With the introduction of Mac OS X 10.5.3 update last week, Apple has added a new feature to Address Book: synchronization with GMail for the owners of an iPhone of iPod Touch.

I was looking forward to this feature since I am a big fan of syncing and I regularly use GMail and Address Book. Unfortunately I do not have any touch screen device from Apple, so I went forward to find a solution to enable syncing. There is a small tweak that you can perform to enable this feature (thanks lifehacker.com): open Terminal and type:

defaults write com.apple.iPod Devices -dict-add red-herring '{ "Family ID" = 10001; }'

Enable the feature in Address Book’s Preferences and remember to connect your existing iPod to start synchronizing! (I have no idea if this works without an iPod :P)

Address Book sync with GMail

For troubleshooting information (unable to perform the initial synchronization due to a 20-contact deletion limit implemented in GMail) please refer to Google’s Contact Sync Help Center.