Ran into a problem where OS X iSync would not start up. I'd start the program, title bar would come up, but no application pane would show. I've been using a third part application that uses the SyncServices (the underpinnings of iSync) for some time now. Their application wouldn't work either. But it kicked out a message that "Sync Services are not currently enabled."
So I contacted their support and they suggested un-install the application and re-install. But the un-installer would hang when it went to un-register from Sync Services. So I was stuck on the same problem. They suggested that if I couldn't get into iSync to reset it (and I could not) I might need to reinstall OS X.
Err.. what? iSync quits and perhaps I should re-install? There must be a better way.
I can't find much help on diagnosing Sync Services problems. Is it a daemon, a program, where does it live? How do I know what is corrupted or what is/is not running? I can't find much in the logs except notes telling me that SyncServices calls are timing out. But where do I look to find the thing that is supposed to be the response? Googling didn't seem to give me much information. I was hoping to avoid having to read all the developer information just to debug the system.
So, on a lark, I renamed ~/Library/Application Support/SyncServices to ~/Library/Application Support/SyncServices_old and restarted iSync.
Would you believe it worked? iSync rebuilt the old directory, then told me this was the first I'd used iSync and I started over. But.. it didn't forget my mobile's name. And that third party installer now announces it's unregisterd from Sync Services. i reinstalled and was off to the races.
So all appears to be working.
The conflict resolution, as the system reset itself is quite clever. I get these panes that come up showing me how the three devices (Mac, Mobile and other system) disagree on some item and ask me to resolve the question. Clever. It's nice to have it all centralized like this.
But to have it hinted that if something fails I need to re-install the OS.. well, that's not going to cut it. Anybody know more about Sync Services? Anybody know why what I did worked? Why iSync didn't forget about the mobile phone? What are the underpinnings of Sync Services?
I think it was a data set corruption. I ran out of disk space. I wonder if that was about the time this quit. How do I figure out which of the data sets was corrupted? It would be better to toss just one and not all of them in the future.

Got a call from John who is trying to move from Outlook 2003 on the PC to Entourage on the Mac. Five days later and he's still struggling. The real problem isn't the various software packages, what they offer and the like. The problems, as I see them are:

• Data is stored in some proprietary format whcih only a few people have reverse engineered. Moving from Outlook 2000 would have been easier, I guess, but 2003 changed the file format once again and now he's stuck
• He's been using his email system as a filing system. Old emails are all stored in it, forever. There's no way to really keep track of everything
• He turned on the business contact manager, it provided lots of helpful tools as far as he was concerned, but he had no idea that it required the MSSql database, what that meant when I told him, or that, as an active process, it's not getting backed up by his backup software because the "file's still open".

He's not stupid or anything. In fact h'e getting further than others might have. He's just got a job to do and thought that a computer would help with that job. And it does, but the natural side effect of sending letters on paper was that you could put them in file folders, and if you got a new typewriter, mailman or whatever, that didn't change the files. The PC is an all in one communications tool and filing tool and he's been using it as such. But where are the darn files? Where are they reall? In which file, in what format, how do I read them, what causes them to persist, and.. most importantly what causes them to vanish and how do I protect against that?
To use paper and pencil you don't seem to need to know how paper was made, pencils were developed, typewriters invented or by whom. They're so simple. And computers make you think you're still in that world. Or let you assume it. Until something goes monstrously wrong
I'm guilty of making all the same assumptions, and of ignoring the problem when it presented itself. When I moved into a new email system I didn't bring across my old mail. It was all in that mail's system and I had no idea how to extract it. I just didn't bother. It's just gone.. I guess that's what makes John the successful guy he is - dilligence, records, persistence, etc.
There has got to be a better way to manage records of correspondence and activity without succumbing to locking all your data into some corporation's proprietary system... without needing to be a computer genius and without needing to print it all out and hire a file clerk.