Monthly Archives: August 2009

Lazyboy added the following as a comment yesterday to 247 and so I felt it deserved a front page spot. Always good to see all sides to a discussion.

Methinks you doth protest too much, Shaun. No less than five articles in the space of one week in which you harangue the iPhone for it’s “poor PIM”? And now you take it one step further with this comment: “Phone: dreadful, pitiful, awful. I could go on, but doing anything calendar or task related is akin to an elephant trying to open a bag of crisps. 2/10″Well, I’m crying foul on this comparison, and here’s why:

The BlackBerry’s PIM apps SUCK in many respects – I’ll take the iPhone any day.

You’ve rightly crticized the iPhone for the number of taps it takes to enter an appointment on the iPhone and some of its other shortcomings, but the notes and tasks apps on the BlackBerry are just as maddening to me.

But let’s start with the calendar, which, on the iPhone, is nowhere near as bad as you’re making out – in fact, it’s pretty smart.

CALENDAR:
ow, the BlackBerry calendar isn’t bad – you can set it up for quick entry, but it’s impossible to get a clear overview of your time, or of the conflicts between appointments. Used intelligently, the iPhone is far superior in this regard. Here are a couple of examples: http://www.flickr.com/photos/86244036@N00/3861172227/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/86244036@N00/3861977828/ I also like the way the iPhone automatically looks for the next available open time slot when creating new entries.

Navigating between different views and days on the BlackBerry is a royal pain in the you know what, particularly irritating is the lag while the BlackBerry informs you that it is “organizing calendar” as you switch between day, week and month views. On the iPhone it is instantaneous.

The week view on the BlackBerry is useless – there’s a good reason they didn’t include one on the iPhone. (Having said that, a week view on the iPhone in landscape would probably work very well, as it does in the Daylite Touch app, and I wish that Apple would add one.)

Month view on the BlackBerry – Meh. It’s reasonabily handy for navigating, (once you get there), but God help you if the date you’re looking for is at the end of next month or, even worse, a couple of months ahead. Get ready for plenty of scrolling and/or typing in the “go to” search dialog. On the iPhone it’s a couple of quick taps and you’re done.

NOTES:

hen I’m talking on the phone and someone dictates a phone number and and address, it’s a snap to switch to the notes app on the iPhone and jot these down, but a ghastly, cumbersome process on the BlackBerry – even if you set up some kind of shortcut to get you there quicker. On the Blackberry notes are are slow to enter because, unlike on the iPhone, there is no quick add button and you have to enter a separate title for the note before typing the body text. If you then want to switch quickly to another app, you can’t, because notes don’t autosave. You have to bring up a save dialog box and tap save, this then bounces you back to the main memo list, and then – and only then – can you switch to a new app. Tiresome.

You can’t email BlackBerry memos. The only data detectors on the BB are for phone numbers and email addresses – and you first have to scroll to the specific text to enable any of these smart features, then pull up a menu to do what you want. On the iPhone I can just tap a phone number, email address, or URL to initiate an action. The iPhone even parses street addresses to launch Google maps.

Finally, the quicksearch on the BB only searches note titles, not the body copy; and you can’t move to the next/previous note without backing out of the note you’re editing/reading first – again, neither of these shortcomings is present on the iPhone.

TASKS:

he tasks app on the BlackBerry is plagued by many of the same downsides as the BlackBerry memo app. It is quite limited, with inflexible sorting options and much else besides. Now, tasks aren’t included out of the box on the iPhone, but there’s no shortage of choice in the app store, with apps like Appigo Todo, Omnifocus and others handily eclipsing what’s available for the BlackBerry and, indeed, any other platform. There are quite a few apps that sync with Outlook, Google tasks and others, too.

Bottom line: I do more on my iPhone than I ever could with a Blackberry, and my workflow is far faster and more fluid. It may not be the perfect, but it’s a pleasure to use while the BB (aside from the ability to quick enter an appointment) is a chore.

Needless to say, I disagree with your views on the Blackberry/iPhone keyboard and battery comparisons, as well;)