My recent criticism of the iPhone calendar caused some discussion on 247 and now Brad has come up with an interesting commentary on the matter. It shows that one feature really can make or break a device.
It’s been a LONG time for me in visiting your (very different now) site! About a year. That’s when I bought a new Win Vista laptop and discovered that my Clie could not sync with it. I then turned to the iPod Touch. Love many of its features. Absolutely HATE many of its “features.” It is such a prime time OS wannabee!
I 100% share your blog about the iPhone OS Calendar. AND your feelings of changing platforms. As a matter of fact, I came to your site to see if you still covered Windows Mobile to get a list of PDA’s that still might be manufactured that used that OS. I am so fed up with Apple.
I own Pocket Informant. Yeah, it’s the best PIM for iPhone OS out there, but DateBk it is not! Is it just me, or did Palm apps come out of the gate with more maturity than what we are seeing on the iPhone OS? This whole limitation of Apple to the Calendar API is just stupid! Well, Apple stupidity is a whole different blog in and of itself (iTunes Windows bugs that they don’t care to fix, their stupid new ratings and impositions on developers, the length of time it takes for revisions to get approved, etc.).
With PI to sync with Outlook, we have to sync with Google Cal, then (using an add-in) sync Outlook with Google Cal. Then if we wanted alarms, set them in Outlook, then sync with iTunes! How’s that for a several-step process in which some of your appointments can get screwed up? It happened to me. More than once. So I no longer use PI and am back to using the plain-vanilla iPhone Cal. Yuck. But at least I only have to do one sync with that and not have to worry about double-booking or missing appointments again because something got messed up!
When PI gets the Outlook sync feature, then I’ll try it again. But I sure miss the features of DateBk. Like someone mentioned, PI doesn’t have a full year view. PI doesn’t have a lot of things that DateBk had, even in its early versions. It’s pretty, but pretty doesn’t give me efficiency.
Calendaring is only one of the weaknesses of iPhone that has me looking at iPaq’s for the first time in my 11-year-old-PDA life. With a Palm OS PDA, all we did was press that sync button once, and Docs2Go, app installation, appointments, email, doc readers, scriptures, PDA readers–everything synced at once. With iPhone OS, you have separate syncs with every app that requires one! A pain! What’s worse, I am now finding out that if your WiFi network goes down (my router died), I cannot sync those apps at all. What a stink!
So yeah, I’m looking at leaving iPhone OS. I’ll miss having this nice, slim, and light little Touch in my pocket. But there are just some things that I just can’t stand anymore!
Brad
“Calendaring is only one of the weaknesses of iPhone that has me looking at iPaq’s for the first time in my 11-year-old-PDA life. With a Palm OS PDA, all we did was press that sync button once, and Docs2Go, app installation, appointments, email, doc readers, scriptures, PDA readers–everything synced at once. With iPhone OS, you have separate syncs with every app that requires one! A pain! What’s worse, I am now finding out that if your WiFi network goes down (my router died), I cannot sync those apps at all. What a stink!”
Unfortunately, none of the modern OSes is offering the type of comprehensive syncing solution once offered by Palm OS. Neither WebOS nor Android does it – they don’t even offer a way to sync PIM directly with the desktop.
It looks like we’re in the days of roll-your-own, with syncing solutions being left to third party vendors, either via wifi or over the cell networks. Ideally, this should all be handled OTA.
Core data like contacts and calendar will be handled OTA by services like Exchange, MobileMe or Google, but everything else is up for grabs.
But, if you’re waiting for the return of Palm Hotsync, you’re going to be out of luck. Data services are moving towards the cloud and are becoming more fragmented. (Hence WebOS’s synergy initiative.)
And, if you want DateBk then I’m afraid you’re only solution at the moment is to switch back to a Palm OS device which works with the latest version of windows – but that is a dead end.
By the way, I completely agree that Apple should open up the calendar APIs.
Let’s say it this way….the picture in this thread says it all. I AM currently looking for a Psion Revo!!!
I’m completely sick and tired of all those conduits I need to use files and\or documents. When I must make a choice…PIM and documents are more important to me than multimedia and “always connected”. Therefore I’m looking for a “dumb” device again with a decent PIM and the docments I need on a SD card.
This is why I keep banging on about BlackBerry. It is ironic that messaging is poor, but the PIM is simple and VERY usable.
PI for BlackBerry has been nothing but a chore for me as well. Dozens of emails with the developer leave me with no resolutions. Outlook sync strips notes. Sync to the built-in PIM breaks. 4 or more months of appts bogs the app down until going forward one month in the month view takes 10 or more seconds to change. I’m having to re-enter my appts & todo’s one at a time in the built-in PIM. The built-in PIM moved all my appts to a default calendar that no longer synced or allowed 3rd-party apps to see the calendar database. What a royal pain! I’d love to have my old Palm T3 or Clie back. I still maintain that the best smartphone I ever had was the Handspring Visor with the VisorPhone springboard.
I kept my laptop with XP so I can use my Revo or Psion 5 (or Psion 7). By the way, Nokia provides a range of Sync solutions but not support for categories for PIM.
@ lazyboy
The HTC Hero has Google cloud syncing of calendar, email and contacts plus ms exchange.
It also has a program HTC Sync which syncs to Outlook.
PS: Will anyone ever beat DateBk? Bc what is so great about the Psion’s calendar? I never thought it was so superior on the 3MX or Revo.
I’ve taken a long time to move on from a Clie TH55. I’ve tried a couple of Windows Mobile Devices but they were sooo slow by comparison. I’ve finally jumped ship and got an HTC Hero. Even if I’ve not got Datebk at least it will sync with outlook and Documents-to-go is now up and running. It’s the first leap forward in PDA devices in three years.