[donlevy]

I needed something better than my Motorola i170 because I needed to keep notes and have much more detail on each contact than that phone allows. But I hesitated to get a BB because I use Entourage for email, as well as for contacts, calendar and the like. It appeared at the time that the only Mac-BB sync application was PocketMac and the then-current version did not handle Entourage categories. So I contacted PocketMac and was told it was just two or three weeks from releasing PocketMac 4, which would resolve that problem. Foolishly, I went ahead and got the BB. The two or three weeks stretched to eight months, and in the interim I was forced to use a local phone dealer to back up my data to a PC and burn it to a CD. Eventually, PocketMac was released:

PocketMac 4 is a dog - worse than than no sync application at all. And because it's "free" (if you don't consider the cost of your time, nor the trashing of your data on both the BB and your Mac) neither PocketMac nor RIM want to talk with customers unless you pay a rediculous amount per call.

When it finally was released, I downloaded Pocketmac 4 to sync Entourage 2004 with my 7520. It didn't work at all - timed out every time. After numerous complaints, I finally reached someone by phone at RIM who told me that if any contacts on the BB are uncategorized - EVEN JUST ONE - it doesn't work! (Thanks for mentioning this little bug upfront, folks).

So with some 700 contacts now already manually created on my BB, I went through them one by one - no way to "find" all uncategorized items (!!!) - and it worked (at least it didn't time out)...but badly: First, if I had assigned two or more categories on the BB (I already had about 20 categories), it would create a "special" category on the Mac that was a combination category. If that sounds strange, I assure you it is. A contact, for example, that had been assigned the three categories BUSINESS, ADD TO EMAIL LIST, and BLACKBERRY-ENTOURAGE (this last a category I assigned to ALL contacts on my BB to insure none had the dreaded "no category" stupid flaw mentioned above that brings the whole sync process down), was transferred to the Mac (OS X 10.4.7) and given the bastardardized, combination category "BUSINESS - ADD TO EMAIL LIST - BLACKBERRY-ENTOURAGE" (yes, created a fourth category that's a concotenation of all three categories I had originally created). A mess!!! Argh!!!.

Fortunately, because by that point I didn't trust PocketMac and RIM both, I'd had the foresight to take my BB to the local phone shop and have them back it up with a PC (flawlessly, I might add), just in case Pocketmac in action (see previous paragraph 3, above) was worse than the Pocketmac that didn't work at all (see paragraph 2, above).

My conclusion: this application is worse than buggy or a bad beta. It's worse, even, than a bad Alpha. I don't believe they - PocketMac and RIM have a clue about syncing correctly with the Mac, and I doubt they care much. RIM perhaps made the mistake of paying PocketMac for this fatally flawed dog up front so they could offer it for "free" to Mac-based BB customers, and things went downhill immediately from there. I'd guess PocketMac now has near-zero incentive (and almost certainly near-zero capability) to make it work at all, and RIM is probably stuck with no clue about how bad it really is or how to fix it themselves. And by the way, the above only mentions a few of the bugs - there are many more than described here leading to further messes.

When the iPhone appears, if the sync is as good as expected, given that Apple is responsible for both phone and computer devices and their operating systems, I will give my BB to a friend with a Windows computer or trash it. Despite the cost of switching devices and phone companies (and I've got nearly two years on my contract I'll have to pay an early termination fee for if I switch companies), it will be worth it. On top of the sync problem I've never found the BB to be user-friendly, logical or intuitive, and the built-in help is absurdly, illogically organized (and no way to search!). I've spent perhaps several hundred hours trying to make my 7520 work right and to sync with my Mac. To this day I still make a 20 mile trek to the phone dealer once a month and pay him $15 to back it up and burn the backup to disk.

My final recommendation: DO NOT try to use this application. It is riddled with huge bugs and ultimately it will likely trash your data bigtime. If, like me, you have a LOT of contacts on your Mac and a very sizable, different group of contacts on your BB, then you are courting almost certain disaster if you try to sync with PocketMac 4. A real piece of junk. Shame on both these companies. While many developers of freeware put out good stuff, this is certainly not worth the price. i'd have rather paid a couple hundred dollars for a sync that actually worked correctly than have wasted all the time and energy I did trying to make this turkey work at all.