Used to be great. Not any more.

It no longer allows for LinkedIn or Facebook integration. Without having that merge capability, what’s the value add of this app over Apples Contacts app? I have no idea. It’s super buggy. The sync between OS X, Web, and iOS is ridiculously buggy and inconsistent. My iOS and Web contact count shows 674 contacts while my OS X contact count is 862. All attempts to sync result in the same counts. All attempts to eliminate duplicates result in the same counts.

It doesn’t sync with iCloud. The iOS, Web and OSX versions are all branded differently because companies merged and they didn’t merge the branding.

This page right here in the App Store that describes this product is completely out dated. They are still advertising In-App purchases for $3.00 each. I bought all of them and then 2 months later they eliminated LinkedIn entirely and made the other paid packages free. No, I didn’t get my $10 back, and despite what this page says, there are no in app purchases any longer except a Pro version which charges you to scan business cards into the database. I don’t know why thats desirable when other apps and Evernote do that for free.

The card fields that are available in OS X Contacts are not all duplicated in the app so some data won’t port over, ever. When 2 contacts from different sources are being merged and they have conflicting info in the title or employer fields, CoBook/FullContact will only show 1 of the 2. In order to select which one you want to keep you have to log on to the web site, open up that contact, select edit and select which one to use. Both will exist but only one will be visible. The merge feature is buggy and inconsistent. I’ll have 2 completely identical contact listings on the screen side by side and the app won’t be able to detect that they are duplicates.

The app won’t alphabetize in a sensible way. I have selected Alphabetize By First Name in preferences but the app then doesn’t know what to do with Business Listings that don’t have a first name and seems to put them in the list in no identifiable pattern. Worse is that this “Unidentifiable Pattern” is different in OSX, Web and iOS. So when I open up my contact lists, the contacts aren’t even listed the same across the 3 devices. The companies merged over a year ago and they still haven’t got anything figured out or working consistently.

Just tonight I’ve spent 3 hours just trying to get the 3 devices to sync up accurately and they still aren’t right. The praise from The Verge, TechCrunch and Life Hacker, above, are likely for the earlier versions before Full Contact bought them and screwed up CoBook. If you get this app, good luck.

Glenn Cashmore about Cobook