Welcome to the hottest new game show: "Will Tom Keep His New iPhone?"
The game began yesterday with the purchase of the new phone, and here's the way the game is played: Tom has 30 days to decide whether his iPhone stays in his pocket.
So far, it's not looking likely. Tom acknowledges its a pretty toy--a gorgeous toy--but he's lost so much by setting aside his Treo.
The contestant in "Will Tom Keep His New iPhone" lives by his to-list and has an extensive collection of notes. Both his to-do list and his notes collection sync beautifully between his Treo and his Outlook. Neither sync with the iPhone. Inexplicably, while the makers of the iPhone decided to take entries from Outlook's contacts and calendar, they decided that Tom didn't need to access any tasks or notes that he had built over the years in his Outlook and Treo. Tom is annoyed: he uses these features for Getting Things Done.
Yes, there are fee-based apps. Tom purchased KeyTasks and for an annual fee of $10 to keep the app active Tom can sync his to-do list between his computer and iPhone. Tom is annoyed: he has been syncing his to-do list between his Treo and Outlook for free all these years.
The contestant hasn't found any way to move all the notes from his Treo/Outlook to the iPhone notes feature. And, since there is no desktop version of the iPhone notes feature, Tom will have to enter each keystroke of each existing note should he choose to manually move his existing notes into iPhone. Tom is annoyed: the iPhone notes feature is fine enough for new notes, but he'd like access to all his existing notes.
Documents-to-Go, which came free on his Treo, allowed Tom to read and edit documents created in Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel. Tom is annoyed: Tom didn't depend on that too much, but it was nice to have. He viewed his lengthy "Books to Consider" Word document whenever he was in a bookstore.
Tom has discovered that the iPhone will not accept his email from the two email accounts he accesses. The main work account, tom@hbcaustin.org, requires some certificate changes to the church's server, so Tom will wait until those changes are made in the next couple of weeks. But Tom's other account, tom@anchorcourse.org, is a Windows Live account connected with his Anchor Course website, and the iPhone and Windows Live accounts do not speak to each other. Tom is annoyed: why pay $30 more a month for a data plan he can't use for his e-mail?
Basically, the iPhone is an iPod that can place phone calls but Tom has serious doubts that it can help him do his work.
Stay tuned for the next episode of "Will Tom Keep His New iPhone?"
2 comments:
It is good to hear your frustration, because I use my centro in many of the same ways. I will waiting to hear, The rest of the story, as Paul Harvey would say.
I may go to the Centro (though I hear the keyboard is tight). Warming to my pretty toy, though. The game has 28 more days.
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