iCal for iCloud in OSX10.6 Snow Leopard

I run a 17" MacBook Pro and a Dell Mini 9 'Hackintosh' (for when the 17" is feeling heavy or I'm planning more than work when out for the day). The 17" is great and now running Mountain Lion 10.8 with complete iCloud sync, the little Dell however is stuck on 10.6.6 and when MobileMe was taken offline iCal and Address Book sync vanished with it. Mail is accommodated but calendar and contacts aren't, and although I'd love an 11" MacBook Air it's not going to happen. So, in this post we'll look at a workaround to sync iCal from iCloud to OS10.6.

The first thing you'll need are your iCloud account server details, this you can get quite easily :

• Log into iCloud via the web interface using Safari.
• Open iCal.
• From the top drop down 'Window' menu open 'Activity'.
• Locate the entry relating to iCal.
• Look for a string containing something like 'p02-caldav.ical.com' and note it down.

To add the iCloud calendar to your Mac simply add a new CalDAV account using your iCloud username and password plus the relevant server string (Fig:1), iCal will populate the extra details it needs and you'll be good to go.

Fig:1 - Add iCloud CalDAV to 10.6

Unfortunately it's not as easy with the Address Book, it can be done but it's somewhat convoluted. You could just use an easy Google contacts sync option, which is workable and solid, or, if you don't have (or want) a Google account there are other options using online file sync utilities and in the next post I'll show you how to set up seamless Address Book storage and syncing using DropBox.