Apple announced MobileMe in June 2008 with big promises that it would become the data-sync service “for the rest of us.” But when it launched on June 30, those promises quickly turned hollow when problems plagued the service. In an uncharacteristic mea culpa, Apple admitted in mid-July that it had released MobileMe before it was ready, automatically extending all paid subscriptions by 30 days.

Not quite a year later, the service works as smoothly as advertised. Still, there are several handy ways to customize MobileMe so it behaves exactly how you want it to. Though Apple continues to improve MobileMe’s Help functions, we dug around to come up with a shortlist of easy customization tricks you won’t easily find within MobileMe’s built-in Help or in Apple’s support knowledge base.

Modify The Sync Frequency From The 15-Minute Default

The only issue we wish Apple would address is the frequency of automatic syncs, which defaults to every 15 minutes--it’s just not often enough. However, if you’re willing to spend $25 and put on your true Mac geek hat for a few minutes, there is a way to change the 15-minute sync interval so MobileMe syncs more often.

If you assume choosing automatic syncing for MobileMe in your System Preferences will enable instantaneous data exchange among your Mac(s), iPhone, and “the cloud,” you’d be wrong. Auto sync only happens every 15 minutes.

A caveat: This tip involves editing a .plist file, which isn’t something average Mac users are generally encouraged to do--or interested in bothering with. A .plist file is a property list, essentially a list of user settings for certain apps or functions on your Mac. Property lists are different for different user accounts (more on that below).

Start by installing PList Edit Pro ($24.95, www.fatcatsoftware.com/plisteditpro). Locate the .plist file for MobileMe syncing frequency, located on your Mac here: ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple
.DotMacSync.your_MAC_address.plist.

It takes a little wrangling--and a $25 cash outlay for PList Edit Pro--but the app lets you easily change the MobileMe sync frequency from 15 minutes to an interval of your choosing.

Since you want to edit the property list for yourself (and any other user account on your Mac), start in the folder on your hard drive most likely named with your first initial and last name (or the first initial and last name of each user on your Mac).

Once you’ve opened com.apple.DotMacSync.your_MAC_address.plist in PList Edit Pro, you’ll see an item under Root called AutoSyncInterval. If you’ve set up MobileMe to sync automatically in System Preferences, the number that will show up is 15. Double-click 15 and change it to the sync frequency you prefer. We changed ours to 5, for example, so MobileMe would sync every 5 minutes. Save the file (Command-S) and close it. Your MobileMe data should now sync at the interval you’ve selected.

Trick MobileMe Into Syncing Your iCal Subscriptions

MobileMe doesn’t automatically add iCal calendar subscriptions to your calendar in MobileMe, but there is a workaround that allows you to get the info into your calendar across multiple computers and your iPhone or iPod touch.

If your needs are as simple as ours, you may just want your home country’s 2009 holidays added to iCal. If you live in the U.S., Canada, the UK, Australia, India, Malaysia, Singapore, New Zealand, Hong Kong, or Romania, you can get the iCal subscription you need from www.calendarlabs.com. Apple offers hundreds more free on its site.

Start by subscribing to the iCal calendar(s) you want: On your Mac, launch your Web browser and visit www.calendarlabs.com/ical-calendar-holidays.php. You’re presented with a number of choices for 2009 federal holiday calendars. (While you’d think it would be simple enough to grab the 2009 U.S. holiday calendar from Apple’s site, we found it faster to get the file from CalendarLabs, www.calendarlabs
.com/). In addition to federal holidays, Apple’s site has calendars for the moon phases, sports team schedules, and many more. Click on the calendar you want to subscribe to. A window appears asking what app to use to open the file. Find iCal in your Applications folder. When you select iCal and click Open, you’re shifted to an iCal window with the URL to that calendar subscription. To add it to iCal, click Subscribe.

To save a few clicks, in iCal, choose Calendar > Subscribe, type in the URL shown in the screenshot, and click Subscribe.

Now you have to trick iCal and MobileMe into adding the iCal subscription(s) to MobileMe by exporting each one, then importing it back in to iCal, then syncing. In the case of our 2009 U.S. holidays, in the iCal sidebar, select the calendar subscription you want to sync to MobileMe, then choose File > Export and save it someplace easy, like your Desktop. Next, in iCal, uncheck the calendar you just exported to avoid duplication on the local iCal Mac, choose File > Import, select the Import An iCal File radio button, click Import, and select the file you just saved to your Desktop (it should have a file extension of .ics). To avoid confusion, in your iCal calendars list, rename the calendar so it’s different from the name of the calendar listed under Subscriptions; we changed the name U.S. Holidays to just holidays, for example.

Sync this new calendar to other Macs via MobileMe: On the Mac on which you just subscribed to the new calendar, sync to MobileMe by choosing  System Preferences > MobileMe > Sync > Sync Now (or click the Sync icon in your taskbar and select SyncNow from the drop-down). You can also let it do its thing on its regular auto-sync schedule. Your newly subscribed calendar data should appear on your calendar in MobileMe, and now, when you go to another Mac and sync it with MobileMe, everything should match.

Thank goodness we won’t miss out on Groundhog Day and Lincoln’s Birthday, now that we tricked iCal and MobileMe into syncing an ’09 holiday calendar subscription.

Finally, you’ll want to sync your iPhone or iPod touch devices to MobileMe too. On your iPhone or iPod touch, press the Home button, tap Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Your MobileMe account. Slide or tap the on/off slider next to calendars to On. You’ll see a warning that informs you that your calendar info will be removed from your iPhone. This shouldn’t be a problem because it will all reappear after you sync with MobileMe, but if you’re unsure, sync your iPhone with your computer in iTunes before completing this step, so you’ll have a backup.

Just as we did with the publicly available U.S. holidays calendar, 
you can follow similar steps to get your Google calendar data synced to MobileMe by exporting it as its own file then importing it back 
into iCal.