I have a Mac, and I have a Pre, and I would like my Mac's address book and calendar to be bidirectionally synchronized with my phone.

You'd think this would be a no-brainer.

Palm's recommended solution to this is, "Give up on using desktop applications, and use Google Mail and Google Calendar instead". The Pre can sync to those.

Another solution is Missing Sync, which I had been using with my Palm Treos and Centro since 2005 or so.

However, I've been using Missing Sync for Pre since the phone was released, and it is a categorical piece of shit. I have yet to get it to sync twice in a row without error. There have been three betas, and I reported extensive debug logs to them in each beta, with no response. I finally got a response after I complained to 'sales' instead of 'support', and then two days later, the trial period expired. So now I can't even go through the motions of trying out their obviously-unlikely-to-work boilerplate response that comes down to, "your call is very important to us, delete all your contacts and calendars, reboot, and try again".

I mailed them saying, "I'd like to try your suggestion, but you ignored me for so long that now it has expired. How do I reset the timer?" They replied, "You can't. Pay us money, and if we can't fix the problem, you can ask for a refund."

Well, I think "fuck that" is the only possible response.

I spent a while trying to figure out how to reset the timer and failed. Deleting /Library/Preferences/.MSWebOSInstall makes the Missing Sync installer willing to run again, but there's some other file somewhere that the app itself is consulting, because it still knows.

I would prefer not to give my contacts and calendars to Google, because I don't trust them.

(I don't care if you trust them. I don't care if you think that's stupid. I'm not interested in discussing that with you. At all.)

Do I have any other options? I see that Pre can sync with Exchange. Is there an Exchange clone I can run on my Mac that will bridge between the Pre and iCal/AddressBook?

Failing that, and assuming that I do knuckle under to Skynet and allow Google to have all of my contacts and calendars, is it possible to bidirectionally sync contacts and calendars and between my Mac desktop and the Google hivemind without actually using Gmail for email at all? That is, using it just as a data store for my address book?