Why is it so flipping hard to sync?

Ooo a tech post. I haven't done one of these in a while!

It's a bit of a rant actually, but hey, what's new.

I have a blackberry. It's great. All these posts are written on it. I can read rss feed offline. It accesses facebook, google talk, automatically gets my e-mail, and has a calendar and contacts system. And it's these last two I have a problem with. The calendar on the phone is not my main one, the contacts system is not my only one. They can't be. The phone can't deal with meeting invites from various systems, and doesn't have the integration of outlook or gmail / google calendar; and because it's sometimes easier to send mail from a pc, or look up an address, my contacts need to be elsewhere.

My setup cannot be that unique. I have outlook integrated with exchange at work, gmail and google calendar at home, and a blackberry everywhere else. On google I have my calendar shared with my wife, my wife's calendar shared with me, and a personal one to remind me of anniversaries or the need to buy presents. For the purposes of syncing, I'd be happy with just my calendar syncing. On outlook, there is just outlook. I want those meetings available elsewhere.

Blackberry comes with some sync software. Connect your blackberry to a pc, and it will sync the calendar with outlook, and the address book. It's the connect bit I have a problem with. I get up to 10 meeting invites a day (some of them updates, not all new!), and keeping things in sync is a major pain. However, I can live with this.

Syncing to google is another matter. First, I thought I'd try using the blackberry as the "man in the middle". I can already sync with outlook, so all I need to do is get those changes pushed to google. At the same time, pull anything new from google, and next time I sync with outlook, I'd be back in sync.

It doesn't work. I paid real money for some nexthaus software, and an account with goosync, and set everything up (this was after 2 other abbortive attempts with other rubbish software). The software gets all changes from google, and pushes all events from the blackberry IF I created them ON the blackberry. If I sync from outlook, these events are missed unless I initiate a slow sync. Also, if an event is updated to a new time, the old event is not deleted. This is especially fun with recurring events.

Then cames google sync for the blackberry. Finally, I thought, google have stepped up. If anyone can fix this, the guys who own the api must be able to. Nope. Worse problems. Intermittent syncing (if I was not the originator of the meeting it wouldn't sync), and duplications. I tidyed up the system and went back to nexthaus.

Then, a new solution google sync for outlook. I don't have problems syncing with google using nexthaus, just syncing outlook events via the blackberry to google; so if I sync all the outlook events to google, the system will then pull them from google to the blackberry. Great? No. Doesn't work. If the meeting is addressed to me internal username (as all internal meetings are) the program won't sync it because it is looking for my full e-mail address. This begs the question, why? If a meeting is in my calendar, I want it synced. I don't care WHO it is addressed to, it's my calendar, only mine, and I want it synced.

So, I'm stuck. Stuck waiting for one of the tools to get updated and fix the problems. Then, finally, I might know where I'm going, and when, no matter which system I look at.
All of that hasn't even touched on the address book! This one is simpler though. It doesn't work. I can't get either outlook, nor the blackberry, to sync with my google contacts. Useless.

Add into the mix my wife's iPhone. The google calendar interface on that is rubbish. You can't add or change an entry. There still is no way to sync contacts, and the whoe thing is a mess.

Is it really so difficult to have a synced up address book and calendar across a few devices? It's really beyond belief that I can't sync a couple of hand held devices, devices that live and breathe on the net, with a web platform and a desktop system that the majority of the corporate world use.

------------------