Well, see, the answer to "the CorpSync conduit sucks" is writing an N-way sync tool using the CorpTime SDK. But if I'm going to bother, I want iCal.app to work also. And the only apparent way to do it *right* is with iSync. I don't *want* to shut down iCal so it's safe to read calendars out from under it.
So it means reverse engineering the .mac protocol. Yuck. Why isn't there an API for this?