[justinvoss]

I agree, but aren't these fundamentally hard problems? Take your calendar example. You could solve that problem with:

* Standardization. Difficult, but possible, if you can convince the entities involved that it's a good idea.

* Machine learning. Unreliable, since even a human might have trouble bridging the gap between the phone calendar's idea of an 'appointment' vs the desktop calendar's idea of an 'appointment.'

* Future Magic. Only works in Microsoft promo videos.

Neither of the two serious solutions seems very good. Is there a better way that I'm missing?

[silverbax88]

Actually, most people don't seem to know this, but if you go ALL-Microsoft or ALL-Apple, everything pretty much works. The problem is, most of us don't want ALL anything, because neither company has a perfect solution for everything.

[kilian]

Yes, they're hard problems, but most of what we do is a cop-out, or as the OP says "whatever shoddy pile of hacks we’ve cooked up by then".

For example, I have to search for some obscure instructions to get my two Google calenders syncing with my iPhone that involves my either adding an "email" account, or manually typing in some ridiculously long "secret" url. Why can't I just open google.com/calendar on my phone and have it say "Hey there, want to add me to your phone's calendar? Click here!"?