What's on My iPhone

It's been awhile since I've written about applications on the iPhone. The last time I discussed a number of jailbreak apps that I had tried out or used heavily. However, since upgrading to the iPhone 3G, I have been running strictly legit apps. (I still have jailbroken apps on my original iPhone, but nothing really impressive.)

So what do I have on my iPhone? Here goes:

Page One/Line One:
- SMS
- Calendar
- Photos
- Camera
All standard Apple apps and in their original locations.

Page One/Line Two:
- YouTube
- Bloomberg
- Maps
- Weather
YouTube and Maps are the standard Apple apps. I have substituted the Bloomberg app for the standard Apple Stocks app because it is so much better; stores and provides more information; and is free. I don't use Apple's Stocks application. Weather is a Safari shortcut for the Weather Underground site (http://i.wund.com) and I have it set to my local weather. Weather Underground provides in-depth seven-day forecasts as well as local weather radar on the same page. I don't use Apple's Weather app.

Page One/Line Three:
- Mobile News
- Calculator
- Evernote
- Reader
Only the Calculator is an original Apple app. I have an HP-21-like financial calculator on the phone also, but find the Apple Calculator simple and reliable for most day-to-day uses. Mobile News is the Associated Press' free news application and I find it simple, and provides a great overview of world, US, political, and business news. While I still use Apple's notes app, it has been relegated to page two. Evernote is a free application that provides easy notetaking, allows voice recording, allows snapshot notes, and syncs all these in the cloud. Evernote also has Web access as well as an app that runs on the Mac. The result is information can be accessed virtually anywhere (unlike Apple's Notes app). Finally, Reader is a Safari shortcut to Google's iPhone-optimized reader page. This fills the bill for information not provided by Mobile News.

Page One/Line Four:
- Contacts
- Settings
- Twitterific
- Jott
Contacts and Setting are the standard Apple apps. Twitterific is my primary Twitter client and is used quite often. Jott is my preferred ToDo list application because it allows voice transcription of notes and ToDos. This makes it great when driving and something comes to mind that I wamt to remember.

The Dock:
- Phone
- Mail
- Safari
- iPod
These are all standard iPhone apps and in their original position.

With a few exceptions, these are the workhorse applications I use. I have a total of nine pages of apps and shortcuts, some used quite often and others that are there if I need them. Others of note include:

- 1Password for keeping track of various user IDs, passwords, and related Web site addresses.

- AppStore for keeping applications updated and installing new ones.

-AirSharing for keeping various Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and PDF files that
I need to reference on the iPhone.

- Wikipanion for looking up those quick items that don't require an in-depth Google search. It's a free app.

- Google Search with the voice recognition capability. I find that I use this app a lot more since they added the voice recognition.

- New York Times application. This fills the holes left by Mobile News and Google Reader, but the application is prone to frequent crashes.

- SportsTap, a comprehensive sports tracking application.

- iBlogger which I use to write most of my blog entries. I paid for this application and it has been worth every penny.

- i.TV for tracking what's on TV as well as finding what's playing at local theatres.

There are other applications that I use from time to time, but not nearly as frequently as the ones mentioned. I will cover some of them at a later time.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

iPhone Sync Problems on Windows

Has anyone had the problem of duplicate calendar items when syncing with Windows? In have noticed the problem several times. It is definitely seen when a new version of iTunes is installed. My guess is the preferences get messed-up somehow. However, even when the preferences are reset correctly, the problem persists.

When I sync, I will get an error message that I have conflicting entries and iTunes then wants to take me through a process to resolve the conflicts. However, regardless of whether I have Outlook overlay iPhone or iPhone overlay Outlook, I end up with "phantom" additional entries on the iPhone Calendar application. The usual situation is when I have changed the title of an appointment by adding "DONE" at the front (so I keep a record of meetings I have actually attended), I will end up with a conflict message. When the message is resolved--overlaying either way--I will end up with the original appointment and the "DONE" appointment. If I then delete the incorrect appointment, the next time I sync, I will get the conflict again and the loop repeats.

I have also turned off syncing with Outlook's calendar and this does not seem to have an effect. I still get the conflicts and the duplicate issue.

I mention this because when you only have a few week's information in Calendar, it is no big deal. Having information dating back to July becomes a very big deal and causes a major drop in productivity.

iPhone: Two Month Check-up--Part V

In my last post, I finished up the second row applications by giving my impressions of the Maps and Weather capabilities. This post will be concerned with the applications on the third row: Clock, Calculator, and Notes (the Settings will be covered in a separate post).

Clock: The clock application does a good job for which it is intended. I found it easy to add cities as long as the city is one listed in the built-in list. However, a nice to have would be the ability to look up virtually any city (or town) in the world using the Internet (or Maps) and be able to set up a clock for it. That said, there is a robust choice of locations to choose from that are built-in.

Adding a clock is easy. When there are multiple clocks, the user can use the edit button to rearrange the order of cities. Rearranging the order is easy. In the edit mode, simple tap with the finger, drag,and place in the order you want. Apple, why don't you make this capability available in all of your applications? It just doesn't make sense.

The format of the clocks are easy to read with analog on the left and digital on the right. All-in-all a good application. A few tweaks and it could be a great application.

Calculator: There is not a lot to say about this application. It's your basic calculator with a memory function. Since I often have the need to calculate in the billions, it has limited use for me. To make this a must have application, I would like to see a larger display register (say 100 billion?), and at a minimum basic financial functions. To be an appealing application for students, a square root function is a must. If Apple really wants to make this a differentiator, supply a menu where you can choose the type of calculator: basic, financial, scientific, trig, electronics, hex/octal, time, and conversions. Apple, make us want to use it.

With that said, the buttons are large enough and are easy to manipulate. It just doesn't do enough.

Notes: As you will see, I tend to be a little demanding of the Notes application simply because there are no alternatives on the device (I suppose you could use email, but as you will see in a future post, it shares most of the same shortcomings). For capturing brief thoughts, snippets of information, lists, and similar items, Notes is more than adequate. The auto-correction feature improves typing speed and output quality. However, it doesn't catch everything and a separate spell-check function would be a great plus. Similarly, typing with the device vertical almost forces the user to one finger entry as the keyboard is small. Two fingers are possible if you position the iPhone horizontally, but that capability is not available in the Notes application. Apple, enable landscape mode for this application so the user has access to a larger keyboard suitable for true two-finger manipulation.

My list of notes is getting quite large. It would be nice to have some type of organization capability such as folders to categorize, store, and retrieve notes. As the title is too long and the first words are the same (as in the title of these posts), it is difficult to differentiate among Notes without opening them. Again, if the application worked in the horizontal or landscape mode, longer titles would show in the index list.

Hopefully, at some point Apple will provide a simple word processor for the iPhone. Until then, the ability to upload a note to an application such as Google Docs & Spreadsheets or Zoho and then be able to manipulate the document in those Web-based applications would be a giant plus. The problem with Web-based applications is that disconnected from the Internet (such as on an airline flight), the applications do not work. If Notes were beefed-up with basic formatting and spell-check, it could serve as a good draft application if enabled to easily interface with a Web-based application. However, even if Notes had this capability, there is an issue that would still have to be addressed in the Safari browser. That will be discussed in a future post.

In my upcoming posts, I'll start tackling the bottom row applications-- Phone, Mail, Safari, & iPod. In the meantime, if you have additional comments or suggestions for Apple, please let me know.

Walter W. Casey, Ph.D.
Sent from my iPhone