Last evening I tried to help Lauren get her OS X address book contacts into Outlook. Why? Because the iPhone only works on Mac OS 10.4, and she’s got 10.3. Ironically, Apple’s forcing her to use Windows XP to synch (sync?) her iPhone.
So, getting our OS X address book contacts into Outlook is a nightmare. I think Rob told me a long time ago how he did it, which is how I did it a year or two ago: you export your contacts to a “vCard” file, then you download Netscape Communicator 6 or something, then you import your vCard to Netscape, then you import your Netscape address book to Outlook Express, then you import your Outlook Express address book to Outlook. Or you could buy a product to add vCard support to Outlook.
I tried installing Netscape Communicator 7.02 on Lauren’s computer, which didn’t go so smoothly; I don’t think Netscape was anticipating Windows XP. Something fundamental must have changed with the UI because the Netscape “window” rendered as two or three lines of text, and then nothing.
Then, today, I noticed Lauren had all her contacts on her iPhone. How’d she do it? She uploaded her vCards to Yahoo… and the iPhone synchs with Yahoo’s address book!