With Snow Leopard i was finally able to synchronize my address book to all my computers and devices. Or so i thought.
After putting it into motion i quickly found out that iTunes didn’t see the CardDAV account and thus couldn’t sync the address book to my iPhone. Leaving me without phone numbers on that device.
A little after that i found out that Adium lost all it’s couplings with the contact cards i had made over time. Defaulting in the ridiculous names people put on their MSN accounts.
What that has to do with CardDAV? It seems that Address Book, the app, doesn’t actually synchronize the address book but rather looks at it remotely. Unlike iCal Calendar which transmits events and calendars to every device. Address Book just looks at them on the server and is able to edit them via CardDAV. Thus, on none of my computers is an address book present. Just the app looking at a remote contact list.
I would much prefer them to actually synchronize the data so i can use it for the various apps that work with Address Book. Like iTunes, Adium, Mail and the like.
Now with this new service i can easily share my contacts, yay! But not after i make the changes locally, also do them remotely. Then again to the local address book on the other computer. It’s quite a lot of hassle and i might just not use Address Book Server. Since all the editing it involves to *actually* sync it has just increased to twice as much editing.
Apple really thought this one through… Not :(
