To troubleshoot the problem, he restored his phone from scratch, but even after reinstalling 7.7.1 iTunes and 2.0.2 firmware in his never-jailbreaked iPhone 3G, the sync is unbearably long. We even tried syncing on an Air and an iMac and used another cable. The only outstanding set of data Brandon had is that he loads 74 apps to his phone. And he says that by adding apps one at a time, his sync/backup time slowly goes up—so it's not a single buggy app ruining the process.

Now, I'm sure Brandon's case is an exceptionally complicated problem. He still has an iTunes error message pop up when he syncs, for example. And even when we both load up 50 apps on our phones, his sync is much longer at 4 hours. This is clearly not a normal example, but that doesn't mean it's not real, and it doesn't mean it isn't related to the big problem many have been suffering from since firmware 2.00 hit. Maybe Brandon can be our poster boy for the eternal sync/backup problem. Or, until Apple fixes it, we can watch this video every time we complain about the iPhone's sync times and we can feel like it could have been worse. Like 8 hours' worth of worse. But damn if that video doesn't make you happy when it's finally done with the transfer. [Brandon's Blog]

The song in the video is Foreplay/Long Time, by Boston, FWIW. [Brandon's blog, Foreplay/Long Time Amazon, iTunes]

His setup:

Both machines running 10.5.4 and iTunes 7.7.1 (but again, this started on 7.7)
Air is a day 1 1.6GHZ, 80GB and the iMac is a 2.8GHZ 4GB RAM 320GB HDD

When I started, I had

997.1 MB of music (163 songs, all .m4a files, except 27 .m4p)
5 playlists
93.6 MB of photos
27 ringtones
No movies or TV shows
47 MB video (all video podcasts)
Contacts, calendar synced to MobileMe
3 other IMAP email accounts
74 apps (a lot, I know, but certainly not as many as you could possibly have)

The sync added

No music
No playlists
No photos
No ringtones
No movies or TV shows
3.5 GB of video (99 podcasts, and this part only took about 10 minutes, as you can see in the video)
6 app updates (2 of which were not installed because of an error)
No new apps

The backup folder produced this time weighs in at 9,771 items and 848.1 MB [corrected from GB]

My observations:
It doesn't matter if the app updates error or not, my last sync was 6:49 with 4 app updates, all of which were successful.
Since 2.0, backup and sync has been very long, but not to this extent. Usually 1.5 - 2 hours.
It started getting this bad about a month ago, right before iTunes 7.7.1 came out, an app crashed mid install via Wi-Fi app store, crashing the phone to the Apple logo but not booting all the way.
When it crashed like that, I put it in DFU mode and restored from backup, immediately had the same problem.
Back to DFU mode and restored with fresh firmware—instead of crashing daily, it did it every few days, requiring DFU mode and fresh download of firmware.
Did a complete wipe from within the phone, installed fresh firmware again, and started from scratch. New iTunes installation (removing support files first, empty trash, reboot, then reinstall) new firmware download.
Since then, no more Apple logo of death, and very few app crashes in general, but still excruciating backup/sync times.
If I skip the backup (I'm inclined to do that these days, since they are usually corrupted, even with a fresh copy on the desktop) it still takes at least 2-3 hours to sync.

It's been such a long time
I think I should be goin', yeah
And time doesn't wait for me, it keeps on rollin'
Sail on, on a distant highway
I've got to keep on chasin' a dream
I've gotta be on my way
Wish there was something I could say.

Well I'm takin' my time, I'm just movin' along
You'll forget about me after I've been gone
And I take what I find, I don't want no more
It's just outside of your front door.

It's been such a long time. It's been such a long time.

Well I get so lonely when I am without you
But in my mind, deep in my mind,
I can't forget about you
Good times, and faces that remind me
I'm tryin' to forget your name and leave it all behind me
You're comin' back to find me.

Mesh lets you set up a sort of virtual desktop, and any files in a Mesh folder will be available to any device hooked up to that virtual hub: your photos stored at home can be browsed by your PDA, or a document shared between colleagues at work. Ultimately, photos snapped by your cellphone may be able to pop up on a remote digital photo frame an instant later, shared via the Mesh.

The principle behind Live Mesh is to replace the concept of "My Computer" with an agglomeration of all of your devices. Or, as chief software architect Ray Ozzie says, with a dash of tech-philosophy: "a personal mesh of devices - a means by which all of your devices are brought together, managed through the web, as a seamless whole."

The private beta is US only, limited to about 10,000 persons, and works only with PCs running XP or Vista. Microsoft will be expanding support to Apple computers and other mobile phones through the year, and opening a public beta before 2009. [Reuters and Tech Crunch]

If you're still interested, this product is part of the Ford and Microsoft effort to put this type of entertainment system into cars, and Fords announced that it will offer the gadget in 12 of their 2008 model cars.

The cars are "the Focus, Fusion, Five Hundred, Edge, Freestyle, Explorer and Sport Trac; Mercury Milan, Montego and Mountaineer; and Lincoln MKX and MKZ." – Jason Chen

Patent Monkey [via Crunchgear]

After you install the suite onto your phone, you can either manually back up your contacts all at once, only back up some, or just set up a schedule to do it all for you. They're stored on AT&T's servers, which means they're slightly more resistant than backing up stuff on your own machine. And if you get a new phone (that's supported), it's easy to download the contacts again. It's so painless you'll want to drop your phone in the toilet just to use it.

Complete list of supported phones after the jump.

• LG CU400
• LG CU500
• Moto KRZR
• Moto SLVR L7
• Moto RAZR V3
• Moto RAZR V3i
• Moto RAZR V3r
• Moto RAZR V3xx
• Moto V365
• Cingular SYNC
• Sony Ericsson W300i
• Sony Ericsson W810i

– Jason Chen

AT&T Mobile Backup

Technically, you could sync your Zune with any PC before, but gave you a pesky "guest" mode where you couldn't do as much as you could if it were the "main" Zune for that library. By installing this hack, you trick the software into thinking that every Zune is the Zune it's married to (someone needs to get on this hack for Catherine Zeta Jones), and thus get full syncing. – Jason Chen

End of Guest Syncing [Zuneboards via Lifehacker]

So yes, a phone that's called the SYNC had problems syncing to Napster and Yahoo Music, despite the support of such technically inclined people as Ludacris, The Pussycat Dolls, and those dudes who dance on the treadmills. Cingular says they expect the SYNC phones to be available today. – Jason Chen

Launch of Cingular's Samsung SYNC Delayed [Laptop Mag]

Press Release [Cingular]

Bit of caution though. This is still beta, so if anything goes wrong, your contacts/calendars may be wiped out. You may want to back them up first, since your wife would be pretty angry if you forgot your anniversary due to "software error". – Jason Chen

Missing Sync [Mark Space via Pocket PC Addict via JK on the run]

It apparently costs $19.95—the buy link is busted on Macs—and there's a 1-month free trial. I'm wondering if you couldn't just write an AppleScript to send reminders via a free SMS gateway? Hmmm... – John Biggs

Product Page [Roamminder]