It's a bit weird, to put it mildly, that Apple's iPhone Web apps site doesn't have an iPhone friendly version.
Makes you wonder how seriously they really ever were about the once celebrated Web apps.
The list is actually pretty interesting. For example: Apple - Web apps - Productivity, including 43 Actions,
I think the best way to install these is to browse the list from Safari/Desktop (on your iPhone sync machine), bookmark those you want to try, then sync to iPhone Safari.
From iPhone Safari you can turn these into standalone icons as desired.
Tuesday, August 05, 2008
Saving grace of the iPhone – Apple updates it
I’ve bitched a fair bit about my iPhone.
I may not have recently mentioned that it’s actually working pretty well for me. I haven’t seen the crashes and instability many users experience. Contacts is slow, but not unbearably slow. The battery lasts about as long as my prior non-smartphone 3G Nokia; I just charge nightly or at the office via USB. I don’t miss voice dial – it’s never worked for me.
I have expected problems with things I knew were missing when I bought the phone: tasks, notes, editing, search. The biggest nasty surprises have been iTunes Outlook synchronization (unsafe at any speed), Apple’s MobileMe calendar limitations (missing subscription features, missing feed and CalDAV support), the loss of Firewire charging, and the usual anxiety about how much power Apple will give developers to work around Apple’s lowest-common-denominator approach.
Still, it’s not like the alternatives are very good. This AppleInsider post reminds us how very bad the US smartphone marketplace has been …
AppleInsider | Inside iPhone 2.0: iPhone OS vs. other mobile platforms
… This rapid pacing of Apple's free updates is unheard of on competing smartphone platforms. The Palm OS seemingly hasn't been updated since dinosaurs roamed the earth…
The Symbian partnership has delivered four incremental updates to Symbian 9.0 since 2004, roughly one per year. These updates are often related to new hardware, and in many cases owners of Symbian phones simply can't upgrade to whatever the latest official version is.
RIM's BlackBerry OS update page similarly warns, "If you did not purchase BlackBerry software or smartphones directly from Research In Motion (RIM), please contact your service provider to determine if the software distributed by RIM is authorized for use with your smartphone." That highlights why Apple chose to only market the iPhone through mobile partners that would agree to allow Apple itself to deliver updates and support for all of its phones worldwide. …
When Microsoft shipped Windows Mobile 5.0 in 2005, the update wouldn't even run on most existing WinCE phones because it required new hardware support for its persistent RAM architecture change. The following release of Windows Mobile 6.0 didn't ship until two years later in 2007, and Windows Mobile 6.1, a relatively minor update, took more than another year to shake loose from the bowels of Microsoft. Even after a Windows Mobile release "ships," owners of specific models might have to wait for many months before their mobile provider or software vendor allows them to install it, if they ever choose to do so.
Despite now being a decade old, the WinCE foundation of Windows Mobile is also still regarded as unstable, riddled with bugs, and poorly architected, with a horrific user interface, clumsy process management, and development tools that are a simple regurgitation of the archaic Win32 desktop API, lacking much optimization for mobile development…
Apple, at least, releases updates for all phones from one central service. That’s a saving grace.
AppleInsider's set of iPhone reviews
Apple Insider has a series of in depth iPhone reviews running. For example: Inside iPhone 2.0: the new iPhone 3G Software [Page 3].
It's excellent not only as a critique of what's missing, but also as a guide to users. For example, the double tap page up/down feature on Safari, holding the period in Mail.app to see domain suffixes, geotag display in 10.5 preview, etc.
It's excellent not only as a critique of what's missing, but also as a guide to users. For example, the double tap page up/down feature on Safari, holding the period in Mail.app to see domain suffixes, geotag display in 10.5 preview, etc.
Spanning Sync tells us what's wrong with Google's free CalDAV sync
Google's free CalDAV sync with iCal would seem to be a severe challenge to non-ad-supported commercial products like Spanning Sync and BusySync.
In reality I know from past experience that Google is perfectly capable of screwing up synchronization time and again, and that they don't admit their problems.
So it's good to see Spanning Sync fighting back with a point-by-point attack on Google's sync solution. For example:
I think what most of us want is synchronization between the iPhone calendar app and Google Calendar; we could leave iCal out of the picture. Unfortunately it's not clear if Apple will allow such an app to be deployed.
Please Google Android, Palm Centro and Microsoft ... be successful. We iPhone users need your competition. In the meantime, I'm thinking of trying BusySync and Spanning Sync again.
In reality I know from past experience that Google is perfectly capable of screwing up synchronization time and again, and that they don't admit their problems.
So it's good to see Spanning Sync fighting back with a point-by-point attack on Google's sync solution. For example:
Spanning Sync Blog: Google's "Appreciated Gesture" Drives Record Sales of Spanning Sync:Ok, that's a wee bit of a limitation! I didn't read that anywhere else, but I believe it. I'm not willing to experiment with CalDAV sync, I really don't trust Google's ability to do this stuff.
... Calendars synchronized using CalDAV become read-only on iPhone. One of our biggest customers is in the process of rolling out 700 iPhones and 200 iPod touches. This lack of iPhone compatibility makes Google's CalDAV solution a non-starter for them, and for anyone else looking for bidirectional sync between iPhone and Google Calendar."
I think what most of us want is synchronization between the iPhone calendar app and Google Calendar; we could leave iCal out of the picture. Unfortunately it's not clear if Apple will allow such an app to be deployed.
Please Google Android, Palm Centro and Microsoft ... be successful. We iPhone users need your competition. In the meantime, I'm thinking of trying BusySync and Spanning Sync again.
Monday, August 04, 2008
Mac OS X 10.4: Installing classic from a 10..2 software restore disk
Say you have a PPC machine with 10.4 and you need to reinstall Classic from 10.2 or 10.3.
To do this you'll need to follow the directions in the above link, but it turns out they no longer work for 10.2 disks.
If you have 10.2 disks, there's an updated version of the Software Restore application that you need to download from Apple:
To do this you'll need to follow the directions in the above link, but it turns out they no longer work for 10.2 disks.
If you have 10.2 disks, there's an updated version of the Software Restore application that you need to download from Apple:
Mac OS X 10.4: Restoring applications from a Mac OS X 10.2 Software Restore disc
...If you have Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger already installed and you want to restore your Mac OS X 10.2.x computer-specific software, you can use the version of Software Restore available below...
Sunday, August 03, 2008
FMTouch: FileMaker on the iPhone
If it suppored encryption, this would help a great deal with my Palm to iPhone migration. It's "pending approval" at the Apple store:
I'm disappointed Apple hasn't resuscitated the defunct FM Mobile for their own platform.
FMTouchThey don't have encryption as a feature, so I've send in a request.
... FMTouch is a powerful application that enables you to use FileMaker Pro on your Apple iPhone or iTouch.
FMTouch allows you to take advantage of the relational data structure that makes FileMaker so powerful.
Simply select the database you would like to sync to the iPhone, use our sync technology, and within seconds you can have your FileMaker database working on your iPhone or iTouch.
FMWebschool to release limited Advanced version of FMTouch July 28, 2008.
FMWebschool will release 50 copies of FMTouch Developer editions to FBA and TechTalk members.
I'm disappointed Apple hasn't resuscitated the defunct FM Mobile for their own platform.
Synthesis iPhone SyncML Client: Sync iPhone Cal with gCal?
The Synthesis SyncML client for iPhone is available on the App store.
So this doesn't help with my real interest -- direct sync from the iPhone calendar app to Google Calendar.
More interestingly, the Synthesis team tells us that the Apple SDK limits what SyncML can do:
Synthesis AG - SyncML Client for iPhone and iPod TouchUnfortunately gCal is not on the list, Goolge just added CalDAV support, but not SyncML (see Palm, 2005 and Wikipedia CalDAV -- I wonder if the SyncML spec has too many issues).
Synthesis SyncML Client for iPhone/iPod Touch OS brings SyncML standard based data synchronisation to iPhone OS X based devices.
This allows mobile over-the-air (OTA) data synchronisation with any compliant SyncML server (such as Oracle Collaboration Suite, goosync.com, consolidate.at, Open-Xchange, MDaemon, eGroupware, ZYB, mobical, DeskNow, ScheduleWorld, neopim.com and many more)...
So this doesn't help with my real interest -- direct sync from the iPhone calendar app to Google Calendar.
More interestingly, the Synthesis team tells us that the Apple SDK limits what SyncML can do:
... At this time, Synthesis SyncML Client for iPhone is offered as a free preview in the App Store synchronizing the Addressbook. Current restrictions in Apple's SDK for the iPhone OS do not allow accessing calendar, notes or emails...As is usual with iPhone SDK limitations, we don't know if this will be remedied with time or whether Apple prefers to keep the competition at bay.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)