Have you ever stumbled across what seems to be the most beautiful person in the world, only to notice they’ve got a big old wart on the end of their nose that kinda ruins things? I know it’s a tired metaphor, but I’m tired and I needed a metaphor.
I’ve been using my iPhone a while now, and I’m to the point where I can’t imagine not having it. But I’d like to use it to help boost my productivity, or at least help my memory a little. It’s not quite up to the task. Yet.
The new version of Mac OS X, called Leopard, has this great feature wrapped into the Mail app. It lets you jot little notes to yourself, set up to-do items easily, and store them in your email folders, so (if you’re using IMAP mail), you can access your Notes or To-Do items from your smartphone, etc. The problem is, the implementation is retarded. See pic. I created this nice, concise list of to-do items for my motorcycle maintenance this week, and on my Mac, the list has a nice little checkbox for each item, and the items are ordered the way I want.
On my iPhone, the to-do items are in reverse order, and they’re not parsed in such a way that checkboxes are part of the interface. I can’t check off my items as I do them. Terrible implementation. I understand there are limitations to the types of data you can store and send through the IMAP mail protocol, but that doesn’t mean you can’t read-and-display that data however the feck you please on the computer (yes, the iPhone is a computer). The Mac desktop handles it properly. Make the iPhone do the same.
By the same token, there’s this handy little Notes app on the iPhone, in which I’ve jotted down draft blog entries, lists of random stuff, etc. From that app, I can email myself the contents of a note. But I can’t “sync” my iPhone Notes with my Leopard Mail notes. I mean, that’s just retarded. And honestly, it’s something I would expect from Windows Mobile 6. But considering all the care that was taken in crafting the user experience throughout the rest of the iPhone system…this is just that much more annoying.