OS X: Address book vs. Palm OS 4 Address
Mar 7th, 2003 by mark
Since switching to Apple in January I have started using the OS X Address book to store my contact list. For the most part I am happy with this tool, although it is quirky in how you edit addresses. I like that I can store multiple sets of addresses for a contact, but therein lies a problem.
You see Palm OS 4 Address only allows one address (street, city, state, zip) to be stored for a contact. When I synchronize my Palm (via Palm Desktop HotSync and iSync) I never know what address I’ll find in my Palm afterwards. Most of the time I get the first address listed in the OS x copy installed on the Palm. This is fine, but I also sometimes have multiple repeats of information on the Palm. A contact that only has one address and one e-mail address in Address book, ends up having their e-mail address repeated 2 or more times in the Palm copy.
In the short term I plan on duplicating address cards in OS X Address book so that each entry has only one set of fields. Then when I sync with the Palm I won’t lose or duplicate data. What I would really like is for Palm to update their address software to handle multiple sets of information per contact, or for Apple to update the iSync conduit for Palm to handle the splitting of multiply-addressed contacts into multiple entries going to the Palm, and rejoining separate entities with the same name coming from the Palm.
