Palm to iPhone migration - address book and notes

My painful Palm to iPhone/cloud migration continues. I've updated my summary table.

I migrated my Calendar by basically stopping use of my Palm/Outlook Calendar and entering data in the iPhone/iCal calendar [1]. I use Spanning Sync to publish to gCal and, less often, update from changes I make to gCal. I'll archive my Palm data in PDFs and data tables.

I migrated tasks by moving them from the Palm to Palm Desktop to archival To Do file to Toodledo. I corrected minor conversion bug on Toodledo and sync with ToDo.app on the iPhone.

I migrated my encrypted password database to 1Password.

Note the above costs money. I've spent about $80 on additional software and services and I'm not done yet. Some of the costs are recurring, but on the other hand so far I've seen no reason to buy MobileMess.

I don't yet know what I'll do with my Memos/Notes. Too bad Google Notebook isn't a more useful product, and too bad Evernote doesn't yet do data freedom. I will probably wait to see if Apple delivers sync of iPhone Notes in September. Other options:

• Put my notes into the Toodledo task framework.
• Use the fake address trick.
• Buy Missing Sync for iPhone.
  

On another front sync with my work calendar, contacts, tasks, memos, notes, appears hopeless for now. (I fear those will be intractable unless Chapura produces an iPhone version of KeySuite.)

So the Address Book/Contacts are up next, then I take a break.

I'm expecting to migrate from either Outlook (via Access?) or Palm Desktop to OS X Address Book (10.4 if possible). Options so far:

• Mac OS X 10.1, 10.2: How to import addresses into Address Book
• OS X 10.2 had some import scripts (I suspect these are gone)
• Thunderbird to ldif
• abtransfer
• Sync Address Book with my Palm
• Use Missing Sync for Palm OS - we have an ancient license!
  
• Buy Missing Sync for iPhone and use the migration assistant to move from the Palm ($25 with a crossgrade from our Missing Sync for Palm and Missing Sync for Blackberry licenses)
• Use MobileMe (added later, I forgot about my prior post!)
  

I think I'll reinstall my old copy of Missing Sync for Palm to migrate my contacts from the Palm (backup first of course). Then, if Apple or a Cloud competitor doesn't give me a good Notes solution by the end of September, I'll invest $25 in Missing Sync for iPhone and take care of my Notes problem.

[1] As I wrote this note I realized that I could have used my old copy of Missing Sync for Palm and moved the calendar data from my Palm to iCal. Note this exposes one of the many peculiar limitations of iCal. Categories in the Palm become calendars in iCal. Of course Spanning Sync only syncs one calendar to Google. So much for categories ...

Update 8/17/08: Address book moved easily. This is what I did.

1. Install my old version of Missing Sync for Palm OS.
2. Backup OS X address book and iCal
3. Delete all existing Address Book entries and sync iPhone (so all gone from both)
4. Disconnect iPhone
   
5. Set Missing Sync to overwrite Notes (might as well get those on the Mac somehow!)
6. Disable sync on Everything else including calendar.
7. Missing Sync default is to "sync contacts". This is a misnomer on first sync; it should say that handheld will overwrite desktop (same for calendar).
8. Consider zipping up your iPhone backup file at this point.
9. Sync Palm then disconnect
10. Connect iPhone and Sync
    

Oddly enough, my favorites were preserved. I wonder if they match on strings.

Based on what I've learned so far, this is what I'd recommend for any Palm user migrating to iPhone/Mac:

1. Consider Missing Sync for iPhone, it includes the "migration assistant" that will move your data. It's $50 new, but you get a $25 sidegrade on other MS products and future upgrades. (See update below however)
2. Use Migration Facility to move data from Palm.
3. Use iCal data to move tasks to Toodledo or RTM. Pay for these. After migration to Toodledo/RTM, you'll want to delete tasks from iCal and disable task synchronization.
   
4. Buy ToDo.app for iPhone.
5. Buy Spanning Sync to sync iCal with gCal (optional).
   

I'm now almost done with the personal migration. Only a solution for Notes remains -- a solution for my work data is still in the future.

Update 1/5/09: A commenter left a very negative review of Missing Sync for iPhone, so please read and review before ordering. My experience personal experience was with using other Missing Sync products.

Update 5/7/09: A reader points us to to a detailed migration path from Palm/OS X to iPhone/OS X.

There are no great task managers for the iPhone - but there's hope for 2011

I'm surprised by the conclusion of my recent survey [3] of iPhone/OS X/Web task management solutions. There are still no great task managers for the iPhone.

Neither Things, nor Appigo's ToDo.app (which I have used incessantly since 2008), nor OmniFocus, nor Remember the Milk.app nor Toodledo.app are a great solution. They all fall short. None of them are the equal of the venerable, simple minded, task manager that came with the PalmOS in 1994 and was improved with integration into DateBk in the late 1990s.

You may wonder why I condemn all of our current options. I'll start by listing the base requirements.

1. Simple enough for a non-geek to use with at least basic task attributes (due date, priority, task name, description, category [1]) and views (filters, sorts).
2. Data freedom: import/export capabilities for all tasks.
3. Synchronization to a desktop or web version that matches the "data model" of the iPhone version and has the same usability standards. [2]
4. Affordable (total solution costs < $50)
5. Calendar integration, even if that's only an "agenda" type view of tasks and dates.
6. Search across all "fields" (attributes).
7. Utter, absolute reliability.
8. Instant on, no delays in task entry.
9. Archiving of completed tasks.
10. Local iPhone app with synchronizatio -- not dependent on a data connection to work.

Sounds easy, doesn't it?  Palm did most of this fifteen years ago, and Pimlico's DateBk delivered the complete package (and more) over ten years ago. Must be easy [4]...

Evidently not. Nobody does it for the iPhone today. Let me name the failures ...

1. OmniFocus is too expensive ($100 for iPhone/desktop pair) and is too complex. At a lower price point though I'd seriously consider them despite the complex. I'm an Omni Group fan.
2. Things has reliability issues, is too expensive and doesn't support data freedom. Their iTunes ratings continue to decline.
3. Appigo's ToDo.app doesn't have a robust and reliable web or desktop solution and lacks data freedom. The best option is to sync with Toodledo's web app, but that app has a different data model than ToDo.app. This is what I use every day however.
4. Toodledo's own iPhone/web solution is limited by their complex (and, sadly, ugly) web app. The web app search is field specific and so almost useless.
5. Remember the Milk has a bad reputation as a business partner, their iTunes ratings are poor (?reliability), they are relatively costly at $25/year, and there's no data freedom. (Corrected from original - see comments.)

It's a sad situation. The best option is still the combination of Appigo's ToDo.app and Toodledo's web service; I pay for both. I do, however, grit my teeth every time I use Toodledo's web client, especially if I need to search for something.

I'm hopeful we'll see a fix in 2011. There are at least three ways the logjam could break.

Apple's OS X app store could reenergize the flagging OS X desktop, and new desktop products might appear at better price points. If Apple were to provide OS X App Store developers with a standard way to synchronize to iOS devices I'd expect a great solution. Alternatively,  Apple could forget it hates its customers, and finally put a bullet through iCal (sadly, will require 10.7). Lastly, and least likely, Jobs might decide he doesn't totally hate task managers after all.

Google might finally provide an API for Google Tasks, allowing iOS client development. Or they might provide HTML 5 (Gears-like) offline Google Tasks web app with synchronization support for Safari. [6]

Lastly, the Omni Group could create a "lite" version of OmniFocus for the App Store and sell both an iPhone and desktop OmniFocus Lite for under $50.  Or some other current vendor will fill out an existing solution.

If we assume an average probability of each of these outcomes of 50%, there's an almost 90% probability [5] we'll get finally get a great iPhone task management solution next year.

I'll raise a beer when it happens.

See also (mostly not about tasks, but all about PIM functions and the amazingly hard Palm to iPhone migration)

• Why the iPhone doesn't do tasks: a theory (2007 - how sad. I thought we'd see a fix in 2008! Later I decided that Jobs hates task managers.)
• Gordon's Notes: Cloud data: Should I trust (Simplenote) Simperium? (2010 - No. But do trust in data freedom.)
• Migrating Notes from ToodleDo to ResophNotes and the Simplenote ecosystem (2010, notes were hard too.)
• Nerdvana now: Our family calendar is working – and how Gmail parses Outlook invites (2008. Things got better. Calendars are still not perfect (CalDAV vs. ActiveSync vs. iPhone data models esp with invitations) but this is one PIM functionality that's substatially improved over the past twenty years.)
• Gordon's Notes: The descent of the PDA: Newton, Palm, Blackberry and iPhone (2008)
• My Palm to iPhone migration challenge -- summarized (I've updated the spreadsheet describing the nasty Palm to iOS migration.)
• iPhone ToDo app and why my reviews are better than the rest (2008)
• Palm to iPhone migration - address book and notes (2008 - mostly historic, Simplenotes.app was the real fix)
• Palm to iPhone - only the notes remain (2008 - Evernote then, but I gave it up. Then Notebook.app, finally Simplenote)
• Gordon's Notes: What the iPhone needs is Gorilla Haven’s DateBk6 (2009 - it did show up on Android as Pimlical this year)
• Palm to iPhone - the summary and Palm to iPhone - the update (2008 - I like the pictures)
• Palm/Palm Pilot: Personal Experiences and Tips (My 1990s era PalmPilot page - just for the nostalgia. Things got ugly there too.)
• Synchronizing iPhone to Google - a review

- fn -

[1] The big "breakthrough" change to the Palm ToDo (task) list was the radical addition of up to 16 categories. For quite some time Palm tasks lacked "categories" (single tag). The original Palm design team were even more radical minimalists than Apple's modern iPhone OS team.
[2] This is huge. If data models don't match perfectly non-geeks, and even geeks, will eventually be frustrated -- even if they don't understand why they are frustrated.
[3] Looking for a good solution for Emily, and deciding none existed.
[4] I'm being sarcastic of course. One of the hardest things in software development is deciding what to omit. It's the old line about sculpture - great art consists of removing the inessential.
[5] 1 - (1/2*1/2*/2) = 7/8
[6] More likely now that the Google/Apple war is over.

Palm to iPhone: do I need an iTouch as well as an iPhone?!

I’ve made my personal Palm to iPhone transition (see report)…

Gordon's Tech: Palm to iPhone - only the notes remain

….The current collection of solutions makes an interesting contrast to the simplicity of my original Palm III - even if I ignore the migration challenges!

• Calendar: iPhone <-> iCal <-> Google Calendar via Spanning Sync ($25)
• Contacts: iPhone <-> Address Book
• Tasks: iPhone ToDo <-> Toodledo ( -> iCal + Google Calendar as read-only) ($35)
• Notes: iPhone Evernote <-> Evernote service (temporary)

It was bloody hard work, but now that I’ve done the job it’s not so hard for anyone who wants to replicate it. The key tip for Palm users going to iPhone on OS X is to pay $50 and buy Missing Sync for the iPhone with the bundled migration assistant. Oh – and read my posts.

That still leaves the workplace problem. On the Palm, after wasted years of trying to get to a single calendar (see also), I ended up using Chapura’s KeySuite (vs. DataViz Beyond) to sync to my office Exchange server/Outlook 2003.

So at home I used the Palm Outlook conduits to sync the standards apps to Outlook 2003, and KeySuite conduits at the office.

It worked, but it sure was stupid. Flipping between calendars was a pain.

Now, with a mounting sense of horror, it occurs to me that, at the moment, the only viable workplace option is to buy an iTouch for sync to my corporate environment. [1]

Imagine that.

Of course I’ll keep my Palm Tungsten E2 going as long as possible, but if I need to replace the half-broken Palm PDA the iTouch is about the same price. If an iPhone alternative does not emerge (and I’m thinking, I’m thinking) it makes sense to replace the Palm Tungsten E|2 with an iTouch.

So I’d have an iPhone and an iTouch to carry about.

This would be funny if I weren’t crying.

[1] Apple has designed the iPhone to sync to a single home machine. It’s more or less mandated by their DRM requirements. The Palm was more or less designed to sync to more than one machine.

Update 8/18/08: Results of an early experiment in trying to sync in two places.

Palm to iPhone - the summary

I'm wrapping up my series on migrating my personal data from the Palm/Outlook/XP to the iPhone/OS X/Cloud. I've yet to figure out how to manage my work data as well, that will be the subject of future posts.

On the left, a picture of my battered Tungsten E|2. It's my sixth or seventh Palm, and my second E|2. Like most Palm devices the on/off switch died within six months of purchase.

Palm can't make power switches. Or rather, they don't like them to last.

Note there are eight action buttons, four silkscreen and four physical (omitting the center button -- I hardly ever use it). Note the nice search button -- the iPhone doesn't have global search (maybe for a good reason).

Below is the current iPhone. Not coincidentally, the top row corresponds to the four physical buttons on my Palm. The special bottom row, however, is taken over the the phone, google, map, iPod.

The Calendar and Contacts are a close match to the Palm. They sync with iCal and Address Book by USB cable. One improvemnet is that iCal also subscribes to my wife's BlackBerry/Google Calendar, so get to see her appointments on my iPhone (read-only). (iCal further syncs my primary calendar with gCal using Spanning Sync; I've put MobileMe on hold until Apple does some major fixes).

The ToDo.app doesn't sync with iCal, it syncs with Toodledo. My family Google Calendar also gets a feed from Toodledo, it shows tasks as all day events.

On the far right is Evernote, the anxiety provoking home for my Palm Notes and more. They sync to the Evernote service.

The following posts may be of interest to anyone who's trying to migrate a Palm device from Outlook/XP to an iPhone using OS X/Cloud ...

• Different calendaring models...
• Migrating Palm Notes (Memos) to Toodledo and Appigo Notebook.app (9/29/08)
  
• All done except Notes/Memos (and buy Missing Sync for iPhone)
• Moving Contacts/Address Book
• Moving Tasks, more moving tasks, and ToDo.app and Toodledo
  
• Archiving your iPhone backups
• JFile passwords to 1Password
• Spanning Sync
• Summary table on Google Docs (since updated)
• ePocrates Palm to iPhone (this one was easy)
• Cumulative iPhone notes and surprises
• Why MobileMe's problems are deep and a Palm veteran's perspectives

Palm to iPhone - the update

A few weeks ago I wrote a summary of my Palm to iPhone conversion.

Time for an update.

This is really a Geek Odyssey, though, as I mentioned before, Missing Sync for iPhone would probably help.

I won't repeat all the extensive links in my earlier post, please go there to get the details. I've even updated that older post with a link to today's Appigo Notebook/ToodleDo migration.

You can see the current state my "iPhone as PDA' above. Those bottom four links should look familiar. They're a close match to the classic four iPhone buttons: Calendar/Date Book, Contacts/Address Book, Tasks/Todo and Memo/Note.

On my Palm I'd substituted a 'digital ink' app for the Note, I used that to scrawl quick notes. On my iPhone the equivalent is Jott. It captures audio snippets which are then transcribed. In some ways better than being able to scrawl an "ink" note, in other ways not as good.

The Calendar and Contacts are Apple apps. They sync with OS X iCal and Address Book. I wish instead they would sync directly with Google Calendar and Contacts. For now I sync my desktop data to Google using Spanning Sync.

Appigo makes both Todo.app and Notebook.app (to the right above the main four). Both sync with Toodledo. I wish Google would buy Toodledo and take that over too. The Appigo products are great. Toodledo tasks are spartan but good enough, Toodledo Notes need a lot of work.

The rest of my primary screen consists only of apps I use ALL the time (oops! Looks like Maps got bumped off. It should be there). Other screens are split info games (a real strength of the iPhone), lesser used apps, etc.

The Appigo apps make the iPhone a better competitor to the 1994 Palm III, but in terms of usability and PDA value the Palm III is still a clear winner. The iPhone is only competitive when you start to do geeky and barely possible things with Google Calendar and the like. Of course the iPhone can do far more things than the Palm III could, not the least of which are Safari, Mail.app and Map.

One more thing. The Palm III had global search. So you could search tasks, notes, address book, etc with one tap. Slow, but global. There's nothing like that for the iPhone. Appigo Task and Note search is very fast but limited to those apps. Calendar has NO search, and Contacts has a feeble search against name alone.

Palm to Google calendar migration: Dba2CSV

I received a comment on on of my many Palm to iPhone migration posts plugging a calendar migration tool:

... To move from Palm Desktop to gCal/iPhone etc you can also try Dba2Csv or Palm2Google to move your calendars. No sync here - this is just accurate conversion from .dba to .csv (for Palm Desktop 4 files) or direct export from Palm to Google Calendars (for Palm Desktop 6 files) ... Unlike some other solutions to this problem, I am an independent freelance developer, and I provide unlimited online help (chat/email) AND a 100% quibble-free money-back guarantee :-)

The author's web site advises ...

... The best method for Palm Desktop 4 users is usually to upgrade to Palm Desktop 6 & use the Palm2Google tool within Dba2Csv. This process should only take 5-10 minutes, if you read the instructions under "Palm2Google" in the main menu on the left first. Once Palm2Google has moved your data to Google you can easily sync Google Calendars with nearly any software or mobile device, or export as an iCal file to import to most calendar software ; once your data is where you need it, you can stop using Google Calendars altogether if you wish, use Google Calendars to keep syncing with your new device, or just keep the data there as an online backup...

With Emily and I sync our iPhone Calendar.apps with Google's Calendar using Google's Exchange server ActiveSync (Google Sync). It's worked very well for us and I'd vouch for it, though the semi-secret UI for multi-calendar support on the iPhone is obviously not for general consumption.

So how did we get to Google Calendar?

Emily had given up on Palm many years ago, but in my case I just gave up on my Palm calendar and started a new one. See a prior post with several options for Palm calendar migration.Now that Google has an Outlook Sync product that's an easy option for any Palm user with Outlook available.

If you're on Palm Desktop though, there may not be a lot of options. So this might be worth looking at.

Incidentally, this post inspired me to update my old Palm to iPhone migration table.

Project Contacts: Now mixing Outlook/Exchange, PST file, Outlook/Home, MobileMe Sync, OS X Address Book and the iPhone.

A recent Apple Discussion Thread led me to take a new direction with Project Contacts.

To put it mildly, there’s a lot of complexity in this post. However initial results are very positive. This method will require me to purchase a MobileMe account, something I was hoping to avoid. (See below for a partial index to past efforts.)

The end result is that I have a single collection of work/home contacts across iPhone and OS X Address book at home. The work contacts portion of this collection is updated weekly. At this time the update is one way, from Work to Home.

For anyone who may be facing these challenges, I have provided a skeletal outline here of what I did and what I would do if starting from scratch. You will see how insanely complex this is. Note that as of this writing the care PIM data that was once in Palm/Desktop is now scattered across Google (Calendar and a detached set of Contacts), Outlook/corporate, Toodledo and MobileMe. Everything does come together in my iPhone. The current solution involves a wide variety of vendors. For example, Apple's MobileMe calendaring is pathetic; far weaker than Google Calendar and a joke compared to Outlook (which makes Apple's no-show on tasks even more crazy). On the other hand Apple's Contact framework is very robust, much stronger than Google and a rival to Outlook.

This ruddy mess is a real indictment of Apple and a fat opportunity for the PalmPre.

So much for prelude. Here’s the outline, strictly for the uber-geek:

Here’s what I actually did:

• Copying contacts from Outlook/Exchange root to Outlook PST caused the EX (Exchange server x.500) email addresses to be updated to SMTP (standard internet) email addresses.
• PST on thumb drive to home (simple)
• Copy into Home Contacts
• Sync to MobileMe
• In MobileMe web assign all to a Group
• Sync to OS X Address Book (small conflicts)
• Sync to iPhone (ok)
• Sync to Outlook Home: Each Group in OS X Address Book became a Contacts Subfolder in Office 2003. This means the cardinality relationship to Address to Group may have to be One to One.

Expected problem:

• Contact belongs to two Groups in OS X Address Book (multiple inheritance)
• Contact assigned to ONE Subfolder in Office 2003.
• In OS X change Group assignments.
• What happens in Outlook?

Here’s what I suggest doing (LOTS of backups of OS X Address Book as go along)

1. Outlook/Corporate create PST file, copy work contacts. Do not copy lists or groups of contacts, only contacts.
   
2. PST file to thumb drive
3. Home Outlook mount PST data file. Make sure Contacts folder is empty
4. Sync iPhone to OS X Address Book
5. Create new group in OS X Address Book that will hold corporate contacts
6. Sync to fresh MobileMe Account
7. Sync fresh MobileMe account to home Outlook
8. Now Outlook will have an empty subfolder. Dump the Contacts transported into the PST file into that empty folder.
9. Sync from Outlook to MobileMe
10. Sync from MobileMe to OS X Address Book
11. Sync to iPhone

A partial index to past and related efforts at work/home Contact integration:

• Synchronization (all)
• MobileMe (all)
• Outlook (all)
• Contacts (all)
• Synchronization is Hell.
• Root causes: Why you can't sync your work and home calendars to your phone
• Project Contacts: Integration across iPhone, Google and whatever
• Work home contact integration: Outlook to Google to OS X Address Book (X.500 EX email problem)
• Synchronization case study: Address Book, the iPhone, and Google Contacts
• iPhone sync to Google contacts - 3 methods and work/home implications
• Outlook contacts to OS X Address Book - 3 techniques
• Google saves my iPhone (Google Exchange Server emulation for iPhone)
• Googaby: Novel approach to Google Contacts and OS X Address Book integration
• OS X Address Book to Google Apps Contacs using Google ActiveSync
• Work home contact integration: Outlook to Google to OS X Address Book
• Access OS X Address Book records using OpenOffice database?
• Synchronizing iPhone and Gmail contacts: getting OS X Address Book into Gmail
• gSyncit vs Google Calendar Sync with Outlook 2007
• gSyncit for Outlook 2007 to Google Calendar and Contacts Sync
• Prediction: We won’t see a fixed MobileMe until 10.6 is out
• MobileMe alternatives – including for iPhone Sync (MacWorld)
• Palm Pre is Exchange sync based
• iPhone: MobileMe vs. Google services
• MobileMe, Microsoft Outlook, Exchange, iTunes and yes, sync Hell
• Is it too late to go back to Palm 1994?
• Palm to iPhone - the update
• Synchronization is hard - more evidence
• Palm to iPhone migration - address book and notes
• Spanning Sync tells us what's wrong with Google's free CalDAV sync
• Apple can't do synchronization - again
• MobileMe syncs with Outlook (but then Apple turned it off for Exchange clients)
• Interoperability and my Contact information: Microsoft Outlook and Access, FileMaker Pro and Palm Contacts

Update 5/15/09: Now that I've got this working I'm trying various optimizations. For example, my contacts don't change that often. It's easy to create a view in Outlook that sorts by modified date. It's fairly trivial to send out a few changed .msg in an email and let Outlook at home merge them in. I still have to think about how to work with Google's Contacts, but I'm seeing a few interesting options.

It's weird how powerful MobileMe contacts are, yet how feeble MobileMe calendaring is. We're due for a MobileMe relauch, so I expect some developments before September.

Lastly, I should probably mention why I took this route. The more I looked at the workarounds for getting Outlook/Exchange corporate contact data to Google or the OS X Address Book the worse they looked. Their are problems with data models, problems with the intractable horror of the Outlook Add-In architecture, problems with Exchange server and problems with corporate access. This approach is crude, but for me, once I figure it out, fairly painless. I think it will fly until we get something better.

In the meantime, I'm rooting for the PalmPre to humiliate Apple and make them reconsider the direction they're taking.

Update 5/15/09b: Now that I've got this setup working I can see weird new affordances. For example, one of my top 10 OS X frustrations is the inability of FileMaker to work with the Address Book SQLite data stores. Ahh, but now my address data is synchronized between Outlook/Home and Address Book, and I can use Microsoft Access with Outlook/Home. So I can clean things up there, and MobileMe sync will propagate my fixes. I think I'll find a way now to get my Google Contacts into the battlefront.

Update 5/16/09: Great comment by Faheem, who's achieved a similar outcome using Plaxo without paying for MobileMe. I took a look, but Plaxo didn't feel right for me.

Palm to iPhone - only the notes remain

As summarized in my last note, I've got everything but my Memo Pad items (Notes) moved from Palm to iPhone. I've also realized that if were to do this all over again, I'd have paid my $25 sidegrade fee for Missing Sync for iPhone (includes migration utility).

Hey, I didn't have the benefit of reading my own blog postings.

The Memo Pad/Notes items are tough. I could get Missing Sync for iPhone [1], but then the data sits on my home machine. That wouldn't be so bad if the iPhone included any search functionality, but it doesn't.

I could wait for iPhone OS 2.1, but there's no guarantee Apple will actually include notes synchronization then. They've get a huge number of bugs to fix.

I don't like the usual hack of storing notes as fake contacts (messes up address book, weak search).

I could store them as tasks without dates or priorities on Toodledo/Todo. That's not a bad option.

I looked at Evernote again. It seems a natural fit. I installed the Windows version and used the "Add to Evernote" option to move all Notes to the net. The first time I did this the Windows app crashed, so I first created a local-only database, imported into that, then created a "sync" (net) repository and dragged them from the local to the net version.

This worked. The notes are on the net, and I can search them from the Evernote client on my iPhone (as long as I'm connected). I can even do some limited work with them using the Evernote client on OS X.

There's only one fly in the ointment, but it's a big, ugly sucker.

I tested the "export" features of the Windows client. Pathetic. The data is locked in. Worse, some web searches find Evernote users commenting about the need for export ... in 2005.

I really don't trust a company that locks in user data like that. They're well beyond the point where words are any use -- they need to show results.

So I have the data there for now, but I'm assuming I won't be able to get any of it out. So Evernote is a transitional strategy.

As I think harder about this I came across a review of evernote contrasting it to some other options:

Evernote for Mac Reviewed (beta version) Daniel mostly on Software:

• 3.1: Evernote (2.7 plus 0.4 for what my benchmark doesn’t count)
• 2.8: Journler, Together
• 2.5: Scrivener, Soho Notes
• 2.4: EagleFiler
• 2.3: DevonThink Personal
• 2.0: Yojimbo
• 1.8: Circus Ponies NoteBook

There are a large suite of unstructured textbase apps for OS X, including Tinderbox. This Particular Outliner and Tidbits often review these apps.

These note taking apps go far beyond what I've done with the memos, which are really memory fragments, but I'll take a walk through this space and see what the Cloud or iPhone integration options are. (Yojimbo's web site still talks about .Mac sync, which is not a good sign.)

It has also occurred to me that there might be a way to structure my Notes as blog postings, and then store them as a private blog, choosing the blog based on available iPhone apps.

So it's Evernote for the moment, but I'm actively considering alternatives.

The current collection of solutions makes an interesting contrast to the simplicity of my original Palm III - even if I ignore the migration challenges!

• Calendar: iPhone <-> iCal <-> Google Calendar via Spanning Sync ($25)
  
• Contacts: iPhone <-> Address Book
  
• Tasks: iPhone ToDo <-> Toodledo ( -> iCal + Google Calendar as read-only) ($35)
  
• Notes: iPhone Evernote <-> Evernote service (temporary)

Obviously my data is fairly scattered now. I positively reek of cloudness.

[1] The mystery of why this is the only product able to access the iPhone data store over the USB conduit grows. What's Mark/Space got that no-one else has?

Update 9/29/08: Migrating Palm Notes (Memos) to Toodledo and Appigo Notebook.app

Update 3/14/09: See comments for an advanced approach using, in part, a Perl script.

iPhone Surprises: Notes you won't read elsewhere

I bought a white 16GB iPhone via AT&T pre-order. It took 3 days from pre-order to pickup; their email notification system didn't work.

Rather than create an annoying new stream of comments on my iPhone, I'll update this post with things I don't read elsewhere. Prior to the 2.1 update this post included a relatively caustic introduction, but post 2.1 things are much better.

This is a good time to buy an iPhone.

When I first posted this Pogue's Missing Manual wasn't out. That's a fantastic book, everyone with an iPhone should own it. I try now to only add items not covered in the book.

Discoveries:

1. When you change to the iPhone, you need to redo your voice mail. My AT&T rep forgot to mention this. I found out I had no voice mail after a week or so. I didn't have any directions, so I just tapped on the iPhone voice mail button to see what would happen. The behavior was weird. The initial setup seemed to be a standard phone setup, then the iPhone flipped over to a GUI setup. It now seems to work, but something went wrong.
   
2. The loss of firewire charging is far more annoying than I'd expected. I have several firewire chargers that worked great, including two from Apple. They also came with nice, long, cables. Worse, the iPhone cable for my SONY car stereo no longer charges -- almost all car peripherals used firewire because it's a close match to the automotive electrical system. This includes my fairly new Griffin FM broadcast and charger. Yes, those are my teeth you hear grinding.
   
3. The iPhone 2.0 USB charger is tiny. If the tines folded in it would be a perfect USB travel charger; this is an odd omission because Apple's prior chargers all had folding tines. On balance though the tiny size and weight are adequate compensation.
4. The SIM is removable, a tiny SIM removal tool is in the box. Don't lose it! You can swap the SIM from the iPhone into a lesser AT&T phone and use that when you don't want to risk the iPhone.
5. The iPhone has a single audio jack -- and it's a 3.5 mm connector. So 2.5 mm earsets won't work. I found 3.5mm to 2.5 mm adapters that work.
   
6. The newer Apple ear buds no longer have foam covers. Ok, minor detail.
7. There's no slipcase with the iPhone, just a cleaning cloth. There are no screen protectors either, I thought iPhone 1.0 shipped with 2-3.
8. The inexpensive white slipcase that shipped with my video iPod is a surprisingly good iPhone case. I wouldn't mind several like that, otherwise I'll probably buy a set of screen covers. I also saw a neoprene wrapper that doesn't add much bulk and would add some fall protection.
   
9. My helpful AT&T rep did the phone number swap -- but oddly enough it seemed like this was an afterthought. I think what he was really trying to do was move data from the old phone to the iPhone via Bluetooth, and he was distracted when he described the task. I'd already sync'd the old phone data to my iMac, so I didn't need that. This ate up some time before I realized what he was trying to do. Let the rep know up front that you don't need old phone data. (He also failed to write my phone number to the SIM, which means the iPhone can't display it. This is a common configuration error, AT&T has to correct it.)
   
10. After phone transfer the old SIM in the old phone enables the phone to be turned on, but there's no service.
11. With 3G service you can talk while you browse the web. This is a huge feature for me, and it's not available with EDGE service.
12. Apple has changed their iPod/iPhone cable. It no longer has the locks, it's a pure friction connector and more compact. I imagine too many people ripped out the cable without disengaging the locks (tyranny of the incompetent!). It's also very short, but the compact charger works well at the end of a lightweight extension cord so this is a good trade-off.
    
13. Apple has a 152 page user guide for the iPhone at the Apple User Guide site. There's a link to the manual on the Safari browser when you start, but it may get lost if you sync bookmarks.
    
14. You can charge an iPhone at multiple machines, but be careful. I have iTunes at work configured with all sync options turned off, this means when I connect the iPhone I can browse photos, but otherwise no sync occurs and iTunes does not lauch. The iPhone, however, charges. So I don't need a separate USB charger at the office, just an iPhone/iPod USB cable (I have a bunch).
    
15. Synchronization with non-Apple desktop apps is a flaming mess.
16. With daylight illumination the camera takes a decent photo of my office whiteboard; I can read my writing. It does well with low light levels. I'm experimenting with combining this with the Evernote service -- annotating images and uploading them.
    
17. Everyone needs one of the many free "flashlight" apps. The bright screen is handy to have in the dark.
18. The iPhone UI is a stress test for Parkinson's disease, familial tremor, other movement disorders and finger/thumb joint disorders. I wonder if they'll eventually get sued under the ADA act. It's a healthy young persons UI, they need to add some tweaks for the rest of humanity.
19. I miss having a "rocker" button like most phones have for navigating pages. It's annoying, and tiring, to have to use my fingers to turn pages. It also smears the screen, though image clarity is good even with a dirty screen.
20. iPhone users will develop dermatitis from compulsive hand washing. Let me make sure I get official precedence for first mention of the new disorder -- "iPhone dermatitis".
21. There's no screen indicator that the phone is in vibrate mode.
22. Many web pages render poorly on the small screen. Newspaper columns, however, work well. Safari/mobile has one peculiar design choice. The font size is fixed, you can't override it the way you can other mobile browsers. That means the initial display flows based on the fixed font size within the vertical window. Tap twice in an area of the page to zoom to fit that region's width.
    
23. I keep running into the 8 screen "pop up" limit. I think this problem could be better handled, I'm sure it will be. Annoying to close 'em. Why create so many "pop ups"? I think it's a problem with handling the HTML "open in new window" behavior.
24. Feeds and the iPhone are a match made in heaven. Google Reader (part of the Google Mobile suite) is fantastic on the iPhone; I've switched from Bloglines to Google Reader. It's a shame that Bloglines didn't have the resources to do an iPhone/mobile version.
    
25. I need to have multiple instances of Google Mobile.app on my phone - one for each of my Google and Google Apps personae. Hope they fix this soon.
26. Voice notes are essential, and the variety of apps on the market that do voice note capture, including offline transcription, reveal how valuable this will be. Evernotes requires notes to upload to the server, since non-Apple iPhone apps don't do background multitasking you will eventually have to let the uploads complete. Jott does background note transcription. Obviously speech recognition on the iPhone will be a big deal, but I suspect doing that with reasonable performance and power drain will require some special dedicated hardware. Maybe version 4.
    
27. Apps keep asking me if I want to use location services. Very annoying -- I always do. I'm looking for a global setting. There are a bunch of usability quirks like this, including unnecessary taps with many apps. This is trivial stuff that will get quickly sorted out, but it's good to expect it.
28. Screen capture (transiently hold the home and power buttons) is a great workaround for various UI limitations, and a good way to put Picasa photos on the local iPhone. I'm sure apps will figure out how to attach metadata to these.
29. I'm beginning to understand why audio pocasts and video podcasts have some value.
30. The dictionary app does not have a UI. It learns from your actions, so try not to mislead it! If it suggests a single word that's right, tap the space bar to accept it. If you don't, you'll hurt the dictionary's feelings. Curiously it is only suggesting short words for me. I preferred the approach of the long defunct predictive text behavior of Palm apps, but those did require tapping with a stylus. This might be better in the long run.
31. The iPhone understands that multiple people may share the same phone number. An incoming call is assigned the first alpha sort name in the list as in "Home plus 3 others". Photos associated with incoming numbers display when the phone rings -- this is very cool.
32. Apple "improved" the launch time in version 2.1 by speeding address book launch and slowing down the launch time of every other iPhone app. So now many apps take 4 seconds to launch but contacts aren't too bad.
    
33. Search on the Address book is first and last name only. If you define a company name, search is on the company name only. This is, needless to say, really dumb.
    
34. The iPhone is a mediocre iPod, but there are some real improvement over prior iPods. You don't have to dismount your iPhone prior to removal from an iTunes session. It's probably a good practice, but it's not necessary. (Of course you can't mount it as a drive either.) The iPhone on 10.5 and iTunes 8 also seem to have resolved the ancient OS problem with switching users when a peripheral is mounted - at least when auto-sycn is turned off in the iPhone settings. The iPhone seems to remain locked to the user who 'owns' the iPhone account.
    
35. The camera is excellent at taking screen shots of white boards in dim light. Good sharpening, good light sensitivity, right size for sharing images, resolution is adequate. Remember, the price of higher resolution is lower light sensitivity.
36. There's no way to disable data services completely and still use the phone. In rural areas the phone may detect an EDGE network, but the throughput may be effectively zero; the phone still shows visual voice mail even when it won't work. Only when there's no EDGE service at all can standard voice mail be reached. The visual voice mail problem causes expensive data charges if you use the phone outside the US, even if you turn off other data services.
    
37. If you disable data roaming (may help with voice mail travel problem) the phone still tries to use a data connection -- but nothing happens. In airplane mode it won't try to connect, but you can't use the phone either.
    
38. If you delete an application from iTunes, and then choose it again from iTunes, it looks like you have to pay for it again. You won't really be charged as long as you're logging in with the account that purchased the app.
    
39. Applications can be synched to up to five iTouch/iPhones from a single account. This is not at all obvious, the process for doing this needs improvement.
40. The silver on/off button has context dependent behavior. In standard mode it locks the phone and turns off the display. When a call comes in one push silences the ring, two sends it directly to voice mail.
41. When you search for a business on the Map and select a pin, you get a pop-up with an arrow. Touch the arrow to see the contact. What's not obvious at that point is that if you scroll down, you can add this to your address book (you cannot, however, specify to which group). I do this all the time. The form of contact that's created is very complete, including a map link.
42. The iPhone truncates the display of Calendar notes at 1,500 characters. To see the entire note you need to navigate a tiny edit window.
43. The touch screen responds to a finger, not to a stylus. A bigger problem is that it does very poorly with dry fingers. Since most iPhone uses are youthful, this is not widely noticed. If you're a geezer like me though, you'll have trouble with unrecognized touches. There's an obvious solution, but I think my salivary amylase is dissolving my screen (good reason not to touch the iPhone of a geezer). Maybe someone will sell an iPhone case with an integrated saline pad to moisten fingertips.
    

Chapura KeyTasks: Sync Outlook Tasks with iPhone

I'm trying to move my Outlook tasks into Toodledo, and finding a meaningless "proxy error" (my XP firewall is off) when I try to use the Toodledo Sync Application to get my tasks to Toodledo, and thence to the iPhone ToDo.app.

This is way too cutting edge for my sleep needs.

IN the midst of the fray I find a link to an old friend/nemesis - Chapura. They're threatening to release a web service iPhone app combo "any time now" ...

Synchronize Outlook Tasks with iPhone.

Using 11 years of Microsoft Outlook synchronization experience, KeyTasks provides the most reliable wireless Outlook Tasks synchronization available for the iPhone and iPod touch.

The KeyTasks synchronization is provided through your MyChapura Account. A MyChapura account is included with your yearly subscription of KeyTasks. MyChapura is an online service that provides "cloud" synchronization of Microsoft Outlook Tasks and KeyTasks on the iPhone or iPod touch.

MyChapura stores your information on our Web servers. This is commonly referred to as the "cloud." When you make a change in Outlook or on your device and synchronize, that change is sent up to the cloud. Your iPhone or iPod touch will receive this change when you synchronize and your PC can be configured to manually or automatically synchronize. This allows you to keep your information current in multiple places no matter where you are.

We keep your information protected with a secure transfer process and encryption in your MyChapura Account. Your information is encrypted using your MyChapura Account password. Because of this, only your password can decrypt your information...

I'm getting a dawning sense of horror.

I've spent about 10 years fighting with Palm/Outlook synchronization.. It's been a greater battle than hacking WordPerfect hex files to make my printer work, or futzing with obscure Hayes commands to get my 2400 bps error-correction enabled.

I've learned a lot about synchronization from Chapura, and it's all been painful.

I must admit though, that while their Palm KeySuite is dumb and ugly, the current version does work. I regularly sync my decrepit Palm to Outlook 2003 and it hardly ever blows up.

So I can believe that Chapura might get the Outlook to iPhone connection working better than Apple, Google or anyone else. Unfortunately I'm also confident that their corresponding iPhone task app will be very ugly.

Which brings me to the sense of horror. If Chapura follows past practices, they'll create a suite of apps for the iPhone that will mirror those on Outlook. They'll be ugly but reliable. I might end up replicating what I do now on my Palm. Sync from home to native iPhone apps, and from work to Chapura's future suite.

Kafkaesque.

Moving Palm notes to Toodledo via CSV file - what worked. (Hard!)

Why doesn't Toodledo have a $#!#$!$ blog? [Update: A reader gave me the address. It's new, but it exists.]

Can they please join the century of the fruitbat?

I had to visit their web site to learn they've done something that's extremely important to me, one of their paying customers:

Toodledo :: Import To-Do List

This will read in a CSV (comma separated values) file and add the notes to your Toodledo Notebook.

You can use this to import memos from Palm Desktop.

This is what I've been waiting for.

Now I can migrate all my old Palm and Outlook Memos/Notes to Toodledo, and then from Toodledo to Appigo's Notebook.app.

Oh happy day.

Now about that Toodledo blog ...

Incidentally, since I use the double push feature to get to the phone, the "permanent" four column row of my iPhone is now a close match to my old Palm devices. From left to right: Calendar (apple), Contacts (apple), Todo (Appigo) and VoiceRecord (quick notes). I'm probably going to switch VoiceRecord to Jott. Appigo Notebook will be on a secondary screen, as a search resource.

Update: They do have a blog, see comments. Now I have to figure out why I couldn't find it!

I'm still figuring out the best way to manage the memo migration. I couldn't find any help screens from toodledo.

The export file uses this structure:

"TITLE","FOLDER","ADDED","MODIFIED","NOTE"
"Create a New Notebook","Tips & Tricks","2008-09-12","2008-09-12","...."

So that might work for import too. At the moment this data lives in 3 places, each with its own complications:

1. Outlook: best export, but Outlook Memos do not have Titles. So I'd have to parse out the first line of each memo to create a title. I might be able to do that in Access.
2. Palm Desktop: the export is weird. Just weird. I must be missing something - it doesn't look like it could be reasonably imported. Everything is together.
3. Palm handheld: I could probably install Palm desktop on our ancient iBook and sync there to the old Mac Palm Desktop, which was a descendant of a Claris product. It has great notes and export.
   
4. Carriage returns: In every case Memos have embedded carriage returns (paragraphs). CSV import will eliminate those.

So there won't be any great solutions, just less bad ones.

Update 9/29/08: Every year I tell my students that everything I know about applied health informatics I learned from my Palm. My Notes export experience was no exception. In this one case I'm not sure it would even help to buy Missing Sync for iPhone!

I tried several routes to get my Palm Notes into Toodledo. Only one worked, albeit a bit oddly. Here they are:

1. Palm Desktop/PC: I sync'd the Tungsten E|2 to Palm Desktop PC, then tried the CSV export. The result looked odd, and Toodledo's notebook import couldn't manage it at all. Just gibberish.
2. Outlook: Outlook export is pretty good, but Outlook Notes/Memos are very barebones. They don't have a separate title field, the first row of a Note is the title. So you can't export a title field.
3. Palm Desktop/OS X: This is little change from Claris Organizer, so I'll call it "Organizer". In Organizer tasks, calendar items and contacts are linked to memos. Standalone memos are called 'desktop memos'. The export tool does a good job exporting memos in a tab delimited file. Oddly enough, you can't really export ANYTHING else! So you can export tasks, but they will be missing their related Memo. (This, by the way, is why I like FileMaker Bento. I don't think anyone but me gets why that little app matters. But that's another story.)

So I installed the latest version of Palm Desktop/Organizer on my old G3 10.3.9 iBook and exported the Notes as tab delimited. I then imported them into FileMaker Pro 8.

At this point, interestingly, the notes still have embedded carriage returns (PC character set I think).

I then exported from FM Pro as CSV. I first tried UTF-16 encoding but that was gibberish to Toodledo so I tried Macintosh characters. The import worked and the carriage returns were transformed in '|' characters.

So it worked, in the end -- though I did lose the paragraphs.

I'm hoping I made a simple mistake early on, because I don't think any non-geek would ever get this working.

For these kinds of Palm migration problems I normally recommend OS X users buy Missing Sync for Palm (Palm migration is bundled with Missing Sync for iPhone too), but I don't know what the export capabilities of the Missing Sync Notebook are. I looked at the export from their Blackberry Missing Sync Notebook and it wouldn't work at all.

Incidentally, exporting Notes to Evernote was only marginally better.

In the end, notes were harder than anything else. I'd never have guessed.

PS. the Toodledo interface for Notes is only slighly better than nothing at all. On the other hand, Appigo Notebook is very nice and the search is fast.

Escape from Outlook Notes - ResophNotes, SimpleNote for iPhone and Notational Velocity

I had despaired of rescuing my notes from Outlook 2007.

I'd written hundreds over time. In the old days I used Palm products that would sync with Outlook, so I could carry them with me. Now my iPhone, after years of struggle, gives me good Outlook sync with Contacts and Calendars. Notes and Tasks, however, have been orphaned. There's no real hope of an Outlook Notes to iPhone sync solution; although a few people use Outlook Tasks almost nobody uses Outlook Notes.

I've learned to live without corporate Outlook Tasks (I schedule my time on a 3 week plan basis), but I wanted those notes. I decided they needed to live within either ToodleDo Notes/Appigo Notebook, iPhone Notes (unlikely), or the Simplenote / NotationalVelocity universe (for various reasons I've given up on Evernote).

Today I discovered ResophNotes, a Windows app that syncs with the Simplenote cloud data store. The Simplenote cloud data store, of course, also syncs with Notational velocity (open source, OS X Spotlight indexed), OS X Tinderbox, OS X Yojimbe (3rd party sync), and there's a Chrome extension for editing notes.

I exported my Outlook 2007 notes to Outlook's odd CSV format (includes line feeds!), then I imported into ResophNotes and synchronized with Simplenote's cloud store. Then on my iPhone I viewed them in the Simplenote iPhone client.

It worked better than I'd expected.

Now I can move my old (originally Palm III Notes, now ToodleDo/Appigo Notebook) personal notes to the same cloud store. I'll sign up for the $10/year premium Simplenote service. (Currently I have free version.) If Simplenote belly up the rich ecosystem and open source Notational Velocity desktop solution provides the insurance I need.

A good day.

See also:

• Gordon's Notes: The rise of software rental (aka software as service)
• Moving Palm notes to Toodledo via CSV file - what worked. (Hard!)
• Appigo Notebook is coming to the iPhone
• Kiss your Google Notebook good-bye
• Palm to iPhone migration - address book and notes (Aug 2008 - dated)
• Toodledo gets it
• Appigo and Toodledo – nasty emergent design flaw makes a mess of my iPhone Notes and Tasks
• Evernote's import/export test (updated)

Update 7/31/10: The author of ResophNotes tells me he's preparing a new version that will import CSV files -- like the ones ToodleDo Notes export creates. Incidentally, I discovered that FileMaker Pro 8 does a great job opening Outlook's CSV files with embedded line feeds. I never imagined ...

What’s wrong with iPhone OS 3.1? I think it’s the RAM.

With OS 3 I had to restart my iPhone every 2-3 weeks. If I didn’t it got painfully slow and problematic apps like Byline would crash.

With OS 3.1 and the same apps I need to restart every 3 days – or spend minutes between screen updates.

I’m not the only one to have trouble with 3.1 ..

iPhone 3.1 problems flood our tip box

In the last week, we have had a constant barrage of iPhone issues break through the lines... so much so that we feel it is our duty to inform the two of you who haven't updated what you could experience by updating to version 3.1 of the iPhone OS. This is no small problem, as you can read from the discussions on Apple's website here, here, here, and here.

The first two links are where we're getting the majority of our tips -- random shutdowns and very poor battery life. The second two, bricked phones and general slowness are still worth a mention -- even prompting our own Erica Sadun to do a live walk-through for debrickifying iPhones…

In my case it’s most likely that the phone is running out of working memory (RAM), probably due to memory leaks (applications that grab working memory and don’t release it). This is likely much less of a problem for 3GS owners, they have twice the RAM of earlier models …

… the actual specs are fairly widely known…

CPU (central processing unit):

original iPhone: ARM 11, 412 MHz
iPhone 3G: ARM 11, 412 MHz
iPhone 3GS: ARM Cortex, 600 MHz

GPU (graphics processing unit):

original iPhone: PowerVR MBX Lite
iPhone 3G: PowerVR MBX Lite
iPhone 3GS: PowerVR SGX

RAM (random access memory):

original iPhone: 128 MB
iPhone 3G: 128 MB
iPhone 3GS: 256 MB

At a glance, you’ll notice that the RAM in the 3GS doubled from past iPhone models. Twice the amount of RAM than you’ve had is never a bad thing, but the reality here is far more noteworthy… The older iPhone models have been often considered underpowered when it comes to RAM, so even though the RAM amount is technically doubled, in actual use, you’ll often be working with 4x to 10x the amount of free RAM. And that’s one major aspect that’s contributing to the overall speedier feel of the 3GS…

Anyone remember the original Mac? It shipped with two little memory to run the OS. The original iPhone situation wasn’t quite as bad, but it was close. It’s likely that the 3.1 update uses more RAM for the OS than the 3.0 release, and the change has moved 3G and original iPhone users into the red zone.

With older phones all-but-inevitable memory leaks are exhausting available RAM in a day or two of heavy use, bringing the phones to a grinding halt. The problem will only be exacerbated by newer apps that expect more available RAM.

The cruel reality is that older iPhones are coming to the end of the line. I don’t blame Apple for that – but I do blame them for releasing OS 3.1 onto phones that can’t handle it. If Apple can reduce OS memory leaks and RAM footprint they’ll redeem themselves (a bit), but clearly future OS releases won’t run on older iPhones.

Apple will either need to move to the two version model they follow on desktop machines (currently 10.5 and 10.6 are both supported, I think there may even be some 10.4 updating going on) or they’ll have to launch some kind of trade-up program for older phones.

Coming from me this is just speculation, but I’m going to install Memory Status and update my results here.

Update: Memory Status was last updated in Dec 2008, so it’s not a good bet for OS 3. I bought iSystemInfo for $1. Shortly after a restart it reports 23MB free (23/128 or 18% free). After using Byline and exiting I have 21MB free.

Update 2: When I make a phone call there's about 3-4MB free during the call. Also, it turns out I didn't need to buy iSystemInfo. I already own "AppBox Pro", a "swiss army knife" product that's subsuming free standing apps like a "Clinometer (level)", Flashlight, Ruler, System Info, Battery Life, Currency Converter, etc. AppBox Pro is giving me approximately the same results as iSystemInfo. Incidentally, AppBox Pro has the ugliest icons ever seen on an iPhone. It reminds me of my old Palm.

Update 9/17/09: The Register on "buggiest update yet". I suspect the problems mostly hit 3G users.

Work and home calendar integration – false signs of iPhone hope

I’m sorting through this warily. It’s like juggling antimatter. I have backups, don’t try this if you don’t.
I’m still striving towards the primeval goal of an integrated work/home calendar view. Palm failed this test. I thought the iPhone wasn’t even in contention, but I’m now seeing some faint signs of hope.
Here’s what I see so far:

• The iPhone more or less supports multiple calendars.
• It appears possible that an iPhone can sync differentially with multiple machines. I sync with an iMac at home, but in cautious testing I can connect and charge my iPhone at work while turning off the automatic sync option. I can differentially configure sync options for the work machine. [Update: this is not correct. After real world tests on OS X and XP I am convinced that iPhone 2.0 can truly sync with only one machine, and that machine better be a Mac. I think 10.4 may work, haven't tried 10.5. This is a regression from iPhone 1, which could sync safely with Outlook.]
  
• iTunes PC has an option to sync Outlook with a “selected calendar”
• Apple - Support - Discussions - Sync iPhone with work Outlook (Exchange ... confirms that Exchange server sync (includes some Sharepoint access!) takes over the entire phone. So while it has lots of appealing features, it’s out of the running for my purposes. In any case, Apple’s Exchange implementation is very weak: “"There are several common-- nay, fundamental-- things that you cannot do with the iPhone calendar application. You cannot:
• create a meeting request and invite other people to attend..
• create a recurring meeting unless it is repeated daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, or yearly. That's right-- no more "first Thursday of every month" or "every Monday, Wednesday, Friday" appointments…
• view suggested meeting times or free/busy times, either for your own calendar or for others'…
• move to an arbitrary date, in either the future or the past…

But how does the iPhone do selectively synchronizing via USB cable with an Outlook Exchange Server client? Will it safely sync with an Outlook appointment that has attendees and schedule exceptions without wrecking the appointment? If I could enforce one way update of the iPhone rather than true bidirectional sync I’d test this out.

I’ve opened an Apple Discussion thread on this. More updates as I learn more.

Update

• signs of hope 
• here there be bugs - and bad ones 

Update 2 

Complete despair.  The list of calendars to sync with is a list of Outlook calendars, not iPhone calendars. If you sync with the work calendar it wipes out all the home calendars. Heart breaking, really. (There is an option, btw, to force unidirectional updates from Outlook, but it must be manually set with every synchronization.)

Update 3

Just for the heck of it, I did a one way calendar sync from Outlook to the iPhone. I acknowledged my iPhone calendar would be replaced from Outlook. After about a half hour the progress-indicator free process stopped. My Outlook calendar was still intact. That was good. My iPhone calendar was empty. Nothing there.

Wow. No wonder Apple is pushing iPhone 2.1 out to developers. They really mucked this release up!

(See comments for a rumor that a combination of MobileMe and Exchange Push can produce a joint calendar on the iPhone. I recommend against trying any iPhone sync until after 2.1 is out.)

Pairing an iPhone 4 with an Apple bluetooth keyboard

For the past two years I've been looking forward to using an external keyboard with my iPhone, much as we used to use an external kb with our Palm devices. I now have an iPhone 4, so I tried pairing it with my 27" iMac keyboard (already paired with the iMac).

I followed this user guide procedure, but it didn't work at first:

1. In Settings, choose General > Bluetooth.

2. If Bluetooth isn’t already turned on, tap the Bluetooth switch.

3. Press the power button on the Apple Wireless Keyboard to turn it on.

4. On iPhone, tap the entry for the keyboard under Devices.

Once the keyboard is paired with iPhone, it connects whenever the keyboard is within range (up to 30 feet). You can tell the keyboard is connected if the onscreen keyboard doesn’t appear when you tap in a text field.

The iPhone Bluetooth settings simply showed the spinning "wheel" next to "Devices" and the phrase "Now discoverable". I think the problem was that the keyboard was already paired to my iMac. My Bluetooth peripheral experience is limited, but this seems a sensible if inevitably confusing behavior.

It took a while to get things to work. At one point the iPhone said it found a "Wireless Keyboard" but not an "Apple Wireless Keyboard". I did the following (not all necessary I'm sure):

1. Went very far away from my iMac and down a flight of stairs. In my house Bluetooth really reaches.
2. Removed batteries from kb and reinserted.
3. Followed above procedures but pressed and held the power button until it went off.
4. Pressed the power button on the kb until it started blinking.

Then the iPhone found the keyboard. I tapped the entry and was asked to enter a code on the keyboard.

They then paired.

Once the two are paired the iPhone's keyboard no longer appears when the kb is in range. I turned off Bluetooth to get it back.

To repair the kb to my iMac I again held the power button until it powered down. Then I held it until it restarted and began blinking. It then reconnected.

This was trickier than I'd expected, but now I know it works. I'll be looking for an iPhone specific bluetooth keyboard that includes a cradle to hold the iphone, an iPhone-touch-screen compatible stylus to facilitate interaction with a mounted device, a form fact that is more compact than Apple's kb, and an optional charger.

Update: A bit more on unpairing from Apple's excellent iPhone iOS4 user guide (it's on my Reader.app bookshelf in my iPhone and it's a default shortcut in Safari on new installs):

Once the keyboard is paired with iPhone, it connects whenever the keyboard is within range (up to 30 feet). You can tell the keyboard is connected if the onscreen keyboard doesn’t appear when you tap in a text field.

Switch the language when using a hardware keyboard: Press and hold the Command key, then tap the space bar to display a list of available languages. Tap the space bar again to choose a different language.

Disconnect a wireless keyboard from iPhone: Press and hold the power button on the keyboard until the green light goes off.

iPhone disconnects the keyboard when it’s out of range.

Unpair a wireless keyboard from iPhone: In Settings, choose General > Bluetooth and tap the entry for the keyboard under Devices, then tap “Forget this Device.”

Project Contacts: Integration across iPhone, Google and whatever

I was just about ready to turn my iPhone into cyber-mulch when, unexpectedly, Google saved it. Calendar nerdvana has come to my iPhone, albeit at some cost to my iPhone battery. Again, I have hope. (Yes, Andrew, I am obsessed.)

I need hope. My PIM/PDA world is still a post-Palm mess. At the moment Google is my source of Calendar Truth, my iPhone is a sync client, and iCal is not involved. I’d like to have a copy of Calendar data that I “own”, so I’ll eventually re-integrate iCal. I’m no fan of Apple’s calendaring monstrosity, so there’s not a great rush. Sometime this year though.

In any event, it’s time for a refresh of my Palm Migration Status page:

Things have changed quite a bit over the past few months. It’s been a lot harder than I ever expected, and there’s still a way to go. (I hope the Palm Pre is a smash success, if only for vicarious revenge upon Apple for MobileMess.)

Today my old Palm Classic PIM data is scattered across my iPhone, Google, OS X desktop, ToodleDo, Evernote and Jott. That has to get simpler! I’ve made a “strategic” family and personal commitment to Google, so if/when they integrate their inadequate Tasks with Google Calendar (here’s how to do it) I’ll drop ToodleDo from the mix.

I could drop Jott fairly easily as well, and Evernote is improving nicely, so for now my focus is Contacts. This isn’t as critical as Calendar integration, but I’d sure like to get all my work and home Contacts on my phone.

Unfortunately, Contacts are hard, much harder than Appointments, Notes, Tasks, etc. (Ok, so Appointments have their own special non-technical problems too.)

There are a lot of variables in the mix, from endpoints to transition tools. Gmail Contacts, Google Apps domain shared contacts, Google Contacts API and extended Contact Kind, OS X Address Book [1] OS X Address Book Google Sync [2], OS X Address Book Exchange Sync [3], iPhone Contacts.app, Microsoft Exchange Server, ActiveSync, SpanningSync, FileMaker Pro, Bento, MobileMe, gSyncIt, iTunes Google sync, iTunes Address Book Sync, Google iPhone Sync, vCal, hCard, GData, OpenSocial, Windows Live, Facebook and Outlook among others. (Yes, several others.)

Bad enough, but “Contact” information is a big part of vendor lock-in strategy. Yes, Data Lock, big time. We’re talking Google, Microsoft and FaceBook fighting over ownership of contact relationship networks, and everyone fighting with banks, Amazon and the phone companies for identity ownership.

Complexity, corporate combat, rapidly shifting implementations, vendors focused until recently on Calendaring …

Yes, this one is the big Kahuna. Big enough that, for this project, I’ve created a new Gordon’s Tech Label of “Contacts” to help me as I work through all the options.

In the meantime, there’s one big bit of good news. Contacts don’t change as much as Calendaring events. I can get by with manual export/import for quite some time.

In the meanwhile, I’ll be experimenting carefully. Follow the Contacts thread forward to learn what I learn …

[1] OS X iCal is miserable, but OS X "Address Book" isn't all bad. If Bento weren't so crummy I'd put the OS X "Address Book" plus Bento at the core of my strategy.

[2] Update: Since my original posting, I discovered through this thread that OS X 10.5 Address Book has its own options to synchronize with Exchange, Google, and Yahoo -- in addition to the Phone to Google synchronization built into iTunes/OS X (available for 10.4 and 10.5). The mind boggles. So one could synchronize the OS X Address Book with Google Contacts directly, or through Google's Active Sync service ...

Update 5/19/09: Major progress - I have work and home integrated and options for Google too. The cost is I may have to subscribe to MobileMe.

The Google Voice web app on my iPhone

It's not a true substitute for the iPhone app that Apple killed at the start of the Google-Apple wars, or even for the third party GV apps we've lost, but it's a long delayed good replacement for the initial GV web app (see also):

Google Voice Blog: Google Voice for iPhone and Palm WebOS

Today we are launching a new Google Voice mobile web app for iPhone OS 3.0 and higher and Palm Web OS devices, harnessing the power of HTML5...

In addition to letting you access a streamlined version of your Google Voice inbox, the new web app also lets you display your Google Voice number as the outbound caller ID (so return calls come back to your Google Voice number), send and receive text messages for free, and place international calls at Google Voice's low rates.

To get started, visit m.google.com/voice in your mobile browser. For quick access, don't forget to create a shortcut to this URL on your home screen or Palm Launcher...

There are many limitations of this web app, such as:

1. startup lag: I hope it's less laggy than the current web app, but still can have long delays compared to a phone app.
2. authentication: The web apps don't store my google credentials. Every couple of weeks Google makes me re-enter them -- typically while I'm very busy doing something else. This sucks. My Google password is not trivial to enter.
3. I'm not sure whether displaying my GV number as outbound caller ID is a feature or a bug. I think it's a feature. The way the phone makes calls differs from the old web app.
4. no call or SMS notifications: You can't really use this for incoming calls or SMS because there's no notification function if the web app isn't running. This isn't so bad for me since I don't use GV this way, but I might use the number more if I could receive incoming calls! I'd love to use it for SMS and get rid of my SMS bill!
5. no integration with phone contacts. There's also no way I can see to edit my Google contacts information on the phone.
6. you can't specify which start screen to use
7. The configuration UI for "caller ID" is unclear whether this is for outbound or inbound calls.

The good news is

1. In many operations it feels a lot faster than the previous web app.
2. If you view a contact and save the web page shortcut to the phone screen you get a quick way to call that person, saving several screen refreshes.
3. There might be a way to use this to reduce my SMS costs. I'll report back on this.

It's enough of an improvement that I may have to go back and look again at a way to integrate my Google Contacts with iPhone/OS X Address Book.

See also:

• Calling from Montreal to St. Paul using Google Voice
• Google GrandCentral (Voice) has been saving me $80 a month
• No Google Voice for iPhone? AT&T’s deal with the Devil …
• The Apple-Google War: The Battle of Google Voice
• iPhone trouble: Apple rejects Google Latitude, possibly Google Voice
• My Google Voice experience: mobile interface a bit raw
• The (historic) Battle of Google Voice - Enter the FCC
• Project Contacts: Integration across iPhone, Google and whatever
• Project Contacts: Now mixing Outlook/Exchange, PST file, Outlook/Home, MobileMe Sync, OS X Address Book and the iPhone
• Project Contacts: iPhone 3.0 means I hack away at Google Contacts, and discover another rough spot

Update 1/26/10: Uh-oh. I'm getting SMS notifications on my phone for every SMS message sent to Google Voice -- and I pay 20 cents apiece for those!! No, it's SMS notifications for voice mails, even though I had that disabled in my Google Voice settings. It's a bug, but probably not new. There's no way to report this bug to Google, their support service problem classification doesn't include "other" and this isn't one they've classified.
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Why the iPhone doesn't do tasks: a theory

Why doesn't the iPhone have the capabilities built into the @1990 PalmPilot? Why can't it do tasks or notes properly? These core functions are the among the demands I list on my non-tech blog:

Gordon's Notes: iPhone: my demands:

... Tasks at least comparable to the 1994 PalmPilot tasks.

Synchronization with Outlook at least comparable to the modern Palm OS (in other words, flawed, but useable). A 256 character limit on contact comments is not acceptable...

My working hypothesis has been that Apple hates me, but maybe I'm taking this a bit personally. Another theory is that the Apple has decided this stuff all has to migrate to the net and they've decided to speed up the process by eliminating all alternatives.

A third explanation occurred to me, and a bit of research supports it. Scott Mace, who has an appropriately despairing blog about calendar sharing and synchronization, mentions that the iPhone's calendar synchronization with Outlook is very weak. That's a clue.

Outlook is a the 8,000 pound Mastodon in the world of calendars, tasks, and contacts. It's the immovable object, and it's not simple to synchronize with. Outlook has a very complex and kludgy way of implementing these core concepts, and Microsoft leveraged that complexity to destroy Palm. Apple may have a few Palm veterans in Cupertino, people who are warning them about what it means to try to manage tasks, appointments, and contacts on Microsoft's turf.

Most iPhones will sync with XP and Vista machines, and eventually with Outlook 2007. If Apple wants this to work half-decently (meaning better than Palm), then the iPhone has to approach contacts, tasks, and appointments in a way that's a reasonable match to a subset of Outlook functionality (the most used fields, for example). If the iPhone does this, then OS X must to.

Problem is, Apple has iCal and the (very peculiar) Address Book on OS X, and they're nothing like Outlook. So Apple needs new versions of iCal and the Address book, but that's not going to happen on 10.4. That kind of change can only come with 10.5, perhaps with a new approach to synchronization.

So my latest tortured theory predicts that Apple won't add new PDA/PIM functionality to the iPhone before OS X 10.5 ships (supposedly in October, though I doubt it will be stable before April). If I'm write we'll see something @ Jan 2008.