Jagalicious Fresh

I heart my iPhone. I really do. Despite the problems with calls (which has gotten WAY better since the 2.1 firmware upgrade), it genuinely is the best phone I’ve ever had. It’s fast, it doesn’t crash on me, and it’s contact and call management is nothing short of suburb. Three way calling? No sweat. Putting a call on hold? Easy as cake. And syncing with my address book is, for the first time, ACCURATE. No more praying and hoping I have the fields lined up the right way (I’m looking at you, old Blackberry 7250….yeah…)

And, I heart Gmail. I really do. I would never go back to any other service. The threading of messages, the quick and easy search results and labeling, it’s top notch. Hell, setting it up as IMAP on my iPhone was even a breeze, and lets me clear crap out of my inbox when I’m not in front of my laptop. It’s great.

But when it comes to contacts, ya’ll really need to start getting along.

A while back, Google introduced a way of syncing your bookmarks between your Apple Address Book and your Google Contacts in Gmail, but only if you had an iPhone (or iPod touch). Great! Now when someone emails me, their email is automatically added to my Google Contacts and, by syncing, my Apple Address Book and my iPhone!

…only, not so much. For some contacts, it just can handle shortened names (Pete vs Peter, Dom vs Dominic) and creates duplicate entries. For some, even if the email is already in my address book, it goes ahead and creates a new entry with JUST the person’s email address.

And while the whole “adding anyone who’s emailed you” think sounds like a great idea, it gets old very fast. Ever emailed back and forth with someone on Craigslist trying to buy or sell something? Yeah, I don’t need a permanent record of the person who bought my old desk lamp. We’re not buddies. I’m not hanging out with them at Murky Coffee anytime soon.

(Conversely, if my roommate of a year and a half sends me a text message, don’t delete his number. Tell me it’s him. Don’t make me hunt down who’s phone number I’m looking at. He’s a person, not a number.)

So seriously, Google, Apple, get together, make this actually work. Sergey Brin is on Apple’s Board of Directors, I’d think y’all would be chatting here and there!

(* - I assume that the correct way of saying this is “Why does Google Contacts suck…” and not “Why do Google Contacts suck.” It’s a single product, just named after something that’s inheriently multiple…I guess…any help Grammer Girl?)