Troubleshooting iSync: Forgetting hourly synchronization

Scott Rose alerted us to a problem that has been widely reported on Apple's Discussion boards, where iSync forgets to perform an hourly synchronization:

"There seems to be a widespread problem among all of our clients where iSync does not automatically sync .mac information hourly, even though the checkbox is set in iSync to sync hourly. We've been trying to recommend iSync and .mac to all of our clients, but due to this bug, this is causing us more headache than benefit at this point.

"iSync simply randomly stops remembering to perform its hourly .mac synchronization, and once it forgets, it never picks up again. This has happened continuously to all of our clients on a regular basis, and this problem happens across all types of hardware and many versions of 10.x, including 10.2.8 and 10.3.

The only workaround users have found so far is to delete the "com.apple.isync.scheduler.plist" preference file from their Library/Preferences folder, and then reset their iSync time-interval synchronization settings.

However, Rose notes "Even after trashing this preference file and rechecking the checkbox in iSync, iSync will still stop auto-synchronizing on its own within a few days of trashing this preference file, so the cycle repeats itself all over again."

Feedback? Late-breakers@macfixit.com.

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