Feature Request: Sync With the Mac Contacts App

[Stephen Spurlock]

I have seen conversations about how this isn’t possible with TF but I wish it was. What I think would be helpful for me and probably many others would to be able to create a contacts “record” that brings in all the contact information with the Contacts app in the iCloud eco-system. From there I think there should be a way to have a lot more information than the contacts app in TF but have a way to pick which fields are viewable in the contacts app. That way if someone tell me their new phone number I only have to edit one and it will sync. Then I can have all their information in TapForms and only a few fields viewable in the contacts app (also I can keep some people only in TF so my contacts app isn’t huge) . Also, this would be a great tool for editing and managing the contacts app. This would be awesome.

Thanks for the great software.

[Cliff Tarrance]

I can’t speak for Brendan, but while I agree that feature would be *great*, I believe the problem is with Apple. This was a signature feature of the original Bento, and FileMaker eventually had to remove it because even they (as a subsidiary of Apple!) could no longer make it work because of how Address Book (now Contacts) handled syncing. I don’t know enough to describe the issue in detail, but what I gleaned was that contact records have no enduring id that other apps can depend on. So: no link, no sync!

[Brendan]

Hi Cliff,

You’re exactly right.

The internal ID generated by AddressBook cannot be relied upon, especially when you sync with iCloud. It’s something that has bothered me for a long time. I’m really hoping that it’s better with Apple’s new Contacts framework in iOS 9 and OS X 10.11. I’m going to have to migrate my contact code to use the new Contacts framework because Apple has now deprecated the old AddressBook framework. It means that I’ll only be able to support iOS 9 and OS X 10.11 going forward though. I haven’t yet made the switch to that. But the next iOS update will still require iOS 9, but the Mac version currently supports OS X 10.10 or higher. But I hate seeing all those deprecation warnings all over my code where I’m still using the older now deprecated AddressBook framework. I really have to migrate.

There’s some technical discussion of the issues here:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14763688/keeping-a-long-term-reference-to-an-ios-addressbook-entry

Thanks,

Brendan

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