Tue, 24 Feb 2009 05:12:26 GMT

Today Google released Google Sync for iPhone, which we’re very excited about. It provides over-the air synchronization of calendars and contacts between your iPhone and Google. But it has a few limitations, including the fact that it makes your iPhone stop syncing contacts and calendars with your Mac.

So what does this mean for Spanning Sync? As it turns out, Spanning Sync can not only simplify the initial setup of Google Sync but will also keep your Mac in sync with Google—something Google Sync doesn’t do.

When you set up Google Sync on your iPhone, all existing contacts and calendar events will be removed from your phone. So before you get started with Google Sync you’ll need to get your iPhone’s calendar and contact data onto Google. With Spanning Sync that’s a snap: just use iTunes to sync your iPhone with your Mac, then Spanning Sync to sync your Mac with Google. That way when you set up Google Sync on your iPhone you’ll still have all of your data.

After you’ve configured your iPhone to use Google Sync, it will no longer sync calendars and contacts with your Mac through iTunes. But Spanning Sync will continue to keep your Mac calendars and contacts in sync with Google, so for Spanning Sync users this is a non-issue.

We’ll be writing a more detailed post soon detailing the benefits of using Spanning Sync and Google Sync together. But the bottom line is this: when you use Spanning Sync and Google Sync together, your data will be kept in sync everywhere you need it: iPhone, Mac, and Google.

Note: If you see unwanted X’s in your contacts when using Google Sync and Spanning sync together, you need to switch to Spanning Sync’s Gmail compatibility mode: