iPhone contact synchronization is a mess
Posted: Thu Mar 31, 2011 8:24 pm
I've been looking for a way to keep my iPhone contacts in sync with my Thunderbird address book. Using Google as an intermediate did not work so well because it sort of flips out on the names. As I understand it, the iPhone displays contacts by concatenating First, Last and Company fields, depending upon which of those fields are populated. Whatever it's doing, I'm happy with. However, when taking it to Google, it screws up those fields because it *need* First and/or Last to be populated. If I have a contact that's just a Company, it tries splitting that in half, so I end up with contacts with names like: Support, Gigabyte Customer.
Ok, so this seems like a lot of discussion about something that does not have anything to do with BirdieSync. I mention it for two reasons: (1) it's backstory on why I'm enthused about finding a direct sync between my iPhone and Thunderbird, and (2) I suspect it's the iPhone's unique perspective on how it displays contact names that might be causing my sync problems. For reference, I'm using a Verizon iPhone 4 and Thunderbird 3.1.9. On to the details of the sync.
To prepare for the sync, I created a new address book in Thunderbird, named "iPhone Contacts," and installed and configured the BirdieSync pc-based server, and the iPhone client. The sync went off smoothly, and created a new item in my Thunderbird address book for each of my 312 iPhone contacts. The created entries are sort of a mess, though. Phone numbers are poorly formatted, but the big problem is with the display name. Here is what I think BirdieSync is doing to generate a display name.
(1) If the iPhone contact as has Company, use that as a Display Name.
(2) If the iPhone has a Home Email, use the username portion of the email address as a Display Name.
(3) If neither Company or Home Email are available, just don't use anything for Display Name.
This has resulted in many of my newly-created Thunderbird address book entries having no Display Name, or a messy, non-descriptive Display Name, in spite of those contacts having a perfectly legitimate First and Last name entry. This is a complete deal breaker for me--the sync is creating a Thunderbird address book that is garbage.
There are some other points and questions I may comment on as well, but this problems seems the most obvious to me now.
Ok, so this seems like a lot of discussion about something that does not have anything to do with BirdieSync. I mention it for two reasons: (1) it's backstory on why I'm enthused about finding a direct sync between my iPhone and Thunderbird, and (2) I suspect it's the iPhone's unique perspective on how it displays contact names that might be causing my sync problems. For reference, I'm using a Verizon iPhone 4 and Thunderbird 3.1.9. On to the details of the sync.
To prepare for the sync, I created a new address book in Thunderbird, named "iPhone Contacts," and installed and configured the BirdieSync pc-based server, and the iPhone client. The sync went off smoothly, and created a new item in my Thunderbird address book for each of my 312 iPhone contacts. The created entries are sort of a mess, though. Phone numbers are poorly formatted, but the big problem is with the display name. Here is what I think BirdieSync is doing to generate a display name.
(1) If the iPhone contact as has Company, use that as a Display Name.
(2) If the iPhone has a Home Email, use the username portion of the email address as a Display Name.
(3) If neither Company or Home Email are available, just don't use anything for Display Name.
This has resulted in many of my newly-created Thunderbird address book entries having no Display Name, or a messy, non-descriptive Display Name, in spite of those contacts having a perfectly legitimate First and Last name entry. This is a complete deal breaker for me--the sync is creating a Thunderbird address book that is garbage.
There are some other points and questions I may comment on as well, but this problems seems the most obvious to me now.