[tsloc]

Apple doesn't seem to be very family friendly! Come on Apple - get this one right like you've done on so many other things... The issue is Address Book with iPhones and multiple accounts. My situation must be just like tons of others'. My wife and I share a MacBook Pro. We each have an account. I've numbered the main problem points 1-4. (1) Of course, we each have hundreds of the same friends and family members and would want to share this info and both be able to make changes to it. (2) We also both have our own businesses. I don't want to be bothered with seeing her two hundred business contacts and visa versa. I won't contact those people nor ever make changes to those contacts. (3) However, as life would have it, some of her business contacts ARE also friends. Of course, I want these contacts in my AB and we both want the ability to edit them. (4) Right now we're using a name field in each contact and entering acronyms to decipher what group each contact belongs to (i.e. FMLY = family contact, MYBU = my business, HEBU = her business). With AB's? smart? ability from a year ago, we can use smart groups to search and organize these groups quickly. But, what about those contacts that are in two groups? Use a 4th acronym? Kinda unwieldy, but possible?

So now take all of the above and start Address Book sharing in preferences with editing enabled. All contacts (family and both businesses) reside on my account and I share all of that with my wife. She can edit and syncing works ?almost pretty accurately.? But to avoid confusion, we have to delete all the contacts on her machine so just my shared book appears. Address Book sharing doesn?t allow me to only share the ?family? group with my wife. And the pinnacle part of the frustration is shared contacts won?t sync with my wife?s iPhone. The painful workaround is to temporarily drag the shared contacts into my wife?s contact library, then sync, then delete the contacts from her library?

The Apple Store mentioned the idea of using the same .mac member name for all accounts. But, this then destroys a lot of iChat abilities when our friends can?t see whose online and I can?t chat with my wife from my work computer to the MBP at home.

What will we do when my daughter is old enough to need her own OS account and access to the family address book?!!! Our situation I?m sure isn?t odd or unique. We shouldn?t have to do any double-entry or manually checking which contacts are most current. The software should do all the work. I was hopeful for Bento, but what I?ve read so far is that it has zero sharing abilities at this point.

Can you guys address this issue?