iPhone 4.0 My thoughts....

I have a few thoughts about the upgrade. First of all, I do want to upgrade my phone due to the low ram and the ridiculous quantity of apps that I have collected over the past year. Many of them free, but with some apps priced at 0.99 and 1.99, the ecosystem is a "suckers paradise." I figure that Apple is making millions of dollars from this "Crack Garden." And when the software is done right, you cannot complain. You come running back for more. Believe me, no one is exempt from this.

I had planned on handing over my current 3G phone to my wife, but I think that she would want multitasking and video recording and, well, you get the point. She thought about giving it to the kids, but I think that's a big mistake, until she added "to use as an emergency phone. It's only $6.99 per month to add a line." Gosh, even AT&T is in on this "suckers paradise." So it is that if the pricing is favorable (and I mean really favorable, because I am a miser when it comes to these things), we will have two new iPhones (? iPhone HD, iPhone 4.0? iPhone 4G?), whatever they decide to call it.

For me, the high points of this new update are many, but none more so than # 1 and # 2. I have been waiting for #1 forever. So, without further ado, here's my opinion on yesterday's preview:

1. Multiple Exchange Accounts.

You know, I think Steve actually reads his emails, the blogs and reviews. I actually sent him two personal emails on this subject. Not expecting to receive an answer, I saw this voiced on many other boards. The iPhone has replaced all of my email reading tasks. I am no longer tied to a desk to read my messages. When I had a Palm, the actual idea of writing a response back with a stylus nauseated me. Now, I can even dictate the response back without problems.
But really, what was important to me was this. I never ever wanted to share my private family life with the company that I work for. Don't get me wrong. I love the company that I work for. They treat me well, but sharing the fact that I have to go to my kids' basketball game or show up at the PTA or go to my Mother's house for dinner just didn't feel right. Worse! Keeping two separate calendars was a real pain. Although I have not seen the implementation as of yet, I am hoping that we will be able to show both calendars superimposed. Bravo on this one.

2. Local Alerts.

Read my take on this in the previous post. But this should have been available in 2007. I mean calling this a new feature is a bit embarrassing.

3. Multitasking.

A lot has been written about this, but I think that the furor has been overblown a little. I really think that multitasking comes in a few flavors, but most are battery draining and performance lugs as noted on both the new Android devices and ALL Windows Mobile devices. For me, I have rarely ever wanted to use two apps at once. But there has always been the one exception: The Calculator. Although I am happy with Multitasking, so that we can use the calculator, I would have much rather have the OS-X approach to this which was to use DASHBOARD. For those of you who don't use a Mac, Dashboard in my opinion was the single most advanced feature that turned many people - myself and my family included- into Mac lovers. It utilized widgets that were installed into the Dashboard system and upon pressing the middle button on the mouse, overlayed a series of widgets - ie. Weather, calculator, sometimes games, time, and a host of downloadable widgets - which did not interfere with whatever it was that you had on the screen. With another click or hitting escape, the overlay disappeared and you had your original display. It was almost as if you were running two separate entities in one. I always thought that this would be transferred to the iPhone, but it has not been. Personally, I would prefer the widget approach, particularly for the Calculator and the Calendar. Nevertheless, I can't argue with the Multitasking approach detailed yesterday.

I guess the one question that keeps popping up is are we really seeing multitasking? It would appear that whatever is running in the background, actually isn't running, but suspended. I have always thought about the Unix approach, which is a program doing a calculation, say 1+1=2,+1=3,+1..... while in another window you're doing something else, but upon return, you see something like 4096+1=4097,+1...., instead it looks like you'll see: 3+1=4,+1=5...., Pause, return 5+1=6,+1=7,+1. But they did show Skype working in the background. So I am not sure how this works. Is it suspended or is it active in the background? I really didn't understand Scott Forstall's explanation of this. I'm sure that developers will bring this up later.


4. CalDAv invitations.

Another Duh moment! This is another one of those things that, if it is what I think it is, should have been in the OS a long time ago. How many times have you gotten an invitation or an appointment in an email? In windows, you can click on the appointment and it sends it to Outlook and puts it in the calendar. This is one of those things that should have been available from at least the second iteration of the phone. But kudos to Apple for listening again. I really think that they listen attentively.


Can you believe it? These are the top 4 things that I am excited about with the iPhone. Yes, I like the bookstore, but I've got Amazon's Kindle on my iPhone already and it's doing a fine job, not to mention Stanza, which does a great job for books I've had from my Palm days. There is a lot to like about this update and luckily my contract is up in a few months so upgrading - if the price is right - will be a good thing.


LDD.


Addendum:

Did anyone see the SDK4 picture below? It was presented during the presentation. It was really glossed over, but I found a few interesting things in the diagram, mainly in the almost blurred tiny settings. See what you think about these:

1. iPod remote control accessories.

A-hem? What in the world? Are we talking about IR remotes, WiFi remotes? It's just a blurb, but it looks really interesting. Could it compete with Logitech's Harmony or is Logitech a part of this?


2. Embed PDF metadata.

I have no idea what this would be used for. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Is it possible to label all of my journals with metadata for specific storage? Is it a DRM feature (not so nice if it is)?


3. In-App SMS.

Sounds delightful.


4. ?Dock based orientation.

I think that is already in place, but I could be wrong.


5. Date Data Detectors.

Absolutely wonderful and I would presume goes in place with the CalDAV explained above.


6. Address Data Detectors.

What a welcome addition. Less typing. No copy and pasting. Wonderful addition.


7. Tuesday 17.

Okay, this one is a bit of a stretch. But in the box of goodies, there's a date that shows Tuesday 17th. Tuesday is a popular day for Apple. A lot of newly released products come out on that day, but granted I am falling into the Distortion Field again - didn't I tell you, no one is immune? - so, I got to thinking, if it was good enough for the Beatles to play these sorts of games, why not Apple? Tuesday 17th, falls in August. Could we see the new iPhone or iPod Touch or iMac or whatever, on Tuesday, August 17th? I don't really think that this was a random picture. But maybe it is. In medicine we call these zebras, when you hear the clickety clack of a 4 - legged creature wearing horse shoes walking outside your window. Most of the times it's obvious, it's just a horse, but there's always someone who thinks it might be a Zebra. And today that's me :):).


LDD.

Local Alerts....New Feature? Say What?

Okay, so I saw the Apple presentation yesterday. I was totally impressed by the offerings. I could live without the iAds, but the fact that they are for free apps made me know that I could opt out if I wanted to. But what struck me senseless was the Local Alerts feature.

I admit that I have become ensconced in the world of Apple over the past two years. I thought long and hard before jumping ship from the Palm platform to the iPhone. But I have never looked back. But there was always something gnawing at me on many occasions: "My Palm could do that." I found myself saying that a lot when several things were not so readily available on the iPhone. Nothing was more glaring than Local Alerts!

Local Alerts were the mainstay for almost all of the important apps that I had on the Lifedrive. My pregnancy listing made in Smartlistogo would send out signals on dates that were important, along with color changes of names for dates that needed to be addressed. It was truly basic.

What nailed me during the presentation was that this was being presented as a New Feature! Something that we can now use as developers. I was stupified! This should have been a basic feature from day one.

For me this is great news. I constantly use Appigo's TODO program which must send its alerts through Apple before it comes back down to my phone. It's not bad, but fails in time sensitive conditions. Here are a few examples:

A. Write letter for A. Shobedoo. Must be done by April 1st.
Date entered: March 2nd.
Time to remind: March 27th.
Actual: March 27th (0900).

Analysis: Not a problem. I was reminded to finish the letter in a timely fashion.

B. Call for telephone deposition for L&I claim for Ms. T. on April 2nd at 4 pm.
Date entered: April 1st.
Time to remind: April 2nd at 3:30 pm.
Actual: April 2nd at 3:45 pm.

Analysis: Big Problem Here! I have always set my presets 15-20 minutes ahead of time
in case I am running behind. This one was set 30 minutes ahead of time and still it was
received 15 minutes late. Server issues?


If you have ever wondered why you would want a local alert, the above two scenarios should answer that question. I was always baffled by the fact that there was no local alert mechanism with the exception of the Calendar. Server issues are major. Apple has to be delivering thousands, if not millions of alerts each day. There is no chance that it can deliver these things on time, every time. My suspicion is that they have woken up and delivered so-called Local Alerts to reduce liability issues. In a program like TODO, if the alerts were about giving yourself Insulin Shots or having some life-saving medication being delivered at a specific time, down-time server issues could lead to potential law suits from developers and customers alike.

It is really about time that this service was offered. It really should have been done a long time ago. I am very happy about this, because now it means that I can write a program for OB that delivers timely reminders for my pregnant patients, ie. Mrs. J needs her glucola test this week or we need to do an ultrasound this week for Mrs. P. The other beauty of this is that since my iPhone has password protection and since Handbase has encryption, I can now use real names on my device. The idea of sending this alert to a 3rd party was not in concert with HIPAA.

This move now also solidifies my move to the Apple ecosystem as a viable alternative to Palm.


LDD.

Why the Google "i-link" will be a good thing and tinkering with OS X?

I recently had the opportunity to try out the iMac and I must say that I have been quite impressed by the operating system. It reminds me of the old Unix days and my slight delving into Linux. This system is so flawless and so natural that I had to pinch myself several times to make sure that I wasn't dreaming. It was so unobtrusive.

So, one of the things that I had to do with this great device was to find a spare Lifedrive hanging around - a friend just happened to have one that he hated, but would not give up - therefore sitting on a shelf gathering dust. So I thought, wouldn't it be great to see how this device works with The Precious.

Well, my friend told me that there was no need for the Palm Desktop software for the Mac, simply because it was just useless ( I hinted that he may actually like his Lifedrive a bit more if he followed the directions of Palm once in a while). He preferred to use a program called i-sync that comes standard with the iMac. Well, the program itself was quite nice. It boasted immediate synchronization with a number of phones, including my Nokia. Access via bluetooth or USB was very simple and it appeared to link the iCal (the calendar program on the mac) quite nicely, not to mention the address book.

Mac's iCal
Absolutely amazing calendar program

So, would it work on the Lifedrive? Well, I did the set up on the imac, introducing the machine to the Lifedrive and it appeared to recognize it without problems.

I then loaded up my friends Lifedrive with a number of addresses and a few calendar dates. He already had a full cache of addresses, appointments etc. in his iCal and address book in the mac. So the sync process would be easy to see.

The results unfortunately were not so stellar. Yes, I was amazed that the program actually worked with the Lifedrive. Essentially, any innovative program that works with the Lifedrive is cause for celebration. However there were a number of problems.

Google Calendar
Notice the similarities with Apple's iCal

First, the iCal format is essentially the same as Google's format. You can place several calendars together to form one calendar, with color codes to separate individual appointments. For example, if Jill has a calendar with her appointments and Sam has a calendar with his appointments, you can superimpose the two or separate them with the click of a button. The result on the Palm is no separation of the meetings. So Jill's meetings coincide with Sam's. In addition, the contacts in the address folder are under the title "other," instead of being separated into their respected folders. The system broke down a few times during the syncing process, hanging for a while. Thus, I would say that this was extremely unreliable and not the best for the Lifedrive. But for the Nokia, a totally different kettle of fish.

Now, there is possibly a solution with another Mac program called Missing Sync, but I have not tried this out yet. It is said to be a bit more stable and more intuitive when it comes to separating Contacts and iCal synchronicity.

For what it's worth, I understand that another solution may be around the corner. See the title for further information. This solution would probably be the answer to many Mac owners who have had trouble using the Palm with the iMac and Palms' less than adequate support for the Mac, choosing to stay the Windows route.

Windows Vista Calendar
Notice the resemblance to Google and Mac's iCal

However, even Palm may run into trouble at the end of the month when Vista comes out. Why? Well, if you take a look at the beta version or corporate edition of Windows Vista, you will notice a very interesting thing. The entire calendar program resembles iCal !!!! In addition, the website touts the iCal protocol interoperability (" Using Windows Calendar, you can subscribe to calendars hosted on websites in the .iCalendar format, and then view those calendars alongside your own..."). Thus, a solution for multiple calendars must be found by Palm in their next rendition of Garnet. It is also the reason why the company that has chosen to follow Apple's way of doing Calendars -Google- (Open source people harken that I pay homage to you first - since the Mac and now Windows players emulated your original designs), may end up leading the calendar wars and leaving everyone in the dust. It would appear that they have found a way to synchronize all of the devices, across the board, including Palm and Windows Mobile, using the iCal and open Calendar format. We know that it can be done, because CompanionLink Software appeared to be one of the first commercial companies to do this.

There are others working on this project, albeit more quietly. One programmer who was at one time posting on PalmAddicts (Shawn Grimes) had a project named Syncplicity (Syncplicity.com), but apparently ran into problems with this. His last post on his web site was June 13, 2006 on the subject. Obviously, we all applaud Open source projects, but I think that everyone is awaiting the Google conduit. It won't answer all of the Apple questions, but it should benefit both Mac OS X and Vista owners. One problem for Mac owners remains the dearth of software compatible with Mac for transferring to the Lifedrive directly. But you need to have back up software in the event that everything crashes. This is particularly true for mission critical applications -- Splash ID, OB and Internal Medicine textbooks, ie. The Washington Manual.

But the most important non-third party application is the calendar. It is what Palms do! The idea of being able to synchronize this with any computer or through the air is mind boggling and makes this an essential piece of software. I do not derive inspiration for appointments or calendar events while sitting in front of my computer. It is usually when sitting in front of another computer, walking down a hallway, conversing with someone else or just opening my Lifedrive. This is a conduit that must happen and I am happy to say that we are not too far from its final release.


LDD.

Addendum: No Lifedrives were harmed during the writing of this article :).


Images and quotes taken from Google.com, Apple.com, Microsoft.com and