How to Manually Delete all Sync Data from MobileMe’s Servers

From my experience, MobileMe has an inherent problem with sync data “residue.”

Most of my technical issues with the service’s calendar, contact, and bookmarks synchronization features have resulted from Apple’s cloud service not adequately cleaning up after itself. In my case, this resulted in massive event duplication in my web calendar and on my iPhone, and MobileMe would randomly sync data from months prior. In short, it was a real mess.

During a recent tech support chat with a MobileMe representative at Apple, I learned of an undocumented way to completely nuke all sync data from their servers. And it’s easy as pie.

Now this isn’t some super-secret hack of the service; it’s more of a Homer Simpson d’oh! moment. You know, sometimes you get so used to doing things in just one way and you forget to try alternatives. This is one of those cases.

iCal-Google Sync Showdown: Spanning Sync v BusySync

I’ve written in the past about Spanning Sync, a great little app for synchronizing your iCal calendars on your Mac with Google Calendars. Unfortunately, the app went through some growing pains during its transition to Tiger and its feature set has remained stagnant for quite some time. I’ve never actually paid for a license for Spanning Sync because I disagree with the time-limited $25 fee in principle and the “enternal” $65 fee is just way too much.

So it’s not surprising that a new competitor seems poised to butter Spanning Sync’s bread. BusySync from BusyMac is cheaper and much more feature-rich than Spanning Sync. In its first incarnation, BusySync was just about synchronizing iCal calendars between Macs on a LAN or over the internet. Version 2, released yesterday, adds full synchronization capabilities between iCal and Google Calendar.