Earlier in the week I quoted the iPhone battery as the one feature I would change, but I will change my mind and use put the calendar as the main fault of the current software. It is slow, requires a multitude of clicks to do anything and does not offer an organisational point of view when viewing what is happening over the days ahead. Add to this the fact that you cannot even add a default reminder and we have a system which is archaic compared to the functionality found on BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and Android smartphones. The webOS calendar is arguably better than the three I have just mentioned and even the Symbian setup is better.
The main annoyance for me though is Apples insistence on not allowing third party developers to access the alarm function. Pocket Informant is close to perfect and the main calendar view is one of the best I have seen, but having to rely on SMS alerts from Google and very soon push notifications is far from ideal. It means that the phone has to be online to receive either and this is not always ideal.
For people like me it is almost enough to push me to another platform, and I think that day is coming closer and closer.
You may not see much of a difference in the main image for this article (Pocket Informant on left and default iPhone calendar on the right), but the gap when used for real world situations is positively huge.
UPDATE: I just remembered how poor the category support is for users who do not use MobileMe or iCal- colours can change for no apparent reason and often to very light blue or other colours which are difficult to read. This may change with the Snow Leopard update if Apple make a wide sweeping change to how Exchange is supported, but it is one more reason why it stays in the ‘hopeless’ category for me.
I agree about the iPhone calendar….mostly – althouh I never find it too slow….but PI absolutely crawls along on my iPod Touch. Can’t think why it should happen but it does.
I think you ought to just pair an iPod Touch with your Blackberry, Shaun. It would cover all the bases.
In fact, tell you what – just because it’s you – I’ll swap my Touch for your iPhone. It’s what friends are for.
Agree – after any other smartphone calendar, but especially Palm’s, the iPhone one (and the lack of ability to access it from/through other apps) is a real downer.
Still…there’s always a bright side (and referencing the next pot up about “need”), I’ve just learnt to live with it. It irritates me sometimes, but it works (sort-of
)
Thought I’d share a little tip that solves the PI notification problem. I use Nuevasync for push mail and Google calendar sync with the native iPhone calendar. By setting up PI to use Gcal’s web alerts, the notifications get pushed to the native calendar and hence the notifications work as usual. Granted, this still relies on having radio coverage at least once between adding the event and the notification, but I’ve never experienced a time where this was a problem.
BTW, if you can do without push mail, Nuevasync is free.
Symbian PIM always gets given a hard time, I use Handy Calendar and I love it!
I don’t use categories though. I don’t need them since I want to know what’s what and when, whether it’s personal or otherwise, an appointment is an appointment. I can’t meet someone for coffee when I have to give a class!
But the calendar entries are beautifully displayed
I agree with quite a few of your points, Shaun, particularly regarding the number of taps needed to enter a new item and the lack of a default alarm. However, I have never found speed to be an issue, not on the original iPhone, the 3G, or the 3GS; indeed, on the latter it is open and ready for use in less than half a second.
There are a couple of areas where I find it better than most, though. The first is on the display of overlapping entries – you can have quite a lot of time blocks jammed together and the iPhone does a great job of displaying the both the text and the relation of each block to the others.
The second key area for me is navigation – for example, I find it far quicker to jump to a particular date on the iPhone than I did on my Blackberry. If I someone asks me if I’m free on the fifteenth of next month, it’s a cinch to quickly tap on the month view and go to that particular date – I’m never fumbling around navigating menus or typing in a “go to” box. (This has been a bugbear of mine on every smartphone I’ve ever used, apart from the iPhone.)
On the whole, though, I agree that the calendar could do with an overhaul. If you can, download a copy of Daylite Touch and check out the landscape week view and some of the other features – it’s awesome. (Unfortunately, it also requires a pricey desktop companion AND a subscription, which makes it unsuitable for individuals users who can’t write it off as a business expense.)
To be honest, iPhone’s calendar is “good enough” for me – I don’t spend much time on it, except to get a quick overview of my day and to enter the odd appointment on the fly. For me, any serious planning is always done in iCal on the desktop, where I can get the big picture and drag and drop blocks of time around with ease.
@Shaun, how does the iPhone compare to the 11 year old Agenda on the Psion 5?
“@Shaun, how does the iPhone compare to the 11 year old Agenda on the Psion 5?”
Who cares?
“@Shaun, how does the iPhone compare to the 11 year old Agenda on the Psion 5?”
Nothing compares to the Psion calendar- no one ever beat it.
“The first is on the display of overlapping entries – you can have quite a lot of time blocks jammed together and the iPhone does a great job of displaying the both the text and the relation of each block to the others.”
That is one of my main issues actually. When I have a lot of entries at the same time, it is a nightmare to view. On a BB everything is listed and much clearer.
“I think you ought to just pair an iPod Touch with your Blackberry, Shaun. It would cover all the bases.”
Definately not using iPhone for PIM anymore. Would go back to a Touch if it was cheaper than the second-hand price of my iPhone. Will keep the iPhone for other stuff and freelance work.
“When I have a lot of entries at the same time, it is a nightmare to view. On a BB everything is listed and much clearer”
That’s what the list view is for.
“That’s what the list view is for.”
Yes, and I have to scroll through a list on busy days. On Tuesday I had 17 events (5 conference calls, 3 meetings and other bits to sort)- the iPhone display in any view was painful.
The BlackBerry and Palm OS setups may not be attractive, but they offer a logical view of what is happening.
I am also frustrated with Calendar, but I’m dealing with it. I still think it takes too many taps to enter something–and if you don’t enter the ‘right’ stuff and save, it doesn’t enter anything at all (unlike Palm, where I could go back and clean up an entry later). I haven’t lost any entries now that I’m used to it, but that’s not right.
I think the list of calendars is pointless, since I can’t seem to figure out how to add more types from the device. It would be nice to have a color for each family member.
The thing that it’s most lacking for me now is a proper “week view” I, like Shaun, think it’s hard to look at it when there are many entries in a day. The list view doesn’t work because I want to see what is there for a certain date, and switching dates is best done on the calendar view (I agree with Lazyboy on that feature). But I want to tap on the date and see my entries–two isn’t enough and scrolling is not giving me the big picture I want. Maybe if the calendar wasn’t so big?–but it would violate HIG and not have big enough buttons for a finger to tap.
A simple week view would make it easier to see things grouped by days, plus would probably easier to change dates. It also could have the added advantage the day view has of seeing things graphically?
The list view is too hard to scroll thru to the right date. I keep overshooting and it’s frustrating. Even some color coding for days could help hone in on the date for which I’m looking.
Hopefully calendar will be updated someday to improve its interface?
It’s not so much the calendar, but the fact that it is SO EASY to fix. It would take someone at Apple 3 hours to fix these problems and that is what really bugs me!
Well, I have eight events schedule for just this morning, and the day view displays them beautifully and logically. I’d love to be able to post a screenshot in this post so you can see what I mean – their relationship to each other is more more clearly displayed than on either Palm OS, WimMob, or, indeed, a BlackBerry.
@Justine
I use the month view purely for navigation, then I jump back to either the list or day view for detail the detail – I find it quick and simple.
I have lots of calendars in different colors on my iPhone and it makes each type of activity stand out very clearly. All the colors are kept in sync via MobileMe and two other computers.
I completely agree with most of your other points. I would particularly like to tip the iPhone into landscape to be able to switch to a week view like the one in the Daylite Touch app – not only can you see each block of time clearly laid out, but you can read the text as well.
“Well, I have eight events schedule for just this morning, and the day view displays them beautifully and logically. I’d love to be able to post a screenshot in this post so you can see what I mean – their relationship to each other is more more clearly displayed than on either Palm OS, WimMob, or, indeed, a BlackBerry.”
Well, we definately disagree on this one. The iPhone calendar remains the worst aspect of the phone for me. You can’t even use the landscape keyboard in it.
@lazyboy I agree that the day view shows relationships well, but I guess I just use the calendar differently. I like to tap on a day, see what’s going on, then tap another, and see what’s up for that day–I’d like to do this w/out changing from the calendar screen.
On the Palm I’d tap on the calendar day and it would bring that date up. No tapping from me. Right now that two entry scroll thing just gets under my skin. Nearly pointless, but for some reason, that’s the screen I always end up on. Maybe it’s because I want to check what I’m doing every Tuesday and it’s easiest to navigate on that screen? Maybe something else?
I also would like to pick 1st Tuesday or 2nd and 4th Tuesday for repeats. Or even a repeat daily, except weekends. I have some things that repeat every T/Th and I have to create two entries for those. Repeat could be better.
So, since I don’t sync w/Mobile Me (or even iCal), I only use on the iPhone, how do you add more calendars???? Please share!
I can’t understand why nobody every seems to include a year view. Where you can tap a date and it brings up that date’s day view. The iphone’s big screen could probably due a decent job with that.
JKP You add Multiple Google calendars via Google on the web. You enable it there. I’ll try and find the link but it’s something like m.google.com via safari on the iPhone. Just select which google calendars you want to sync and they appear. All in diff colours. Absolutely fab.
Sid
@CharFeld, the Psion Agenda I mentioned has day, week, month, 3 month and year view! But no one seems that interested in old PDA solutions!
I have GCal on my iPhone. I actually like the iPhone calendar but then again I don’t use it for a huge amount of entries, 2 or 3 a day. I don’t need to enter “go to toilet” at 4.30pm for example. Gcal instructions at http://palmmac.wordpress.com/2009/07/30/but-what-about-tying-in-your-google-calendar-to-your-iphone/
Shaun,
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
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