You can use the CalDAV option in iCals preferences to set up your iCal and iPhone/iPod Touch to read your calendar. Instructions for using Google Calendars in iCal via CalDAV can be found here or instructions to use Google Sync for your iPhone/iPod Touch via Microsoft Exchange can be found here. This has been available since the 3.0 software update was released. You can subscribe to your Google calendar and edit events on your iPhone/iPod Touch, you can even invite others to your event that you create on the spot. This is notable because you cannot invite people to a normal event that you create on iPhone/iPod Touch without a Microsoft exchange setup.
Spanning Sync is a third party solution that has worked similarly for quite some time. With Spanning Sync, everything works as it should, you can edit your calenders on your iPhone/iPod Touch as well across computers. Several computers can be synched with one account. Spanning Sync requires a yearly subscription of $25, or a lifetime membership for $65. Why use this instead of the free built in CalDAV support on the mac and Microsoft exchange support on the iPhone/iPod Touch? Spanning Sync makes this argument on their site:
How does Google CalDAV compare to Spanning Sync?
- Cost
Google CalDAV is free, and what could be better than free? Simple: something that makes you money, which is exactly what the Spanning Sync does with our Save 5+Make 5 program.
Several people have already made over $1,000 just by including their personal referral code in blog posts, Twitter tweets, and comments. Brian Dusablon is one of those people, and here’s what he had to say:
It’s pretty easy to get four referrals, and if you get five or more, you’re at a profit already. [Within eight weeks] I hit $1,000. I’m donating half to charity, and I’m buying a Drobo.
We think saving money is great, but making money is even better.- iPhone Support
Calendars synchronized using CalDAV become read-only on iPhone. One of our customers recently rolled out 700 iPhones and 200 iPod touches. This lack of iPhone compatibility makes Google’s CalDAV solution a non-starter for them, and for anyone else looking for bidirectional sync between iPhone and Google Calendar.
Calendars synchronized with Spanning Sync are editable on Google Calendar, iCal, and the iPhone calendar, and changes made in any of those places will show up on all three (after syncing your iPhone using iTunes).- Customer Support
Sync is inherently complex, but when problems do crop up they can usually be solved quickly with just a little customer support. Unfortunately, Google doesn’t provide any. They’ve even said publicly that it’s “not feasible” for them to respond to individual requests for support.
At Spanning Sync, we provide support our customers have called “tremendous”, “excellent”, and “stellar”, regardless of whose software is causing the problem: Google’s, Apple’s, or ours.- Contact Sync
Spanning Sync syncs not only calendars but also contacts, including contact photos. Click here to see a video. And of course contact sync works great with iPhone, just like our calendar sync.Spanning Sync also supports existing iCal calendars, read-only Google calendars, MobileMe sharing, and true Mac-to-cloud “push”, none of which are supported by Google CalDAV.
If you are using CalDAV on your iPhone/iPod Touch properly, that is, if you set it up as a Microsoft Exchange account, then you can edit the events on your iPhone/iPod Touch. If your iPhone/iPod Touch is simply subscribed to the CalDAV account in the calendar app, then it will be read only and uneditable like Spanning Sync suggests.
