Cobook 1.0
Is it time to lose Apple’s leatherette Address Book in the back of a drawer? Developers Kaspars Dancis and Janis Dancis have released Cobook 1.0, a free Mac app that gives you access to your contacts without having to wade through Address Book’s weak and confusing interface. We first saw a beta version of Cobook at Macworld | iWorld 2012; see “Cool Products at Macworld | iWorld 2012,” 30 January 2012. It caught our eye not just because it could replace the much-maligned Address Book, but also because it can pull information (with your authorization, of course) from Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, fleshing out your contacts without requiring
you to do it manually. Cobook is also smart about adding new information: for example, just type a full address to populate the proper fields. Best of all, it’s free. (Free via the Mac App Store, 1.5 MB)
If you manage your contacts through Gmail and syncing, Cobook will mess you up badly. Letting Cobook do its thing moves all your contacts—those you already had and newly found ones from the social networks—into the "My Contacts" group. If your setup is like mine, that means "My Contacts" quadruples in size, finding a particular contact on your iPhone becomes more time consuming, and your contact list will be littered with dozens of duplicates. I liked Cobook's interface, but I only deal with a few dozen contacts frequently, and it's only those that I want to see at the top level. Suddenly having to deal with hundreds of contacts in the same group—not to mention the hour I spent resolving duplicates—was not fun. Be warned.
Went to Mac App Store and downloaded Cobook. When Cobook opened, it announced it was an outdated version (1.0 beta) and one should go to the Cobook Web site for the latest version. The Cobook Web site only links to downloading from Mac App Store.
The lack of 32-bit support is a deal-breaker for me. I have three Intel Core Duo chip based Macs, including my main iMac used for word processing, web browsing and email...and none of them will be able to benefit from this otherwise-excellent app! (I have a dual-processor Mac Pro which meets the minimum specs...but it is the least-llikely of all my machines on which to run Co-book!)
I hope the authors will consider supporting older - and still very useful - Macs!
I was excited by Cobook when I tried the beta, but I'm thoroughly regretting using it now, as, after merging duplicates, I've ended up with lots of contacts with other people's email addresses and phone numbers. Probably user error, but Cobook doesn't give you an opportunity to specify which bits of info belong in a merged contact, and I've found it all took easy to make a mess of things.