MobileMe Calendar Beta Does Not Sync with Todo Apps

Whenever I see an update to a program or app I get excited and want to try it out. This is not always a wise thing to do.

When I found out about the MobileMe Calendar beta update I eagerly signed up and did not think of the consequences. I was approved to try out the beta and pressed the little update button.

The result was that my entire iCal on my iMac was “wiped out” and replaced with the new MobileMe Calendar beta.

From what I understand, the MobileMe Calendar beta moves the local iCal information from your local Mac and stores it on the MobileMe “cloud” or server. So everything you enter on your iCal is stored online and no where else. All updates are sent to your other iOS devices. And when you update info on your iPad or iPhone this is sent to the “cloud” and then down to all other iOS devices. In this way everything is kept up to date and in sync.

Unfortunately iCal is no longer automatically backed up on your hard drive or Time Machine. You have to manually back up your individual calendars in order to have any sort of backup that’s not on the MobileMe server.

So when I updated to MobileMe beta and synced my Todo iPad and iPhone apps, there was no longer any iCal info on my computer and all the info was wiped clean from my Todo apps.

Of course this was very upsetting since I no longer had any of my Todo’s on my iPhone and iPad. Also at this time iCal does not sync it’s todo list feature with any other iOS device (which is still very annoying).

The good news was that I was able to “downgrade” my MobileMe calendar server back to the pre-beta mode which restored my calendar as it was before I updated to the beta. Any changes made after I updated to the beta was lost.

And when I re-synced my Todo apps on the iPhone and iPad I got all my info back! So everything is back to the way it was before I got myself into this mess.

The good folks at Appigo and “Todo” are going to look into this and hopefully come up with a workable fix. If not, I’m worried that when this new MobileMe calendar beta becomes the only option, my Todo apps may become useless.

UPDATE: 11/10/10

Appigo and Todo have been working on the MobileMe update problem. They have also added Todo Online (for $19.99 per year) to sync your todos in the “cloud”. If you have an iPad, iPhone and iCal this seems like a good option to sign up for. I have done so and it works quite well. Whether my computer is on or off, near or far, all my todo items are in sync.

Appigo has detailed instructions on how to update your software to work with the new MobileMe.

Read about my latest AppigoSync/MobileMe fiasco.

Update: 4/25/11 The deadline to update your MobileMe calendar to the new CalDAV system is May 5th. Check out this helpful article, “How to Upgrade Your MobileMe Calendar Safely” from GigaOm, before updating your calendar, if you haven’t done so yet.

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