could turn off iCal synchronization, but unchecking “Calendars” in iSync doesn’t make things any quicker, and as long as the iSync conduit is active in HotSync Manager, Palm Desktop’s datebook doesn’t get synced (is there any way to do both? I’d like to use its address book and Mac OS X’s, also), so I guess I’ll leave it on for now. Maybe I’ll go sign up for .Mac and publish my calendar on the Web.
Update: It appears that the iSync installer removes the Address Book, To Do and Datebook contiuits from /Library/Application Support/Condiuts, and moves them to a “Disabled Conduits” folder. Moving them back re-enables them, although unfortunately it looks like the iSync conduit won’t run if you re-install a conduit for a function it syncs.
I was able to move re-enable the Datebook and To Do conduits, disabling the iCal synchronization in iSync, and leave Address Book synchronizing with iSync instead of Palm Desktop. I’ll try that for now. It is annoying that iSync still tries to talk to iCal, even though I have its synchronization turned off.
Cool. Thanks for putting this up. I was trying to find out where the files were to revert and now it’s done. For pure speed and ease iCal isn’t ready yet to be a viable alternative to the Palm datebook. I also found inputting data to iCal to be a slower process.
Cheers
I’ve been stuck in an ical / isync / palm desktop endless loop of anger for almost two days, and your posting here just saved me from pulling out what little hair I had left!
your tip about god damned isync moving palm conduits into a folder called “disabled conduits” was the info I was missing!
Just wanted to send you an email thanking you for posting that!
Cheers,
-Kev.