June 19, 2013
Spanning Sync service discontinued
Sales of Spanning Sync ended and the sync service was switched off on June 19, 2013. Existing installations stopped syncing from that date. Anyone who still has the preference pane on an older Mac can remove it with the uninstaller included in the original download; calendars and contacts on the Mac and in Google are not affected by removal.
The company behind Spanning Sync had by then moved its focus to cloud backup. This site stays online as the reference home for the product.
July 2012
Spanning Sync 3.3
Version 3.3 was the last release of Spanning Sync: a maintenance update for the 3.x line with compatibility and stability fixes. Requirements stayed at Mac OS X 10.5.8 or later, and the download remained a 2.3 MB Universal binary.
2010
Spanning Sync 3
Spanning Sync 3 was the first version to be positioned as the one utility for both halves of the job: iCal with Google Calendar, and Address Book with Google Contacts. Address Book groups were now matched with Google contact groups, the preference pane gave finer control over exactly which calendars and groups synced, and a rewritten engine completed syncs up to ten times faster than before.
September 16, 2008
Spanning Sync 2.0: contacts join calendars
Version 2.0 added the most requested feature: Address Book contacts, including photos, now synced with Google Contacts. Syncing also changed from a timed interval to sync-on-change, so edits in iCal or Address Book were pushed within moments. The release improved network performance, handled large calendars and contact lists better, and worked more smoothly on Macs that also used MobileMe or synced with several other Macs.
September 2008
Macworld reviews Spanning Sync 1.2.1
Macworld's Joe Kissell reviewed version 1.2.1, highlighting how simple the preference pane made calendar pairing and praising the ability to merge existing iCal and Google calendars. The review also noted limits that were true of Google Calendar itself at the time, such as the absence of to-do items and attachments. More press coverage →
March 12, 2007
Spanning Sync 1.0 ships
After a public beta, Spanning Sync 1.0 was released as a Universal binary for Mac OS X 10.4.8 or later. It offered two-way sync between iCal and Google Calendar, calendar sharing across several Macs and Google accounts, and a path from Google Calendar to Sync Services devices such as phones and iPods. A 15-day trial was available, with licenses priced at $25 per year or $65 one-time.
November 2006
Private beta begins
Spanning Sync first appeared as a limited private beta in late 2006, already in its familiar form: a System Preferences pane that asked for a Google Calendar account and needed very little setup beyond that.