BusyCal and MobileMe Calendar Beta
Monday, July 26, 2010 at 7:15AM I received the email below from a ScreenCastsOnline viewer (Thanks Floyd) with what looks like some important information for BusyCal users. As I did a show about BusyCal a short while ago and I'm an active BusyCal user (as I know a lot of ScreenCastsOnline viewers are), I thought it would be useful to publish it here and on the ScreenCastsOnline forum:
The new MobileMe calendar beta uses CalDAV for syncing calendars. BusyCal does not currently support CalDAV and is not compatible with the MobileMe calendar beta. We are working on CalDAV support in BusyCal and expect to release a public beta that is compatible with the MobileMe calendar beta later this summer. You can learn more here:
http://blog.busymac.com/blog/2010/07/busycal-and-the-new-mobileme-calendar-beta.html
If you're already using the new MobileMe Calendar beta, it will not work well with BusyCal. As part of the MobileMe Calendar beta upgrade process, all of your calendars are moved to MobileMe and deleted from Sync Services. As a result, all of your BusyCal subscribed calendars will be orphaned on MobileMe and no longer syncing with the host. Further, the MobileMe hosted calendar will be read-only in BusyCal.
You have two choices:
1. If you prefer to use the MobileMe Calendar beta, you should reset BusyCal and use iCal for the time being. You can reset BusyCal by selecting Help > Reset > Reset BusyCal.
or
2) Switch back to the old MobileMe Calendar and continue using BusyCal. You can do so by clicking the following link:
http://www.me.com/calendar/downgrade/
After you've done that, you will have to reconfigure your BusyCal Publish and Subscribe settings. There may be some duplicate orphaned calendars that exist both locally and on the host that you were previously subscribed to with BusyCal (on the LAN or on Google). In which case you should delete the orphan local calendars in BusyCal, and resubscribe to the calendars on the host.
Reader Comments (6)
Am I right in thinking the MobileMe Beta is going to trash all my calendars and merge them into one?!?
I don't think so Ron, they will still be separate, just not managed by SyncServices.
That's my reading of it as I haven't tried the beta yet!
Don
I am a beta member. Your calendars stay separate Ron, I am still having 10 calendars just like before the beta. The conversion process generated a few duplicate events, but that's OK for a beta I guess.
I haven't signed up for the new Mobile Me calendar beta, but I do use MS entourage on my Mac and its calendar syncs across to iCal/Mobile Me through Sync Services. Does that mean that once the MM calendar is out of beta something will break my Entourage calendar syncing if iCal and Mobile Me are no longer using Sync Services?
Did I have to do anything to start using the beta mobile me or did it come as part of an update?
busy cal seems ro be working ok at the moment.
cheers
AP
Michelle - Not too sure how that will impact Entourage, one would think Apple would not implement something destructive by default - might continue to be opt in until supporting software has had a chance to adopt.
Andy - You have to opt in to the beta via the MobieMe web interface and request participation in the beta.