You're Somewhere In The Cloud
I'll give you $100 to sync all of my vCards
The Teardown
Tuesday :: January 22nd, 2019
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Annoyed AF About Contacts
Sometimes we buy new phones. When we do, we face a conundrum as compelling as any: how to transfer our enormous bucket of data to the new device. Is there a cord? Will a sale representative help us with our questions? Schedule a Genius appointment to finish the sync — really?
In lots of modern-day upgrades, syncing is handled not by a clunky device from the stone age of the mobile phone hardware, but by the internet. We use cloud services to seamlessly connect and disconnect devices from our personal data store.
What irritates us is the various ways these syncing processes sputter to a halt despite quantum leaps in computing sophistication. I search Google Photos by typing or saying (to Google Home) “dog with pants on,” but I’m uncertain about whether I’ve ever cleanly synced my contacts in the past. The contrast is hilarious, until it isn’t, which is always. After my last newsletter, someone asked what I do about contact syncing. I felt my blood boil in an instant. Another newsletter was born.
The answer: I don’t know. Let’s work through it together.
Option 1: Apple
Ah, yes, Apple’s services. There are years of support forum threads dissecting sync issues, and in some cases, solving them. I’ll lead you through one of my own problems: syncing contacts on my MacBook Pro. It doesn’t work. Now, as frustrating as the issue is, I care less because I don’t spend most of my time actively conversing with people from my laptop. Sure, there are emails, but I’ll come back to that medium later. My laptop use spans reading, writing (this), feverishly attempting to stay on top of all electronic communication, and farting around with code.
Yet there is a simple issue lurking behind the scenes: both my iPhone and my iPad use iCloud contact syncing, and they harmonize perfectly with each other. My MacBook doesn’t.
I don’t know why. Maybe another famous cloud provider will save me from my misery.
Option 2: Google
Google’s services are superior in nearly every way. They’re faster, more reliable, and platform agnostic. Material Design — Google’s design language — doesn’t wow me more than Jony Ive’s magic touch, but I’m happy to buy into superior function over design for something utilitarian like contacts.
Google’s solution is Google Contacts. Presumably, Google Contacts seamlessly connect one Android phone to another. Both software projects are from the same parent after all. They also live entirely in the cloud and allow access from anywhere.
I spend most of my time in Gmail and Google Photos. It seems logical that contact information and intelligence gleaned from my mailbox flows to the other services, but I’m not sure that’s true. Whereas iCloud isn’t syncing across all devices, Google’s contact system is tangled at best. Precisely what contacts are syncing is anyone’s guess, but my hunch is connections of any kind from the vast number of Google Services, both dead and alive, and others. Google Plus is an egregious contributor as those trusted folks from my Circles are also glued to my contacts. Also included are lots of Outlook Exchange contacts from my past three jobs. I’m grateful for the treasure, but without a useful way to sift and clean, I’m likely to leave the mess in the cloud forever.
That mess is why I don’t sync my Google contacts to my iPhone — the menagerie of connections when the two platforms marry gives me the chills.
Option 3: Save To Computer, Blow It Away, Start Over
Blanket-cleaning everything is theoretically possible, but probably impossible if we consider the vast number of services using our contact information. Here’s a logical question: suppose I back up my Google contacts and subsequently delete them all from the cloud — will Gmail auto-fill when I type? I have no idea. I’m happy to let Google’s AI monsters continue to prefill everything — recently including email body text — and save me time.
We then stumble headfirst into data portability. Putting aside the question of whether we own our data, the more annoying experiment is uploading a simple flat file with contacts — exported by Google — to iCloud. Or, in reverse. There’s a good chance the process won’t work as smoothly as expected, leading to confusion and frustration. This article is one of thousands that try to simplify the process with statements like this:
If you want to move your Google contacts over to iCloud, you’ll have to do it manually from your computer. It’s the easiest way.
First, log in to your Google Contacts account on the web. If you’re using the new Contacts Preview, you’ll need to switch to the old version before proceeding.
You need to switch the old version — in reality the current version (at that time) — because the Preview isn’t packed with all of the bells and whistles necessary to create a simple flat file with contact information. The process is breathtaking in all ways.
Tell Me Your Solution
Some of you use iPhones and others Android phones, and I want to hear about plentiful joy or misery due to contact management. How do you handle this mess? Have you given up? Maybe I’ll form an emotional support group in our Slack group.