A few of you sounded interested in where my iCloud calendar experiment might be headed, so I thought I would keep you posted.
The original purpose
I’ve been a Google Calendar user for years. My only complaint with Google Calendar is that it is, like all Google services, tied to an email address. When someone sends a meeting invitation to an address other than the one attached to my Google Calendar, accepting the request on an iOS device is difficult to impossible.
I wanted to see if iCloud would serve as a better standalone calendar solution.
Meeting request/acceptance
The first 24 hours with iCloud resulted in mostly negative progress from where I was with Google Calendar. iCloud didn’t seem to want to send any email notification when I invited others to a meeting.
Later, it started working. I think the problem had more to do with iCloud email glitches, which were being reported by others.
It’s been working fine the last few days.
My iCloud calendar email address
Once iCloud started sending email notifications for new meetings, I couldn’t figure out how to control the email address it was using. (Naturally, it was using an email address I didn’t want it to use.)
After much fiddling, mouth holding, and séance saying, I figured out that iCloud was using the email address associated with my Apple ID. This seemed odd since iCloud allows you to specify a different email address in iOS settings.
But sure enough, once I changed my Apple ID email address, iCloud began using that when generating meeting requests.
It’s worth noting that changing my Apple ID, of course, triggered all kinds of additional downstream taps because it meant I needed to sign out/in on all my Apple devices.
iSpammed. Much.
I saved the worst for last.
As I mentioned before, I imported my entire Google Calendar, with all its history, into iCal. Seemed like a good idea at the time.
Until last Thursday night… when iCloud decided to re-send meeting acceptance emails to every single person on every meeting I’ve had in the last three years. I’m not the only one.
And I’m not just talking about meetings I organized. It emailed every bloody email address it found on every appointment. Hundreds of emails. Hundreds.
I’m still getting phone calls and “This is weird” replies from people wondering why I’m accepting meetings from 2008.
I have no idea why iCloud did this, but I’m hoping it was a one-time event.
It’s also a reminder why email is such a God-awful place for private information. It’s unnerving how little control you have when an email server goes rogue.
From here
iCloud sync is very fast and so far very reliable. It also feels cleaner not having to sync contacts and calendar appointments with Google on my Mac. In other words iCloud is working well aside from the aforementioned snafus.
At the risk of sounding like an iCloud apologist, I’m going to stick with iCloud for now and hope I’m past the turbulence. The fasten seat belt sign is still on, though.
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
Great to hear that iCloud is working alright, despite a few bumps here and there. Can´t wait to get a new iPhone 4 to replace my aging 3G.
Thanks for sharing your experiences. Hopefully that rogue e-mail scenario is one that hasn’t affected too many users.
I recently went in the opposite direction – switching form iCloud (I was using MobileMe) to Google Calendar. The motivation stemmed from the fact that a scheduling service I rely on (Tungle) doesn’t support iCloud.
I had some issues using iCal with multiple calendars linked to a single Google account and ended up switching to BusyCal. My current setup is working well and I’m enjoying some of BusyCal’s advanced features, such as the ability to see two weeks at a time – especially nice when running full screen on my 27″ iMac. On my iPhone and iPad I access my calendars through the mobile Exchange service that Google provides and have noticed that event changes and additions show up on my iOS devices within seconds.
There’s still a lot about iCloud to like – I use it to sync my address book and for personal e-mail. But, when it comes to calendars, Google’s offering feels more professional, albeit not as easy to set up and use.
Thanks for posting this. I just synced my iPhone to iCloud for the first time, and also unexpectedly started spamming my friends and co-workers with acceptances of meeting-invites past. Disappointing and embarrassing. I guess I just have to hope it’s a one-time occurrence. After an unacceptable experience with the MobileMe Calendar “upgrade”, I was really hoping for better and am now feeling extremely reluctant to “upgrade” my Mac to Lion and join iCloud on that. I love most things Mac, but their sync services are really lacking in professionalism.
I had a similar experience taking my calendars across to iCloud. About 2 years ago i synced my work Outlook calender to Google calendar. Then i brought the work calender into ical with all its history, when i got my first mac. I’ve since left that work place but I still have the calendar hidden as I occasionally need to reference some dates.
Cut to iCloud cross over day and i get a email from an old boss who must be the model for most of the bosses in the movie Horrible Bosses. I thought I had left the horror of that woman behind but no, these meeting requests, that I did not set up, start spitting out, back to 2008, intiating contact. Embarrassing indeed and upsetting to have to deal with this hag.
I hope that is a one time deal with iCloud set-up.
iCloud sent HUNDREDS meeting notifications to my clients and friends from like 3 years ago. After may hours and tears, I’m still getting calls from friends that they are still getting emails. And the crazy part is, it’s sending emails in cases where I was just on the distribution list, to everyone who is on that list… even on things that are not (and were not) my meetings! As a small business owner, I am mortified and embarrassed. I am so angry, and no one at apple seems to care. And they always have the nerve to say “I’ve never heard of that happening”. Is that supposed to make me feel better?
Tonight, I want to thank iCloud for sending calendar invitations for EVERY meeting I had in my diary. Past.And.Present. To EVERY name on the invite list including clients. For EVERY event in there, whether I created it or not. And all this was sent using my personal email address just to add a really professional touch to losing my spamming virginity. Thanks iCloud. Thanks very much.
This happened to me as well. This is VERY embarrassing!!
So much for using iCloud – I have decided to completely STOP using this junk product.
If Steve Jobs were still alive somebody would probably have got fired over this..!
Hope they fix this bug and stop spamming people.
It happened to me on Oct 23th, out of the blue at night where I used iCloud for more then a week already.
Yesterday evening Feb 18th again iCloud send out meeting requests from events in the past, but now only a few. The meetings are not visible in my iCloud calendar which is odd.
Probably some old meetings in the iCloud server.
What wonders me is that there is no trigger from my side to these bulk meeting requests sent out. Does iCloud periodically (this case every 4 months) send out rather unsynced meetings from the past?
When you say you changed the email address used for your Apple ID, did that create a new ID? How did it affect iTunes access, etc?