[chriscoyne]

After talking with an Apple Representative today, I was asking more about how to use Push and Fetch features. Especially, for Google calendars to sync to the iPhone calendar.

The rep said, he did not know, and thought it was for Gmail only.

Well, with a little investigating myself I figured it out. It works great. Thought I would share.

1. Go to settings and select, Fetch New Data
2. Turn on Push
3. Scroll down to Advanced
4. Select advance and select your Gmail Account
5. Tick if not selected already Fetch
6. Close Settings
7. On your computer, sign in and go to Google Calendar
8. On the bottom left select - Manage Calendars
9. Select Mobile Setup
10. Enter your details and select to get activation code
11. Note: Use Explorer or Safari not Firefox
12. You will recieve an SMS with code insert and save

Thats it. Now test for yourself. set an event on the iPhone....it will be Pushed to the Google Calendar.

On Google Calender....Set an event and it will be Pushed and or Fetched to the iPhone. Also, you can set Alerts to remind you. They Pop-up on the computer while your working and Popup on the iPhone as a SMS to remind you of events.

I will have to call Apple back to tell them how it works... Haha !

Try it out. I will be doing a Review of Google Mobile App soon. It should be your Favorite App after you getting it working right.

Don't have a Gmail account? Go to Google Gmail and create an account in settings set it to be IMAP not POP.

All the Best, Chris

Update - On Contacts. After you have done the above, your contacts will sync automatically in Gmail. Go to Gmail select Contacts of the left and your iPhone contacts will be listed. Wow!
Also, Here is the good part....I have not tested yet. If someone sends you an SMS or an email,with a change to an appointment of event, It will automatically change in your Calender on the Computer and on your Calender on you iPhone. Going to test this now. Update on this - You get alerts from SMS. Email reminders to yourself and Pop-up reminders can be set. Invitations to events created are sent out and they can reply and change event times in comments returned to you and invite others.

Update 2 Creating events and send out invites to join for meeting or dinner..... say works. The recipient receives email and gets the invite. Answers Yes, No or Maybe. Can add comments, like a change of time. Calender is updated to Computer Gmail and iPhone Calendar

Update 3 - Many commenters and bloggers hither and yon have noticed that MobileMe lacks "true push" capabilities, even though Apple uses the "push" buzzword extensively to describe MobileMe services.

A commenter in a MacRumors thread about the subject took screenshots from Apple's site, showing they had removed the phrase "Push happens automatically, instantly, and continuously." In its place, Apple clarifies that changes from the iPhone and web apps are updated instantly on connected computers, but not vice versa.

Apple also notes in a Knowledge Base article that changes "made on your computer will be synced to the MobileMe 'cloud' once every 15 minutes (or every hour in Mac OS X 10.4.11)."

That, to me, doesn't sound like "push," it sounds like "sync." The term "push" still applies, however, to me.com email, as that shows up immediately (in my experience, at least.) Calendars and contacts, though, not so much, apparently.

Thanks to Robert Palmer from TUAW.

This may be why, That some Google Push and Fetch users are having problems. The Data Cloud is experiencing a few teething pains.

Update 4 - Here is an Alternate Method. I have not tried this yet. If you do please post your results.

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacke...phone-for-free

[reeko]

i use gmail, if i could get this to work i would have everything that mobileme offers that i want. the only extra thing would be contacts, i have synced my address book with google contacts but need a way to wirelessly sync that aswell.

i have my ical synced with google cal using busy sync, so this would be a god send... if i could get it to work. is there no way of manually pushing the cal? you just have to wait for the 15 minute intervals?

i would love to get this working.

i have it set up so every day at 5am it sends me my daily agenda.

it alerts me of any changes etc. but cant seem to get it to push to my google calendar if i add on my iphone.

if i could do this, google calendar would sync with iphone, then ical would sync with google calendar. ill have a mobileme setup for £0.00

[chriscoyne]

I will look into Contacts as well. You can set your Push settings to manual for your Gmail account on the iPhone. Go to settings the fetch new data...then advanced below and select Gmail account then set to manual.

[reeko]

i understand that, but to manually fetch mail you just open the mail app and click refresh.

how to manually refresh the calendar?

my calendar is not pushing the dates to google calendar at all

[chriscoyne]

Did you do the activation code thing? Did you enter and press the save button below?

And yes press refresh on your computer and just open mail and it will refresh automatically.

[reeko]

activation thing is fully set up.

in the options, i can tick to choose e-mail/sms for different things such as invitations etc. nothing about wireless sync.

i can sync my ical with google calendar as explained above, but if i add something to my calendar in iphone, then open mail, then check google calendar, nothing changes.

have been doing this repeatedly for the last half hour since reading this.

if it doesnt work, i really hope google can sought this out. even though i feel with mobileme apple are going to block this from every which way possible

i am subscribing to this thread as i would really like my google calendar to wirelessly sync and love contacts to sync aswell.

[chriscoyne]

Originally Posted by reeko

activation thing is fully set up.

in the options, i can tick to choose e-mail/sms for different things such as invitations etc. nothing about wireless sync.

i can sync my ical with google calendar as explained above, but if i add something to my calendar in iphone, then open mail, then check google calendar, nothing changes.

have been doing this repeatedly for the last half hour since reading this.

if it doesnt work, i really hope google can sought this out. even though i feel with mobileme apple are going to block this from every which way possible

i am subscribing to this thread as i would really like my google calendar to wirelessly sync and love contacts to sync aswell.

Give it time buddy. Your contacts will be in gmail....mine are already. Apple servers busy with a lot of traffic. Push cloud has been have hicups. Perhaps if you give it time. Set back to 15 mins for now and not manual.

[reeko]

ive left it set to 15 minutes and am not going to sync with my mac until tommorow evening.

fingers crossed it goes through eventually and does actually work, just a bit slow.

ill be back on tommorow night.

cheers for now.

[flybopr]

i also have tried it and so far nothing, maybe i am doing something wrong, not sure. Gonna wait a bit more then i will try to start all over again. Thanks

still nothing, is there a way to rest the whole thing so i can try again??

[pvollrath]

I used NuevaSync for my google-iPhone calendar sync and it worked very well. I haven't tried contacts or mail via this method, but perhaps if you are running into trouble you can try it out. See my posts on this at Bender Blather. Though perhaps I'll try this method out myself, since it doesn't require an intermediary. Thanks for the info.

[chriscoyne]

Originally Posted by flybopr

i also have tried it and so far nothing, maybe i am doing something wrong, not sure. Gonna wait a bit more then i will try to start all over again. Thanks

still nothing, is there a way to rest the whole thing so i can try again??

It does have some technical problems. Even MoblieMe that uses the same Data Cloud is a bit overwhelmed. Apple says, these technical issues should be sorted out soon. Keep trying.

Chris

[texags08]

so will this work for gmail???

[flybopr]

ok thanks will keep on trying.

[oo3]

It doesn't work for me so far. I added an event on my iphone a while ago and nothing is showing up just yet.

[jm12345]

Thanks for the tip