Gmail Contact Help

[mhanos]

I use gmail for my contacts and have a few different groups within my contacts such as Friends, Business, etc...and most but not all of these contacts are also in the "My Contacts" group.

I could only get my Ipad1 to sync with the "My Contacts" group, how can I get all of these groups to sync.

Or is there a better app than the stock contacts app that I should use?
I'm not against buying apps, but would prefer to do this with a free app or the stock app if possible.

Thanks for your help.

 

[Rudinater]

You can't . . . . .See apple has decided that there is no reason why you should be able to break up all your friends in to sub groups, just as they don't feel you need to be able to make folders in the e-mail app.

GO APPLE

I just go direct to Gmail.com and work from there, by passing the APPLE BS

 

[twerppoet]

That is not entirely true. If you sync your contacts from MobileMe or the Address Book on a Mac, groups sync nicely.

I doubt very much that Apple 'decided' not to support Google Contacts fully. It's just that no one has settled on a solid standard for syncing this type of information.

Getting various contact apps, websites, and computer clients to play nice is often a problem. Testing with every site, and fixing all the bugs is a full time job.

In typical Apple fashion, Apple has probably settled on what it considers a fairly solid standard and rather than tying to tweak it to work with all the variations, is waiting for others to 'see the light' and follow the same standards. Sometimes this works for Apple, and sometimes they eventually cave in, or go another direction entirely.

This time I suspect they will simply try to side step the issue with iOS 5 and iCloud.

 

[twerppoet]

BTW, you can make folders in the email app, if you have an IMAP or Exchange account, and create the folders on the server, they will automatically sync. Not convenient, but it can be done.

iOS 5 is also supposed to address this, though it is not clear (to me anyway) if you will be able to make local folders on the iPad, which is the only way to support folders for POP accounts.