<p>Okay, so I am a little late to Iphone world.</p>
<p>It’s wonderful…except, I have had several syncing issues with Icloud and inadvertently
lost contacts, retyped them in, got duplicates upon duplicates and accidentally merged contacts that shouldn’t have merged because of a crappy app and user error. </p>
<p>I can’t make Iphone export to Google, even though I can export Google to Iphone. What if I want a nice clean contact list that I can print with all the information on several pages? What if I want a list that is backed up offline, when I can’t access the cloud? I want a copy of the list on my computer, but it looks like a webarchive and not a normal directory list. I can do that in Google. I can do that in Yahoo. I can’t figure out how to do that in Icloud. It’s probably so simple that a Genius would make me feel inferior, but it’s stumped me. Maybe it works in group lists, but what if I want ALL of them? It can’t be this difficult. </p>
<p>So I am lame. I admit it. </p>
<p>Any suggestions from Apple gurus in residence? </p>
<p>Anyone have any clue? I have googled it with no success.</p>
<p>I haven’t started using iCloud yet, so I can’t help you there. If your phone is still under warranty (did you buy Apple care?), I strongly recommend calling tech support. They tend to be really helpful and will walk you through all the steps. </p>
<p>I have my Google contacts synched with my iPhone contacts, and when I manually sync (connect my phone to my computer), they mutually back each other up.</p>
<p>When I saw your post heading I was sure I would be able to help, but the one thing I haven’t really mastered is the whole contacts synching thing. I, too, had a bunch of duplicates, but I just sort of culled them manually and I do NOT synch with my computer anymore. I hope someone weighs in here who actually can do all this. iCloud further complicated things…</p>
<p>I am glad it’s not just me. My previous phone was an Android and I could sync everything up fine, no duplicates, either with my yahoo or gmail account. </p>
<p>It’s frustrating. I may have to go to an Apple store, but this is a crazy time of the year around there with holiday shopping plus getting house ready for family to come into town.</p>
<p>I tend to think that Icloud just doesn’t play nice with Google. From what I understand before Icloud, you could sync better without the duplications on the list.</p>
<p>I have also deleted contacts numerous times from iphone and icloud and they keep coming back in duplicate or triplicate. </p>
<p>Perhaps there is a Apple geek/genius in residence here who can give us the simple steps.</p>
<p>There is hope that Apple will figure this out in the future. Some are lucky enough to have updates and upgrades that work as planned. Others are not, and when things do not go as planned with new updates, the “Me” world is a lot less pleasant. The “try this and try that” one finds by scouting the web usually turns into different sets of problems. </p>
<p>My take is that it was a wise decision to wait for the mythical iPhone5 and an iCloud that works as advertised. Fwiw, about everyone I know who did jump on the 4S/IOS5 bandwagon has experienced some frustration. </p>
<p>Well, xiggi, I’m perfectly happy with my new iPhone 4s, although I’m not using iCloud yet.</p>
<p>Samurai – go onto the Apple website and set up a phone appointment with tech support. You can schedule a specific time for them to call you (and they have always called me within a couple minutes of the scheduled time). I wouldn’t go near an Apple store for this – phone support should do it.</p>
<p>Samurai - call tech support. I had similar issues with duplicate calendar items and did not quite understand ICloud. A scheduled phone session with tech support worked wonders for me.</p>
<p>I didn’t pop for the Iphone 4S. I am Siri-free.</p>
<p>I had a Blackberry for several years and I loved it, until they shrunk the keypad. I swore I would never get a touch screen. I ended up doing that when I upgraded in Spring and got an Android. I had terrible, terrible battery performance problems, having to replace batteries multiple times a day. The touchscreen was problematic too. </p>
<p>I only switched after playing with a friend’s phone and realizing that the touch screen was intuitive, I could do it with one hand (I never could do this on the android phone I had) and it had a nice heft as I was holding it. It felt solid. </p>
<p>The only thing I don’t like about it is the ICloud, so far. Everything else has been wonderful.</p>
<p>I think you will like it once you give it a week or two. Then you will wonder why you held off so long. The Iphone Kool Aid is mostly delicious. ;)</p>
<p>Jym, I am not an Apple fan, but I believe the Iphone to be the most enjoyable phone you can buy. Of course, this can be by default! It is not beyond criticism but I would not revert to a HTC which was a great phone, or to a RIM product. The iPhone is entirely different from the typical Blackberry as it seems to have a different purpose. </p>
<p>Fwiw, for all its ease and greatness, you might hate to be hostage of iTunes, unless you are already stuck with it through other Apple purchases. Apple fanboys will deny this but iTunes is a royal PITA. even this last update was an exercise in typical Apple futility with broken connections, hours of asinine synching, and a messy result of duplicates and additional AppleIds and email accounts. Again, fanboys will deny it, but few people can explain how users were supposed to install the new software CORRECTLY. And this for a company that PRETENDS to deliver a more intuitive product. Not surprising that you can’t get decent advice on the web to solve iCloud nightmares. By the way, if you have problems, check your groups and AppleIds.</p>
<p>In summary, you will enjoy the iPhone by itself, but will be annoyed by all the synching and the Apple mystique. The iPhone, in my opinion, is the best Apple product, but again that is not as remarkable as it sounds. They always LOOK good, but the software ranges from so-so to entirely crappy. To give you some perspective, think that the lauded iPAd cannot display a LOT of websites and crashes very often due to memory limitations.</p>
<p>PS I typed this on a IPad. I have no idea why anyone finds CC enjoyable on it.</p>
<p>A friend of mine was just complaining to me yesterday that she lost her whole contacts list from her Iphone. Spent four hours on the land line phone and computer with Apple and no resolution. She said her eyeballs were fried by the time she gave up and went to bed with no phone list. The back up of her list did not work either. Business contacts and all lost.</p>
<p>Oddly, my contact list was the ONE thing that did work properly when I swapped from the 4 to 4s. I did have terrible issues with my calendar. If anyone can tell me how to use icloud and ical that would be amazing. It seems to be one or the other. I has originally had the duplication issues with ical when I used mobileme. The guru’s did something to fix that and it worked great until switched from mobileme to icloud.</p>
<p>I’m with jym626 considering a change from BB to iPhone because I want the mobile hot spot on the phone and only Android and iPhone support it. But the reason I have BB is that I have 2 different email accounts that clients use to get to me and BB works seamlessly with my outlook and the accounts for email, calendar and contacts. But the rest of BB drives me nuts. I am not currently an itunes user. So I am wondering the same thing about the change.</p>
<p>Plenty of discussions about all kind of problems. You might be lucky to find a solution for yours. Again, most issues are created by extra AppleIDs and the need to have all the devices on the same page, so to speak. </p>
<p>It should not be and have been that hard. Spending some of those billions towards useful instructions might have been a wise investment at the iAmKoolAid Company. </p>
<p>Xiggi, I will check out the link. I appreciate it.</p>
<p>I am putting all my contacts in Google as a backup. The address list is nice to look at and I can share it with others, print it out and such. You are right, it should have been easier with Apple - they sell it’s consumers and prospective buyers on simplicity and ease. I am not there understanding the ease of Icloud, yet. Maybe I just have to tweak a couple of settings and then I will rave about it, but I am just kind of over retyping these contact lists!</p>
<p>I never used MobileMe - I tried it on the trial and wasn’t a huge fan, so I always used Yahoo for email contacts. Then I added Gmail account, which is a lot nicer than the Yahoo address book.</p>