ICal, 10.5.6, MobileMe & the new Automatic Sync Features

Question

when I read the release notes for 10.5.6 and saw that they had finally (/___sbsstatic___/migration-images/migration-img-not-avail.png) got ical to sync "instantly" from computer to computer in any direction, I knew it was time to download. Did the install on both mine & my Fiancé's machine, set up the MobileMe System preferences to sync changes "Automatically," and almost instantly noticed that iCal was taking up inordinate amounts of RAM. My machine has 4GB, hers has 2GB, both Intel C2D 2.2Ghz MacBooks, and it would swallow up all available RAM on either one (we're talking like 3.2GB on my machine), and then become unresponsive and require a force-quit. starting iCal again would result in the same behavior every time, at some point it would suddenly spike in RAM usage, take everything the system had and not relinquish it, and become unresponsive while pinning the CPU usage at 98% or so.
I troubleshot for awhile and eventually noticed that there was one To Do item that was not syncing changes from one machine to the next. So I deleted it, turned of syncing on both machines, and then reset the sync data from one machine to MobileMe, and then reset those changes again from MobileMe to the other machine.
Presto-change-O, suddenly iCal would sit idle with only 25-50MB of RAM, and not ever spike out for days at a time. I was pretty sure it was a corrupt event file or something, and it had been flushed out and we were fine going forward. Until last night, that is.
I was dragging some highlighted text out of safari and my path crossed over iCal on my way to the target program window. iCal then proceeded to freeze and quit unexpectedly. We know what happened next, right? I restarted iCal and we're back in the same boat as before, with it taking up ALL available system RAM, slowing the computer down and pinning the CPU to 98% and requiring force-quits. ON BOTH MACHINES, even though ONLY mine crashed.
The same procedure used the first time seems to have fixed the issue once again for me, so as long as iCal doesn't CRASH again on me (or her), I suspect we'll be fine.
So this is a word of warning & a helpful tip on how to recover: if you notice iCal is taking up more RAM than an idle calendaring program should be taking up, and you've enabled mobileme syncing (and perhaps set it up to sync changes Automatically in the System Preferences Pane), try the steps I did, it should restore iCal to normal behavior, at least until the next crash cycle.
1) Turn off syncing on both machines
2) delete both machines from the sync registry in the Advanaced Tab in the MobileMe Sync System Preferences pane
3) reinstate syncing from one machine, preferably the one with the data you trust the most.
4) from the same advanced Tab, select "Reset Sync Data" and have it push the changes from the computer to MobileMe ("the Cloud")
5) sync the desired stuff (calendar, contacts, etc)
6) let stand for 10 minutes before serving
7) from the other machine, reinstate syncing, and from the Advanced options in the MobileMe system preferences, reset sync data BUT THIS TIME, have the data from mobileme pushed to the computer. This should ensure that the data is definitely the same across both machines.
8) sync.
9) serves a family of 4 :-D

Answer 1

Wondered if you are still having the problem. My iCal with two Macs via MobileMe doesn't work properly when set to automatic. I have seen 4 GB of virtual memory used, an RSIZE of 850 MB and a "not responding" in excess of 5 minutes.
I gave up on automatic and set it to sync every hour. My memory usage is now reasonable and iCal always responds.
I did find a problem with my iCal when trying to sync to a Blackberry but even after fixing this the automatic sync mode overwhelms the RAM.
I noticed in the logs that when in automatic there are 3 changes every 30 seconds in iCal - nothing real is changing - just the sync wants to change them constantly. This seems to slowly increase RAM usage and then suddenly after may hours there is an explosion of RAM usage and iCal becomes useless again.
So far (10 days) the 1 hour sync seems to work. I figure I can always say sync now if I made a lot of changes that I want the other systems to see. My iPod Touch seems to work much better at keeping in sync!