jerieljan

Okay, so I have to migrate someone's new phone (going from iPhone to a Galaxy Note 9, so yay Android).

So I'm aiming for the best: a unified inbox, address book and calendar and making sure that everything works on all devices. So, what devices are those...

• owns an iPad
• owns an Android

Okay yeah, this is going to be somewhat rocky — Apple hates anything outside its ecosystem, so I'm going to kick it out entirely for not playing nice everywhere else.

Mini rant: People love saying how Apple's ecosystem is the best but I personally disagree — it's their biggest DEFECT because you're basically locking out of everything else with an Apple device, with the exception of the Mac.

Okay, what's next? Accounts!

• Yahoo! for primary email, and email contacts
• iCloud for notes, and some saved contacts
• IBM Verse* for work email, calendar and default contacts

Oh my god, this shit is maddening.

• iCloud is trash — As I said above, Apple or nothing BS ecosystem pretty much means I have to move things to a service that works for all platforms, like Google.
• Yahoo! Mail is partially broken – Yahoo email works thanks to IMAP, but contact sync is effectively dead unless you install their trash email app made out of dead unicorns and rainbows.
• IBM Verse, what? – IBM Verse has its OWN set of second-rate apps that screams boring businessware and only accepts their email accounts and nothing else.

The annoying parts about Yahoo and IBM Verse? They're effectively incompatible with the concept of a unified inbox, address book and calendar since they don't respect the system-wide Android account system. Why? Because fuck consistency, that's why!

IBM Verse would've been the worst at this point seeing that it's behaving like it was GSuite or Microsoft, but no one supports their stuff. Thankfully though, they have support for Exchange Activesync so I'll funnel everything through EAS and completely disregard their apps.

But I'm not done!

Need to use the S-Pen? Samsung Notes only and nowhere else. Samsung Notes doesn't play with any notes services — iCloud, Google Keep or Yahoo! are all out.

It's a lost cause for notes at this stage. No sync for notes at all if it's all going to be in Samsung Notes.

Fucking hell, man. It's going to be a long week to sort these all out. Absolutely terrible.

So far, my plan goes like this:

• iCloud deserves to die. Migrate all data to Google.
• Install Google apps on iOS devices and purge all iCloud-related garbage.
• Work around IBM Verse using EAS.
• Stick to IMAP for Yahoo! and completely abandon the contacts (or move it to Google)
• Samsung Notes because Samsung.

In terms of apps:

• Mail: Native mail app with two accounts [Yahoo! (Personal) and IBM (Work via Exchange)]
• Contacts: Native contacts app with two accounts [Google (Personal) and IBM (Work via Exchange)]
• Calendar: Native calendar app with two accounts [Google (Personal) and IBM (Work via Exchange)]
• Notes: One note app, Samsung Notes.

Everything is terrible, but thankfully somewhat serviceable. It could've been better, but alas, it's not.

Conclusion

Seriously, anything that isn't GSuite or Exchange-based / O365 is effectively dead in my eyes since these de facto standards are at least recognized by every device out there. Although they're still just de facto protocols and not actual standards that everyone should actually follow, like Email's IMAP.

I really wish there's an open standard for calendars, notes and contacts that's as widely-adopted and recognized like IMAP, and I mean as a protocol/standard that services cannot ignore. I know that there are widely-adopted formats like iCalendar and VCF, but it's just not enough.