#Contact management software for mac os x update#
Updating contact data in Cobook definitely takes fewer steps than using the Contacts app, and the changes you make sync quickly via whichever service you rely on.Ĭobook can help organize and update your address book from your Mac’s menu bar-regardless of which service you use to sync your contacts. It can work either from the addresses stored in the Contacts app (which, in general, live in your iCloud account) or from your Google contacts.
Sparks stores his contacts in Apple’s app, but also uses Cobook, ‘which is much faster and always rests in my menu bar.’Ĭobook, which I only looked at on Sparks’s recommendation, can merge contact data from various places, including-for free-Facebook, Google, and Twitter. That platform used to randomly make multiple copies of contacts with no rhyme or reason.” When Sparks runs into trouble now, he uses the $5 app Contacts Cleaner to eliminate duplicates and fix other issues. I think part of my hang-up is I remember how terrible contact syncing was back in the Palm Pilot days. Macworld contributor and cohost of the Mac Power Users podcast David Sparks sticks with iCloud because “Microsoft Exchange has been a little more spotty. Macworld senior contributor Glenn Fleishman said his dependence on iCloud “is stupid of me, as I shouldn’t trust it.” But another contributor, Marco Tabini, said that “so far, iCloud does an admirable job of keeping everything in sync and safe from loss.” But the reliance on iCloud, at least on occasion, seems at best unenthusiastic:Įach of the five experts I spoke to uses iCloud for contact syncing I’m the lone outlier who relies on Google.
You have options: For example, you can use iCloud to sync contacts between Apple devices (iPhones, Macs, iPads) or you can use services like Google or Microsoft Exchange to sync instead-particularly if you need to sync your contacts with non-Apple devices, or if you just question iCloud’s reliability.Įach of the five experts I spoke to uses iCloud for contact syncing I’m the lone outlier who relies on Google’s syncing instead. Making sure that you can access every address in your address book on all your devices is a top priority for contact management. Our panel of experts, clockwise from top left: David Sparks, Glenn Fleishman, Jaimee Newberry, Marco Tabini, Lex Friedman (yours truly), and John Moltz. The upshot: No one’s thrilled with how they organize that Rolodexical data, but there are numerous approaches that work “well enough.” I spoke with Apple experts Glenn Fleishman, John Moltz, Jaimee Newberry, David Sparks, and Marco Tabini about how they organize their contacts. There are plenty of ways to deal with your contacts’ information, so which method do you choose?
Your Mac and iOS devices can sync all your contacts for you, and store more data than those books of yore could have handled even if you wrote with the sharpest of number two pencils. In 2014, there’s no need for such old-fashioned foofaraw. Books into which they scrawled the names, numbers, and addresses of their friends and family members. Used to be, people maintained literal personal phonebooks.