Live Sync for Mac is back. What’s with the remote access setting?
Yesterday, Microsoft launched Windows Live Sync, a new service that takes the place of the older FolderShare application that’s been around for several years. While the cross-platform support of Live Sync is welcome, Mac owners saw immediate problems. A few hours after launching, it was apparent that the service wasn’t ready for Mac OS X and the Live Sync team blogged an update last night that we shared:
"Hi Sync friends. We’ve found a problem that is causing sign-into take longer than expected and in some cases causing sign-in to fail.We’re actively working on fixing this problem and expect to have itfixed for most of our users very soon. We are sorry for theinconvenience. – The Sync Team"
A few hours ago, one of our readers noticed a more positive update. Terry Tigner noticed that the Sync Team posted the following message indicating that the issue was resolved:
"Hi Sync friends.Thank you for your patience while weinvestigated the sign-in issue. We have now fixed this issue and theservice has now recovered. If you have the Mac client you shoulddownload the updated Mac client (http://sync.live.com/clientdownload.aspx) in order to connect. Thank you for your continued support."
I tried the old client just to see if it work but no such luck. Following the Live Sync team’s instructions then, I grabbed a new version of the client and it’s working perfectly fine. Good to see this get addressed quickly! One thing I’ve noticed in the settings but haven’t had time to try just yet: remote access to devices. Live Sync is sounding more and more like Live Mesh, so I’m curious how it fits in to Microsoft’s business and service model.
Kevin,
If the remote access is anything like the feature that was part of FolderShare, then the remote access allows accessing the files and folders in a library from the FolderShare/Live Sync website. I.e. Access to your files when you are on a different computer via the web.
This is different from the remote desktop feature that is included with Live Mesh.
In general, I’m still having problems understanding the purpose of replacing FolderShare with Live Sync, when Live Mesh seems to be the up and coming platform from Microsoft.
I’d say you’re likely correct Rick, based on the functionality in FolderShare. There’s still way too much overlap here in the services I think. Not a very cohesive or unified strategy in terms of service offerings, which is unfortunate as I think it’s hurting Microsoft.
Interesting point about how the different products overlap… I had never used folder share, but just installed live sync to give it a try. Although there are some differences, it reminds me of another Microsoft application I’ve used – Groove.
This goes right along with a conversation I was having the other day… one of Microsoft’s problems is that there is no one unified vision – lots of teams creating lots of apps and throwing them against the wall to see if they stick…those that don’t, go away and the user’s who bought in on them are left in the cold. Companies like Apple, on the other hand, have someone like Jobs to articulate the “dream” and move the company in the same direction. To bad Microsoft doesn’t do the same!
Apple’s mobileme is a terrible implementation of a good idea, this is even before we get into pricing.
I just installed the mac client a little a couple of hours ago. Tried to sync with a folder that is on my Windows machine, which is sync’ed to my Windows laptop just fine. After 3 hours of waiting, and even a reboot (thinking maybe the regular Windows fix might work), nothing. It just sits there at 0 files downloaded, and even when I try manual mode, it will schedule a download, but it never completes. I don’t think this is ready for prime time yet.
I have the same problem. Actually all the folders are copied but no file has been transfered from my PC to my Mac. I had the same problem with Folder Share but after reading quite a few posts, I found out that not encrypting files did the trick.
There was a script where you could change the encrypting option on Folder Share. Dont know about live sync. Any ideas?
I have the same problem. Actually all the folders are copied but no file has been transfered from my PC to my Mac. I had the same problem with Folder Share but after reading quite a few posts, I found out that not encrypting files did the trick.
There was a script where you could change the encrypting option on Folder Share. Dont know about live sync. Any ideas?