iPhone to iPhone Wireless iCal Sync

[demokr]

Ideal Scenario:

During your busy monday, you accumulate several appointments for the week on your iPhones Ical. You come home to your wife (whomever) and she (they) tell you about all of the appointments and meetings for the week recorded in their iCal. Routinely, they sync their iPhones wirelessly without the use of a computer. During the week, plans change and one changes their iCal event. Because of the change, an automatic update is sent out to all connected iPhones, updating their iCal with a pop-up notification.

The End

Does this scenario happen? Is the iPhone capable of this yet? Have we heard anything about this for future updates?

If this could happen, I know a lot of people that would be drawn to the iPhone because of this feature.

Please let me know any info regarding this topic.

Thank you!

[Surf Monkey]

Short answer: no, that doesn't happen on iPhone.

[jhollington]

Correct. Not only does the iPhone not do this, but in fact doesn't even provide a way for specific appointments to be sent from one phone to another over Bluetooth or even e-mail.

Considering that even my Motorola RAZR V3i and my five-year-old Sony Ericsson T68i could send appointments and vCards (address book entries) over Bluetooth to any other phone, and even open them from their e-mail clients, it's a very strange omission for a device like the iPhone, which is otherwise such an advanced device. :shake:

The bottom line is that the only way to get address book or calendar information on and off the iPhone is via iTunes (or entering it manually, of course).

[Surf Monkey]

Considering that even my Motorola RAZR V3i and my five-year-old Sony Ericsson T68i could send appointments and vCards (address book entries) over Bluetooth to any other phone, and even open them from their e-mail clients, it's a very strange omission for a device like the iPhone, which is otherwise such an advanced device. :shake:


I wouldn't call it strange. After all, iPhone is missing a LOT of basic functions. Cut/copy/paste isn't included and that omission alone is so shocking that the fact that it won't wirelessly synch or send vCards seems pretty minor in comparison.

We're all waiting for software upgrades to address these issues. I'm pretty confident that they'll get fixed over the next few months.

[jhollington]

Oh, I agree... But when you consider that the vCard and vCal/iCal formats form the basis for the calendar and contact applications not only on the iPhone, but on Mac OS X and the iPod, it seems all the more strange.

The iPhone won't even open a vCard file from within an e-mail message (ie, even just to view what's contained inside it), yet there's technically no reason why they shouldn't be able to do this, and it would likely require very little extra code to do.

On the other hand, the lack of cut/copy/paste, while a very serious omission, isn't all that surprising for a device like the iPhone... The real question is how Apple would implement such a thing elegantly enough to be useful? It's certainly possible, but it presents a whole new design issue.

It's not a strange omission because it's a major feature, but rather because it's such a simple feature (in terms of the effort required to accomplish it).

[Surf Monkey]

It's not a strange omission because it's a major feature, but rather because it's such a simple feature (in terms of the effort required to accomplish it).


I can see that. I'd add though that there are a lot of similarly simple but missing features. Really, it's all about the updates. I think we're all really holding our collective breath waiting to see how substantial and how frequent iPhone updates will be.

[EmilAusTirol]

so you cannot sync ical to iphone but you can do the opposite, is that right?

[jhollington]

No, you can sync iCal (as in the application), to your iPhone, via iTunes, in both directions. Changes made on either end will be reflected on the other, and if you're moving your iPhone to a different computer, you will be given the option to merge the data on your new computer with the data on your iPhone, or to replace the data on your iPhone.

What doesn't work is wireless synchronization of iCal data, or individual calendar appointments (iCal/vCal file exchange between devices). The iPhone won't read an iCal/vCal file directly (ie, an appointment attached to an e-mail), nor is it capable of sending them out.

So the only way to get calendar data on and off of the iPhone is to either enter it manually on the device itself, or synchronize it from the Apple iCal application (on Mac) or Microsoft Outlook 2003 (on Windows) via iTunes.

[demokr]

Thanks everyone for your input. Maybe Apple's updates will shine a new light later on.