no birthdays on iPhone! --> Apple = laughable!

[TurboSC]

wow, really. all this drama for birthday reminders? I'm sure there's another way you can remind yourself... people did it before the iPhone existed... I think a lot of people are just spoiled these days, never happy with what they have, always wanting more.

 

[Phil A.]

OK, I've been having a play with this and I've found a solution to the problem. It's not perfect (but then what is!).

Here's what you do:
In iCal, select Publish on your Birthdays calendar. You can then select several options such as publishing changes automatically, publishing alarms, etc

Once you click publish, it will start publishing to MobileMe and give you a URL. You can subscribe to this published calendar in iPhone OS 3.0: go to mail accounts and add. Select Other and "Add Subscribed Calendar". Add the relevant details in there (e.g. the subscription URL), and the Birthdays calendar will appear on your phone.
Now, if you make any changes to contacts in Address Book, the birthdays calendar will update and publish the changes back to your phone. If you change a contact on your phone, it will push back to address book, which will update the birthdays calendar and push it back to your phone.

So far so good - it all works beautifully. So, where's the catch? The only one I can see is that I can't find a way to password protect a calendar published on MobileMe, so if you are concerned about privacy of a birthdays calendar this isn't the solution for you. If you're not, then it should be what you're looking for

Edit: If you mail the links to yourself after setting up the publishing, you can just click on the webcal link and it will set the subscription calendar up automatically for you - even easier

 

[toneloco2881]

I hate to say this, but your iPhone has nothing to do with your complaint. The iPhone is designed to be cloud based; that being said, it's dependent upon what your calendar/contact storage service is.

This is already a common complaint with Gmail.

It has everything to do with his iPhone as he's using mobileme (a "cloud" based service) designed to interact with iCal, and it is confusing why Apple wouldn't do something as simple as syncing the birthday calendar. Mobileme won't sync subscribed calendars as well. One workaround is to export your birthday calendar to the desktop then re-import it as an actual calendar within iCal. Or u can switch to google calendar as I have done. One caveat is that atm it only supports up to 5 calendars.

With 3.0 I believe you can now subscribe to calendars from the iPhone so you can create a workaround that way also.

Edit: beat me to it . Good advice, I'll have to try that.

 

[eezing]

wow, really. all this drama for birthday reminders? I'm sure there's another way you can remind yourself... people did it before the iPhone existed... I think a lot of people are just spoiled these days, never happy with what they have, always wanting more.

Wow, really.... Dude, I think it's a great idea. Hell, I suck at remembering b-days. Having that feature would benefit me greatly!

 

[Clavius]

OK, I've been having a play with this and I've found a solution to the problem. It's not perfect (but then what is!).

Here's what you do:
In iCal, select Publish on your Birthdays calendar. You can then select several options such as publishing changes automatically, publishing alarms, etc

Once you click publish, it will start publishing to MobileMe and give you a URL. You can subscribe to this published calendar in iPhone OS 3.0: go to mail accounts and add. Select Other and "Add Subscribed Calendar". Add the relevant details in there (e.g. the subscription URL), and the Birthdays calendar will appear on your phone.
Now, if you make any changes to contacts in Address Book, the birthdays calendar will update and publish the changes back to your phone. If you change a contact on your phone, it will push back to address book, which will update the birthdays calendar and push it back to your phone.

So far so good - it all works beautifully. So, where's the catch? The only one I can see is that I can't find a way to password protect a calendar published on MobileMe, so if you are concerned about privacy of a birthdays calendar this isn't the solution for you. If you're not, then it should be what you're looking for

What he said.

 

[randfee2]

OK, I've been having a play with this and I've found a solution to the problem. It's not perfect (but then what is!).

great.... man, I should have thought of it, read that OS3 can subscribe to calendars some days ago yet haven't played with it enough!

cheers for pointing it out... its solved... even if not very elegantly from apple's side

cheers again!

 

[anjinha]

Minor complaint: why does the calendar color have to be red?? I already use that for another calendar... </rant>

 

[diamond.g]

do you use Mobile me to sync everything? If so, please contact me, I'll buy you a beer. I doubt it though. I just tried it here. The birthday calendar CAN synch to the iPhone IF you let iTunes sync it. If you use MobileMe for synchronizing everything, it won't work!

lame!

Yeah it is lame, I just realized that I stopped MobileMe calendar syncing for that exact reason. My bad.

 

[lfine39]

I had trouble syncing my calendar when I first purchased my iPhone I think this might be your issue IF YOU do not put and end DATE (as in repeat every year) the calendar will not sync....I put end dates in like 20 yrs and never had a problem hope it helps

 

[randfee2]

phil,

there is a slight bug though in the iPhone's iCal.
With having a subscription, all days in the monthly view are indicated as having something scheduled, which clearly is not the case!

I guess that's the first true bug I've seen in the 3.0 GM

 

[Phil A.]

phil,

there is a slight bug though in the iPhone's iCal.
With having a subscription, all days in the monthly view are indicated as having something scheduled, which clearly is not the case!

I guess that's the first true bug I've seen in the 3.0 GM

That's strange - I don't get that on my calendar (using 3.0 GM)

 

[randfee2]

hm, that is strange indeed then. If you'd agree we could exchange our birthday calendar links to check if it is a phone or calendar issue...

 

[anjinha]

hm, that is strange indeed then. If you'd agree we could exchange our birthday calendar links to check if it is a phone or calendar issue...

It doesn't happen on mine either.

 

[ebika]

I use http://www.nhoj.co.uk/datestoical/ . It creates a calendar with customizable entry formats, defaulting to giving the name and age. It syncs to the iPhone just fine.

 

[joro]

The Birthday Calendar in iCal is a "special" calendar that automatically pulls birthdays from Address Book contacts. It's incredibly useful because you only have to keep birthdays in a single place and where they should be (i.e. against the person themselves), and iCal takes care of the rest. The problem the OP has (and I share his frustration to a certain extent) is that this calendar does not sync over the air so you lose the benefit of this very useful function.

Let's face it though, birthdays don't change. So having to update them in address book and on the calendar is a minor hassle unless you're adding a huge amount of people into your address book daily. Plus, as mentioned in my post, I was able to sync these calendars using both mobile me and exchange (which is what I'm on currently).

 

[Pooshka]

As someone has already stated earlier, indeed there is not an OTA iCal birthday syncing yet. iCal birthdays can be synced manually only.

 

[lauren7]

That's strange - I don't get that on my calendar (using 3.0 GM)

I have the same issue with subscribing to my birthday calendar published to MobileMe. In month view, there are dots on all days, even ones without an event.

It's strange some people are having this issue and others aren't. Is everyone publishing to MobileMe?

It's not all calendar subscriptions that cause this, just my birthdays calendar. The US Holidays calendar does not cause this bug. I also tried publishing my Home calendar and it did not cause the bug either. I tested for the "publish changes automatically" function and this has no effect on the bug either. Very strange...

Please let me know if anyone figures this out. It's very annoying

 

[alFR]

Since 3.0/the latest iTunes lets you sync calendars both via MobileMe and locally with your Mac, it's probably easier to sync your birthday calendar with your Mac locally - after all, they don't change often so OTA sync isn't as important for these. Be nice to have it sync OTA but this is a reasonable workaround for now.

 

[mavis]

It is a stupid omission.

Indeed. A stupid omission with an incredibly easy workaround: subscriptions. Just publish your birthdays calendar in iCal and subscribe to it on the iPhone. It's really not that complicated.

 

[randfee2]

Please let me know if anyone figures this out. It's very annoying

I wish... I've been at it for 2h yesterday, can't find it

 

[alFR]

Indeed. A stupid omission with an incredibly easy workaround: subscriptions. Just publish your birthdays calendar in iCal and subscribe to it on the iPhone. It's really not that complicated.

If all you want is the birthdays calendar on your phone and you don't need OTA sync (which for me is reasonable, how often do birthdays change really?) you don't even need to do that: just go to the info tab in iTunes (with your phone connected), go to the calendar section, select to sync selected calendars and tick the birthdays one. Saves all the hassle of publishing etc. You can still subscribe directly on the phone to the other calendars you subscribe to on your Mac if you want.

 

[alfmil]

b

 

[BD1]

alFR is right. It seems as though you can just do both.

It says in iTunes: Your calendars are being synced with MobileMe over the air. You can ALSO choose to sync calendars with this computer.

I use MobileMe plus I (in iTunes) selected some holiday and birthday calendars to sync. Works fine since you don't have to change birthdays very often and even when you do, you do it in the address book, which goes through the cloud to your computer, which updates the birthday in iCal, which will then update when you plug your device into iTunes. If that is not updated fast enough for you, well then you probably are already late getting a present anyway.

This is a good interim solution. Thanks for the tip!

 

[TheCheapGeek]

Birthdays sync just fine. In itunes under info, when syncing a calendar you can now sync that birthday calendar. Mine shows up great, and if I change a birthday on the phone it updates the cal during the sync back to the computer.

 

[Ambrose Chapel]

Birthdays sync just fine. In itunes under info, when syncing a calendar you can now sync that birthday calendar. Mine shows up great, and if I change a birthday on the phone it updates the cal during the sync back to the computer.

I tried this yesterday and it did not work for me. It synced ONE birthday to my iPhone 3G, running 3.0, which is very strange. i just saw an apple discussion thread that also had the same suggstion phil a. posted, so i'll try that when i get home. the other posters on the apple forum all said that method worked for them.