I have never owned an Apple product, but bought an iPhone to replace a
dead Palm device. I find that while it's flashy and cool, and some
things work very well, the two basic functions for which I used the
Palm are both inferior on the iPhone.
The Calendar app cannot handle n'th week scheduling (i.e. 4th
Tuesday), so it's useless to me since many of my calendar entries are
of that type. Apparently you can set these up in iCal, so the
functionality is there, it's just not accessible on the phone itself.
There's no iCal for the PC so those of us with PCs are just out of
luck.
There are many 3rd party calendar apps that do support this, but NONE
of them can ring the iPhone's alarm since Apple provides no background
task support (as a software developer I can undersand that, maybe).
What leaves me mystified is the lack of an underlying alarm service
API with which an app could schedule an event to have the OS ring the
alarm.
Supposedly push functionality is available now, but what if I'm out of
range of a cell tower or WiFi? I just want the PDA to ring an alarm
based on its internal clock, but this will require a chain of events
starting at a server somewhere. This is overcomplicating things for
no reason.
The other big use for my Palm was secure password storage with a
companion PC desktop app and synchronization to multiple PCs. Again,
there are lots of "password vaults" available, but only a few have the
companion desktop app. Of those, none provide a lossless import/export
capability. Either the import discards categories or custom field
names, or the export is incomplete or not in a structured format (i.e.
XML, CSV) that could be imported into a different app in the future.
Getting my 600+ records into the iPhone is going to require hours of
recategorizing and correcting, and I do not relish having to do that
yet again the next time I change platform or password app.
I guess my expectations were too high, based on all the hype.
When I posted this on the Apple forums I got this response:
Your post was removed from Apple Discussions as it contained feedback or feature requests. These areas are intended to address technical issues about Apple products. Although your feedback is appreciated, unfortunately these forums are not designed for it and your thoughts/concerns will not get the attention they deserve.
Yeah, right. Shades of George Orwell....
dead Palm device. I find that while it's flashy and cool, and some
things work very well, the two basic functions for which I used the
Palm are both inferior on the iPhone.
The Calendar app cannot handle n'th week scheduling (i.e. 4th
Tuesday), so it's useless to me since many of my calendar entries are
of that type. Apparently you can set these up in iCal, so the
functionality is there, it's just not accessible on the phone itself.
There's no iCal for the PC so those of us with PCs are just out of
luck.
There are many 3rd party calendar apps that do support this, but NONE
of them can ring the iPhone's alarm since Apple provides no background
task support (as a software developer I can undersand that, maybe).
What leaves me mystified is the lack of an underlying alarm service
API with which an app could schedule an event to have the OS ring the
alarm.
Supposedly push functionality is available now, but what if I'm out of
range of a cell tower or WiFi? I just want the PDA to ring an alarm
based on its internal clock, but this will require a chain of events
starting at a server somewhere. This is overcomplicating things for
no reason.
The other big use for my Palm was secure password storage with a
companion PC desktop app and synchronization to multiple PCs. Again,
there are lots of "password vaults" available, but only a few have the
companion desktop app. Of those, none provide a lossless import/export
capability. Either the import discards categories or custom field
names, or the export is incomplete or not in a structured format (i.e.
XML, CSV) that could be imported into a different app in the future.
Getting my 600+ records into the iPhone is going to require hours of
recategorizing and correcting, and I do not relish having to do that
yet again the next time I change platform or password app.
I guess my expectations were too high, based on all the hype.
When I posted this on the Apple forums I got this response:
Your post was removed from Apple Discussions as it contained feedback or feature requests. These areas are intended to address technical issues about Apple products. Although your feedback is appreciated, unfortunately these forums are not designed for it and your thoughts/concerns will not get the attention they deserve.
Yeah, right. Shades of George Orwell....