Let me just start off by saying, I think the iPhone is close to being a masterpiece. I am blown away by the imagination and quality it exhibits. Way to go, Apple designers; please get in touch with me and let me take you out to lunch.
That said, I’m disappointed in some of its designs. The particular object of my ire is the calendar app. The Palm 100 calendar UI from 1995 laps it in terms of moment-to-moment usage. In this article I want to show how a thirteen year old UI designed for a 160×160 pixel, monochrome display on a cheap, slow CPU is so much more effective than a 2008 iPhone with a larger, high-res screen and fast CPU.
Here is a real-world example of what I mean. When I have a tentative appointment, I append a question mark to show that it isn’t confirmed. For example: “Dinner with Rich?” Later, when the appointment is confirmed, I will removed the question mark. Here’s how to remove that question mark on every Palm device from the first PalmPilot to the latest Palm Centro:
- Tap at the end of the appointment text, to place the cursor there
- Press (or gesture) backspace
That is it. Two steps and you are done. You can now turn off the device or navigate away to some other task. The direct manipulation is similar to how you might do it with a paper agenda.
Now, here is how you remove that question mark on the iPhone 3G:
- You can’t edit the appointment text from the day view, so tap it to open it up in the “Event” details screen.
- Well you can’t edit the text here either, so tap the “Edit” button in the top right corner
- Unfortunatly the “Edit” view doesn’t let you edit. Instead it shows the components of the appointment. Go ahead and tap the event name to tell the iPhone you want to edit it.
- You are now in the “Title & Location” field with the cursor blinking on the appointment, with the on-screen keyboard shown.
- Press backspace.
- Press Save to get back to the “Edit” screen
- Press Done to get back to the “Event” screen
- Press the back button at the top left corner (labeled with the Date)
Them’s a lot of steps. And a lot of modes. And a lot of thinking to do an every day task. Four times as many steps as the 1995 Palm. This design conduct is unbecoming of an Apple product.
This is not an obscure task. We are not changing some technical configuration on a one-time basis. We are making an adjustment to the title of an event. It’s the sort of thing that everyone who uses the calendar needs to do all the time. No excuses here: common, frequent tasks should be the most streamlined.
And it’s not just this task. Creating a typical appointment on the Palm takes two steps versus about ten steps on the iPhone. Five times more steps. (And that is being generous with the horrendous spinning slot-machine style time picking UI.)
Palm, and in particular the guys chiefly responsible for its UI design, Rob Haitani and Jeff Hawkins, understood that for a PIM device to replace the reliable, always-on paper-based planner, it would have to be simple, direct and fast. When you are trying to capture an appointment while on the phone, only a sliver of your attention is available to spend on the UI. The Palm’s UI is direct enough that you can do it during a conversation. With an iPhone, you’d better jot it down on paper and transcribe it into the device later if you want to avoid putting your caller on hold mentally.
Here are some other reasons why the old skool Palm’s calendar laps its young cousin.
In the day view:
- If you have appointments far apart in the day, the Palm is intelligently condenses hours of the day, so you can almost always see all your day’s appointments without scrolling. This is important to give you the big picture. If something is concealed you might very well miss it. On the iPhone, if you set up an appointment at 7 AM, and another at 7 PM, it’s possible to look at the day view and completely miss one of them…or either! We are talking missed appointments here. The iPhone tries to help by auto-scrolling as you step between days, but this ostensible bit of cool just adds UI friction.
-
The irritating iPhone slot-machine spinner UI.  Please, just give us a calendar to tap
To change the a date of an appointment the Palm gives a standard calendar UI that you have seen on every travel planning site. Calendars are tried and true and have some great information visualization benefits. You get to see where the dates are relative to the week and month and relative to other important dates. Assigning a new date is a simple matter of tapping on it. The iPhone instead gives an atrocious spinning slot machine picker. It provides none of the contextual information and requires a lot of painstaking work to flick to the right date. It’s easy to inadvertenly touch something in the wrong column without even knowing it. I have had several appointments that have been off by hours because of this. Form gave function a beating the day that one was designed in Cupertino.
In the month view:
- The month view on the Palm shows you roughly how busy you are on each day. The iPhone shows a dot on each day with an event. Any event: appointment, birthday, multi-day. The result is that just about every day has a dot, eliminating any useful information it might convey.
- The Palm’s month view shows multi-day events with a dotted line that spans multiple days. It shows me when trips are happening or when visitors are in town. The iPhone just gives me that dot on each day, which could just as well be a morning workout appointment as a business trip. There is no way to distinguish those big multi-day events in the month view.
- On the iPhone, when you tap a day of the month, it tries to be helpful by showing the day’s events in a little pane at the bottom. The problem is, in six-row months like this one (August 2007) there is only enough height to show one appointment. You are supposed to scroll that little area vertically to see more. It’s like looking at your appointments through a straw. To make matters worse, there isn’t even an indication of there being more than one appointment. The scrollbar only appears when scrolling. If you are checking to see what you are doing on a certain day you must scroll that tiny text area, always. In contrast, the Palm lets you tap on any date to see everything.
Furthermore:
- The Palm has a Go To date function. You can get to most dates in two or three taps. It’s a wonderfully tuned UI. The iPhone makes you press and hold the Next Month button as it whirrs through the months. It’s attention-consuming and clunky by comparison.
- On the Palm, you can get to the calendar in one step, even if the device is off, by pressing the calendar button. Brilliance! On the iPhone this is three to seven steps which vary depending on the state in which the device was last left, which means you need to pay attention (cf. Don’t Make Me Think).  [Step 1. Press button on top. 2. Slide finger. 3. Press home if you were in another app. Step 4. Figure out where you are and slide the home screen left or right one or more times to get to the page with the calendar app. 5. Tap in the calendar. 6. Switch calendar modes if necessary. 7. Navigate to today if necessary.] For a worker who checks her schedule twenty times a day, this makes a difference. Apple’s buttonphobia undoubtedly makes things look sleek and elegant but it really does hurt, every single day, many times a day to not have direct access to the most frequent and common tasks. [11/14/08 Update: see some ideas for instant access without adding buttons.]
- The Palm lets you search for an event (“When is Peggy’s wedding?”); the iPhone does not offer this. This is an important SSNiF that should be covered. [6/18/09: iPhone v3.0 software now allows this]
- Why can’t you flick left and right to go to adjacent days in the day view, as you do with, say, the photo album? There is already a left/right spatial paradigm established by the small arrow buttons. Instead, you have to press those small arrows with your finger, obscuring the screen with your hand in the process.
- [added 6/18/09] There is no coherence or consistency between the calendar and alarms. The (non-calendar) alarm are more insistent, and therefore reliable, then the calendar reminders. You get to choose the sound, unlike calendar reminders. (For instance, I use the “Vrrroom” sound to remind me of street cleaning times in San Francisco, when I have to move my car.)
- [Added 6/18/09] You still cannot create repeating appointments that happen on, say, the second Thursday of the month. This is basic, required functionality. iCal on the Mac allows such appointments, but they do not sync to the iPhone. (At least I don’t think so… I’ve been waiting… over 30 minutes… for my iPhone… to sync… with iTunes…) I anticipate more parking tickets.
In this giddy age of hi fidelity UIs, iPhone design team and those trying to emulate them would do well to carefully study the old, low-fi masters. Get the function right, then make it pretty. It’s the Apple way.
Please link to this article at: http://StealThisIdea.com/articles/palm-vs-iphone/
See also: iPhone love/hate list
—
Philip Haine is principal of Product Vision Associates, a product innovation consultancy that helps product leaders and their teams envision new, breakthrough products and reboot older ones. To follow him on Twitter click here.
This article is straight to the point. I agree with it completely, and it should be sent directly to Apple’s designers!
I had previously been using the Windows Mobile Outlook calendar on an O2 Atom phone. It was fast and easy to use, all the information could be edited from the same page! And viewing your upcoming calendar events was as simple as turning the screen on – because the events are displayed on the home screen. In comparison, the iPhone calendar makes you constantly “press & wait” for the appropriate options.. I wish a new calender app would arrive to replace it! It’s HORRIBLE.
You are spot on with his article- everything described is true!
The iphone is a giant leap backwards in terms of time management. If I had not parted with so much money for the damn thing I wouldn’t be seraching the net for ways to solve the most basic, simple issues that my old Palm Tundsten cruised with.
And it seams that I am not alone!
Hi Philip and all,
I’ve just found this article while searching for a Palm-style calendar for my new iPhone 3G…
All the above is true and I feel it myself every day, regardless of loving the *great* phone. I got a 10 year-old Palm user experience, with 5 devices (last is/was Centro). Reading your iPhone love/hate list I found I think pretty much the same about this question. Thank you for summarizing it so well.
And please inform us if you find a better calendar (notes, todo, etc.)!
P.S. Let me share I’ve found two interesting applications: SaiSuke and SmartTime.
Regards,
Akos
Philip,
Thank you so much for your article. I have been going mad trying to find a solution to this calendar problem. I don’t want to have to carry around both iphone and my old Tungsten T5, but it seems for now I will.
As well as all your valid comments, I have found the repeat function to be the most rubbish of all. I put all of my kids movements with regards to school, after school clubs, etc. on my palm, but 1) it doesn’t obscure the whole day by colouring it in and 2) I can pick and choose which days to repeat (as school times are different on a Friday). It is so flexible and I felt sure the iphone would be even better, but have been disappointed. I have looked at Google calendar as a possible replacement, but it doesn’t support these features either.
I guess we will just have to wait for someone to produce an app which is worth using!
Joanne
Everyone,
Havent quite got new iphone yet because of that darn Calendar functionality not being as good as windows pocket mobile. Let me know before It’s too late & I settle for a normal XDA, PDA etc.
Was thinking about the Samsung Omnia. Any comments?
Paul
I agree completely! It is for reasons like these and others that I cannot switch away from my palm OS. I even went as far as to buy an iPhone on eBay to really try out. But its these little things that make the Palm OS, (an OS that is over 13 years old) more powerful than today’s blackberry, iPhone or Android.
Not to mention that they still continue to “pull the wool over our eyes” with this software keyboard that everyone hated for 10 years until the Treos came out with a full qwerty keyboard. Would it be so hard to have Treo/Centro type keyboard flip out of the iPhone (at least in the US version)? Also a 5 direction keypad helps also. A solo touch screen is not the way to go.
Also I need reminders for my calendar events!
AND FINALLY: WHERE IS THE SELECT, CUT, COPY, AND PASTE FUNCTIONS!!!!!!
[...] The calendar is really lacking though. I’ve used Palm OS for 10 years or so. Palm was better 10 years ago than the iPhone calendar is now. Hard to believe really. I thought this was well-written:Â http://stealthisidea.com/articles/palm-vs-iphone/ [...]
I have switched from a long series of Palm devices, from PalmPilot through Treo. I agree that the iPhone calendar is lacking. Just try to set up a recurring event for Tuesdays and Thursdays, or for the fourth Thursday every November. Also, where is my data -notes, contacts, calendar, on my Windows PC? Why do I need to use Outlook, Windows address book, and whatever else — at least Palm has an app for accessing native data on your PC. Why are there subfields (name->firstname, last name, etc.) just to enter a contact? I am hoping that software updates address these issues, as the hardware platform is first class, and could easily support what we all want.
Philip,
What a great article! I agree wholeheartedly. I’m going to be returning the iPhone that I thought was going to be a timesaver for all of the above reasons. Hopefully Apple is taking notice of articles like yours.
Amen! It’s so good to hear that others feel the same way as I do. Due to iPhone’s calendar limitations, I’m forced to keep my Palm with me. A big part of my investing in the iPhone was to eliminate the need for dealing with multiple devices. Come on Apple… it’s only a software improvement. Hope you’re monitoring public dismay.
I agree completely. My husband wants me to buy the ipod touch, but I am holding off until the calendar problems are solved. Hopefully Apple will accommodate us soon!
Right on the mark, the agenda is really inferior, and I cannot find a good one, doing both calendar and todos as my 7 year old Treo did… on the other hand, there are so many other things which are vastly superior to anything else around that I could not keep the Treo any longer.
For the moment i put up and test any calendar/todo application I can (I spent a few euros for nothing, yet) hoping in an upgrade.
[...] In mijn langdurige queeste om behoorlijke agenda te vinden (vergelijkbaar met die van de Palm, zie Steal This Idea 1995 Palm calendar creams the 2008 iPhone’s) zag ik in Cydia "MyWeek" staan. Lijkt veelbelovend! Dus onmiddelijk geïnstalleerd, maar [...]
Alas, I was just on my way to ditch my old Tungsten to buy an iphone with all the bells and whistles. Until I looked at Ical and was incredibly disappointed. It doesn’t hold a candle to the 1995 Palm (originally Clarisworks!) program. I’ll wait on that iphone until apple gets its act together. I’ll keep my phone that’s a phone, and hang on to my old palm which has it all there for me.
For all the programs and games they have out for the iphone, too bad nobody can come up with a better organizer.
Anna, I’ll take that as a compliment, since I designed the UI for ClarisOrganizer 2.0, which became Palm Desktop!
Here is an ancient paper I published at the CHI conference in 1997 on the design of the contact card [pdf], which I think is still better than iCal’s!
Great article – cannot believe I still have to carry my Palm around. Has anyone designed a Palm Calendar to iPhone application that works? Outlook was horrible, and now sometimes I think Apple has an audience in mind that doesn’t actually, you know, work or have appointments. Yow.
I have been searching the app store trying to find something that will emulate My Palms calendar functionality for my new Iphone. One of the best parts of the Palms Calendar was it’s integration with the alarm clock. You could ‘Snooze’ your alarms, and aslo set it to go off at any interval. The Iphone jumps from 1 hour to 30 minutes with nothing in between. Seeing as how I get up 45 minutes before I have to go to work, this is very frustating. I also loved the ability to diffrentiate between categories of appointments by color, and the ability to edit those catedgories. No such luck on my Iphone.
The above comments are spot on.
If the Gentleman mentioned above (the designer of the claris app) has half an idea to write a decent app for the iPhone (I’m in health care and need variable appointments from 15 to 45 minutes in length – and I need to be able to scan a full day at a glance, copy, paste, cut, etc) I will immediatly sign on to pay
€50 for said app!!!
there must be a market for this, yes???
I imagine I am not alone in that I found this web page because of the very facts you write about. I wanted, no – scratch that – I NEED a better calendar in my iPod Touch and am so used to the Palm calendar DateBk5 from Pimlico Software. It does everything I need. The Apple calendar in the iPod Touch does not. It is terribly disappointing, so much so that it makes me suspect they dumb it down so badly in order to leave so much room for improvement when they begin selling us incremental upgrades. Find a feature you want (above) and look for it, just that one, maybe two even, and a fee. Then they’ll come out with another version with a fee and another one or two “new” features that are also not new at all. It’s all an underhanded form of marketing. As a dyed in the wool Apple user since 1984 it doesn’t come as a total surprise to me but this time I think they went way too far with it. For one thing, it’s just too obvious. But even worse, it’s far too extreme. Some of this they can “get away with” and at some point (that I believe they long passed) it will backfire on the company.
Add me to the list of people that agree. I love the iPhone, but think about carrying my Palm too just for the calendar. Ease of use and ease of data transfer from my work calendar. I also miss being able to select text and copy and paste. The person who makes a Palm-like calendar app for the iPhone will be much loved and could make a bit of money too!
I was just given an iPhone as a gift May 14th (was waiting for the next iPhone release before switching from Sprint for past 12 years) & my PALM Treo 700. I may have to cancel my ATT contract & return my iPhone until Apple iPhone software engineers figure out how to include the BASIC Calendar, Memo, & To Do list functionality that all my Palm & Palm phones have had for the past 10 YEARS!.
I need to enter appointments, reminders, memos, to do items into my phone while the idea is fresh in my mind – not wait until I have time to perform 9 steps for each entry, or on my computer later (I’m guessing this is the preferred Apple iPhone iCal programmers method), then sync.
On my Palm:
if I need to make a quick note to myself,
1) I press the Calendar icon,
2) Type note,
3) press sleep, then put my phone away – my note is entered without a time in Today (assigning a 3pm appointment requires an extra step – I touch 3pm before typing. (or select the icon to the left of the note later)
On my new iPhone:
If I need to make a quick note to myself,
1) I press the Calendar icon,
2) Press +,
3) Press Title,
4) Type note,
5) press save,
6) press done.
(evidently, iPhone assumes the time is the next available slot after your last timed entry)
Adding a specific time only requires 3 more steps:
press save,
1) I press the Calendar icon,
2) Press +,
3) Press Title,
4) Type note,
5) press save,
6) press start & end,
7) roll time time to 3pm,
9) press done.
I know it’s less than 2 years old, but where’s the double-click, cut, copy, paste & global find?
I truly believe Apple’s products are a superior technology that force other companies to improve their products.
Apple has the talent to make the iPhone the most functional smart phone on the planet. If they believe thier iCal & iPhone calendar Apps are adequate, someone at Apple is either asleep at the wheel, or they are using some other Calendar Application.
I hear the new Palm has a killer OS…
I completely agree. I’m still using a Palm Centro because of the calendar issue. It’s really disappointing.
Well, iPhone’s OS 3.0 is finally out and i downloaded it to my iPhone 3G which I bought 3 weeks ago (and no one in the ATT store mentioned the 3G S would be out soon). I was excited in getting the 3.0 software because the calendar on my 3G phone is terrible. I particularly find the REPEAT function useless since you cannot tell it you have a meeting on the 2nd Thursday of every month, for example. All it can do is place an appointment on the same date each month… useless. Nor can I simply sync it to my PC. I am not interested in having to pay extra to use some system that keeps my calendar out in the ethers.
I completely agree that the Palm calendar, todo list etc. is excellent. Unfortunately my Palm m505 finally died. So, I bought an iPhone. There is plenty I love about the iPhone, but the one thing I really need is a good calendar system that I can backup on my PC and iPhone doesn’t come close to offering this very basic application.
BRILLIANT ! You have just saved me the trouble hoping to replace my trusty old Palm zire 31 and TX…
Anyway how does one speak through the phone and jot an appointment or even scribble a sketch at the same time with the same object without thinking… perhaps with the speaker phone on maybe… erghhh!
No… I’m sticking to a basic phone and separate diary…
I was just hoping that the ipod touch with the same iphone app would do the job of replacing the Palm with its new hand writing recognition app, What a shame its not got a well designed calendar / diary. That slot machine spinner is just eye candy gimmickry.
Thanks and well said.
Thanks for making me feel I am not crazy. I just got an iPhone 3GS after being a Palm guy for well over a decade… And trying to find a decent way to manage my tasks has been driving me CRAZY! I’m trying to decide if I will give my iPhone back (reverting to my 700p) before the 30 day trial period is over, simply due to the lack of a “to do” / task management system that will work for me like Palms. My wife is insane at the hours I’ve spent researching and testing task management applications to no avail. I just can’t believe, with the numerou task applications available, that none seem to do what I need, that my Palms have been able to do for almost 15 years… How frustrating!!!
Any news on whether Apple is even working on this? I’d have an iPhone if not for this problem (and possibly AT&T).
I haven’t heard anything about the iPhone improving their calendar.
I should clarify that although the calendar is a daily pain to me, the iPhone as a whole is a daily joy. I just wish it could be all joy.
I spent just a couple of minutes with the Pre over the weekend. Their calendar is a more direct-manipulation than the iPhone. And the keyboard, while cramped and squishy, is still better than typing on-screen. Unfortunately the calendar UI did not at first blush appear to be as efficient as the old Palm’s. Sadly, Palm borrowed the vertically scrolling pickers (like Apple’s annoying slot machine UI). I’d prefer they’d just lay out the times so you could just tap the time you wanted with minimal scrolling.
It would be cool if someone did a 3 way usability study of the 1997 Palm, the 2008 iPhone and the 2009 Pre.
I tried to type up some comments on my iphone but that was so frustrating I switched to the good ‘ol pc. Basically, Rob, I feel your pain. It is so frustrating that this new iphone (“iAlmost” as it should be called) cannot perform as a PDA/calendar. I love much about the phone(the keyboard,… I work with) but this calendar app does not function successfully. Beyond all points mentioned about use/UI/options/repeating events/time to enter data/limitations/just plain stupidity in software design…I DO NOT GET MY ALERTS!!!THEY LITERALLY DISAPPEAR IF ANYTHING ELSE IS DONE ON THE PHONE(i.e. answering a call). The alert is not loud (or customizable) so many of them are missed, furthermore there is no cache for missed/un-acknowledged calendar alerts so they literally are gone unless you always check your calendar for appointments on days gone. At the very least there NEEDS TO BE A CACHE FOR MISSED ALERTS. There is no reason that a missed alert should disappear if you then receive a phone call (and the alert disappears even before answering said call after a missed alert. FRUSTRATING. Please Palm developers just make an app for the iphone and charge … well, enough…we’ll pay to alleviate the PAIN…
Like many of you, I am a dedicated Palm user, starting with Palm Professional for my professional attorney life in the late 1999s to today when I am a stay at home mom who got a Zire when the tungsten gave up the ghost.
It was just beautiful how well everything transferred over the years from my Professional to the Zire.
I was given the iPhone as a gift by my thoughtful, yet not-palm-oriented husband, before he knew the Palm Pre was on its way. And was just SHOCKED at how poor the calendar/tasks/memos functions were laid out on the iphone. Searching today to rectify that, I came across this article.
So yes, this is just a long note to say “Ditto AMEN Brother” to Phillip Haine and thank him for so thoroughly noting all the terrible things about the calendar. I’m not crazy after all! I’m keeping the faith with Zire and hoping that in 2 years perhaps I won’t mind cancelling ATT and picking up Pre. iPhone is a fun toy with lots of features that have added to our life (including becoming an expensive toy for a 3 year old), but no way does it do what I need, even as a stay at home mom, for the vital parts of my life.
Thanks, Kristen, for a great testimonial.
I had a chance to spend a few minutes playing with a Pre recently. Unfortunately even Palm’s own 2009 calendar is not as streamlined as its 1995 calendar.
I wish Apple would take some time out and invest in the calendar. It makes my heart drop every time a new iPhone OS is announced without this being fixed.
Steve Jobs used to denigrate PDAs. He was right that the market for PDAs as a standalone product were coming to a close. But PDAs fulfilled an important need — they subsumed the needs of paper planners that were very popular back in the day. The need for an electronic calendar that is as efficient as jotting something down on paper is as strong as ever.
Article and comments are all right on the money accurate.
Add me to the list of Iphone + 700P users. Talk about juggling, this is crazy. If I were still within thirty days I would be fully rid of the Iphone.
To me the Iphone has been delegated to life as an elaborate toy, not a production tool like my various Palm devices always were.
I really didn’t expect this. What a let down.
Yikes! Wish I’d looked for this post before I bought by iPhone this weekend. It is slick, but I need an integrated calendar, task manager, reminder function; guess I’ll give it a week or two – who knows, maybe I’ll join the club and go back to my Palm Treo.
What’s really annoying me that my old Palm did so well:
1. No way to set an alarm that goes off 1 min before the time 5mins is the nearest option. I’m able to set it to 1 min in iCal but not on the iPhone. Most of my events are for conference calls – and it doesn’t take me 5 mins to pick up the phone and dial the number, a 1 or even 0 min alert is all I need.
2. No default alarm when creating new events on the iPhone. Do I really need to go through all those steps on every new event – for me 99% of my events need an alarm. iCal does provide this feature, but sadly not for it’s data detectors! I’ve missed a few appointments because I’ve forgotten to set the alarm – that never hapend on my palm.
3. No repeating alarm. Palm would repeat the alarm every minute for 10 mins until you acknowledged it – I’ve missed hearing my iPhone’s one and only alarm some times and that means I miss the appointment. (I know I can set multiple alarms, but that is a time consuming job AND acknowledging the first alarm doesn’t cancel the remaining alarms)
I was hoping that some of this might be addressed in the 3.1 OS, but alas it was not…
Love my iPhone but can’t stand Calendar.
Also from what I understand of the App Development kit, there’s no way for an app that’s not running to schedule an alarm to go off at a specific time without using push which is overkill for such a thing and doesn’t work when your not connected, so Apple is the only ones who can solve this problem for us! And apple probably wouldn’t approve the app, since it would be duplicating something they already provide NOT!
Ya Just got my 3Gs.
Have spent an hour on this
Nivce phone but that’s about it
All i have to say is I have NEVER BEEN SO DISAPPOINTED WITH A PIECE OF TECHNOLOGY
in terms of ease of use (Calender in particular)
I’ll be scouring the want adds for spare Palms
They are sure to be collectors items
Kodos to the Palm design teams vision in the Tungsten line. WAY ahead of the pack
The pre is worse.
Gee my palm … you can write on it ….COOL.
It is so nice to hear that I am not the only person that is freaking out about this. I had switched to the Iphone from a Treo 700p, for the last year and a half I have suffered with these same issues in hopes that the new and improved Palm Pre would solve all my headaches. Unfortunately Palm seems to be turning to the “dark side” as well…
1. The Pre has no 5-way Navigator button, like the Iphone you now need to have pin point accuracy with your fingernails in order to correct spelling or insert the cursor somewhere else. Advantage – Treo
2. Like the Iphone the new Pre does not always save your calendar entries, you need to hit the enter button or select a different time slot. boo
3. How could Palm ever think that switching to the “Slot Machine” input method was a good idea, I was so disappointed to see that. Advantage Treo
4. The Pre only has 4 home screen Quick Access buttons- Phone, Contacts, Mail, and Calender. So if you text people you can’t access your threads unless you replace one of those buttons or use the launcher and search for your Messaging Icon. Advantage Iphone (or even better any old Treo or Centro)
5. The Pre OS is so slow similar to the Iphone 3G ,although I have heard the 3GS is much faster (at least for the first 31 days of your new contract then it starts to slow down again) Advantage Treo
6. The Pre feels like your gonna break it every time you try to open it, there is just no comfortable way to slide the keyboard in and out. Unless you use the $70 wireless charger (pretty cool) you should buy some tweasers in order to open the charging port or just break it off like I did, unintentionally but I wish I had done it sooner.
Final conclusion – since Palm has given up on making user friendly phones and Apple does not want people to manage appointments or input calender events in under an hour, I am forced to use small sheets of scrap paper crumpled in my pocket with all of my tasks and daily phone calls. I will be going back to the Iphone in hopes that the 3GS will be fun to play with and a bit faster than the Pre or the old Iphone. I am also praying that some genius from the late 90′s can help Apple develop a user friendly calender with an alarm. Good Luck
Thanks Doug, for the useful and informative 3-way comparison between the Pre, the iPhone and the Treo.
Regards,
Philip
[...] Without a clear, coherent image of how things should be, design suffers.  Nokia’s products (and Sony’s, and Motorola’s, etc.) became complex, incoherent, and frustrating to use.  When products take on more capabilities, keeping things simple gets exponentially harder, because every feature relates to every other feature.  The possible associations grows with the square of the number of features.  (Even the best-of-class iPhone and Palm Pre are not immune.  Both could do their core tasks considerably easier.) [...]
Suddenly, I found a website filled with my frustations.
My palm is pending to die, which forces me to buy a replacement, may be i-Phone.
But I think Apple loves Palm that they don’t want Palm to be out of the market this soon; I mean if Apple provides a Palm Calendar for free or in the app store. Very likely, almost all current Palm holders will sync all data to their new i-Phone, and out the Palm RIP.
If anyone found anyway to have a Palm-like Calendar that can be used in i-Phone, please let me know.
Palm user looking for good calender, to do app to make me lovey iPhone
Hi,
used all kinds of Palms with a Treo 650 in the end. Now with my fancy iPhone I face the same problems you folks do.
The calendar really sucks when it comes to entering the data. I looked for agendus which was an application for the palm which I never needed because the original calendar was good enough. Now thre is a version of agendus for iPhone but without calendar support. Read why here http://www.iambic.com/agendus/iphone/?cnt=calendar_info
Though I never needed nor liked agendus this might help someone.
By the way. Looking for a godd memo pad? I now use “Notebooks” which syncs with a Java Toolkit on your Mac or PC and just works fine for me. Also supports categories and password protected entries just like my good old Palm memo pad.
Termi
Try to change the calendar of an event after it’s on the Apple cell phone. You can’t. I’d just like to add this to all that’s been said. I won’t go into detail as to how this affects me, but trust… it’s infuriating. I believe that Palm should just make “Palm app for the iPhone” and let everyone reap the benefits.
I wish I had read this thread before my boss “made” me get an iPhone 3G for work. All I want are recurring events based on days of the week (ie 2nd Wed of each Mo.), not the day of the month (ie the 14th of each month). I’ve got a Google G2 (HTC Magic) and as hardware goes it’s a much better device. As OS and app software goes – Android is light-years ahead of Apple. And finally: as providers go AT&T is absolutely the worst service provider I have ever used (have had Verizon, Sprint and currently have T-Mobile for my GPhone) I just don’t understand the grovelling ‘Fan-Boy’ mentality.
Great article! I note that two things are even worse than you say above:
1) There is no “go to date” and Apple banned a third party “go to date” application! See http://www.polarbearfarm.com/search/index.html under “Note.”
2) Yes, Palm will now let you search for an event — “When is Peggy’s wedding?” works. The problem is that the search only runs FORWARD. In other words, you cannot do “When WAS Peggy’s wedding?”! Search does not include past events — it blows my mind each time I think about it. And Apple also banned the third party app (same one above) that provided full search.
My suggestion would be to use Google calendar and the Google calendar app for iPhone. (No syncing; you just access Google calendar over the Internet with an app specialized for the phone.)
why doesn’t Palm make some some money writing an app for the ipod/phone that emulates the calendar function they’ve used for years in their now discontinued handhelds.
ALL I WANT TO BE ABLE TO DO IS TAP ON A VISIBLE TIME SLOT AND TYPE IN AN ENTRY… for Gods sake !
My name also is Rick, and I agree completely with the January 8, 2010 post. What to do? How long to wait? I have a Palm TX that will no longer sync calendar, and I STILL use it as my calendar for the ease discussed all throughout this thread. I’m shocked that this seems to be the state of the situation
TOTALLY AGREE.
I have used palms on and off for the past 7 years. Every time i have moved onto another phone i find myself longing for the palm calendar.
Everything about the iphone is great EXCEPT FOR THE CALENDAR.
APPLE Please do something about it.
The palm interface is genius.
I would also like to be able to see a list of my days appointments on the background screen when i press the standby button on my iphone instead of just seeing the background.
I LOVE MY IPHONE but this is killing me.
Fix the calendar and the phone will finally be fully functional for me.
In the mean time i am going to lug around my iphone and my palm.
Apple you’ve always done it in the past, SO DO IT NOW follow the KISS Principle (Keep It Simple Stupid).
Also make adding birthdays easier.
I know there is extra functionality in ical but i need the portable functionality.
PLEASE APPLE FIX IT before i convert back to my old palm.
Philip,
Congratulations on articulating so well the shared pain of all the posters here. I am in violent agreement with you too.
The question now is… What can be done?
To my mind two things can be done:
1. Apple can fix it or
2. A third party can write an app to do what we want. I personally would $200 for such an app. Seriously.
As for 1., Philip, do you know who manages these things at apple? Could you email them a link to this post/blog of yours and ask for an answer from them? Or even snailmail them a formal letter, reproducing your post and our responses? (You’d be amazed what happens when you snailmail a formal letter to a senior manager within an organisation with other people (their boss) copied in! I snailmailed the CEO of vodafone a few weeks ago to complain about poor reception. There ensued a flurry of phone calls from very senior people including the national network manager and then a personal visit from a very deferential network engineer).
2. Assuming the iphone’s touch technology actually allows direct entry into the calendar, how would one go about finding and selling the concept to a software developer? I don’t know about these things but surely there are people out there who share our opinion and who do know how to do these things get done! Ideas please!
Let’s find a solution!
Regards William Jones
Sent from my iPhone
Thanks for your comment, William.
I don’t know why a 3rd party hasn’t stepped up to the plate and done a better calendar. I am assuming that Apple would reject or has been rejecting calendar apps on the grounds that it interferes with built-in functionality.
Anyone know the real scoop?
I think respectfully lobbying Apple for a better calendar is a fine idea, although I do not have time to do so. Perhaps one of you gentle readers does.
Philip
I’ve posted, by snail mail, hardcopies of this excellent blog, with a cover letter requesting for these changes to be made, to the Product/Design manager of the Calendar app at Apple, copied to Steve Jobs.
Here’s hoping!
William, thanks for taking action! Let’s hope we see some improvements in the calendar.
As the months tick on without improvement, one that has bubbled up for me as a top issue is what Dan wrote above: ” particularly find the REPEAT function useless since you cannot tell it you have a meeting on the 2nd Thursday of every month, for example. All it can do is place an appointment on the same date each month… useless.”
I am forced to make a weekly repeat out of several appointments that occur only on the 2nd and 4th (Monday, Tues, Wed, Fri) of the month. Then when the alarms go off I must manually double check to make sure that the appointments are really happening.
there are a couple of “options”, particularly for a jailbroken phone, but the bottom line here is that Apple fell flat on thier face. They’re busy designing the “next big thing” in the iPad to do anything about it.. the calendar is AWFUL. I am very tempted to go back to my centro simply for the calendar.. the apps are way better, but the calendar is a deal-breaker, it’s that bad.
Palm would probably love to write an app… they’d make a killing. How likely do you think it is to be approved by Apple?
I shouldn’t have to jailbreak my phone to get it to perform basic functions, yet Apple is busy dictating to us how to use our phone so they can maximize the money they squeeze out of us. Look, I paid for the phone. It’s a GREAT device. Unlock the features and allow us to use it the way we want.
Amen. Amen. Amen. I have spent hours and days and weeks trying to find a replacement for my dying Palm Treo 755p. None of the alternatives (especially the iPhone) have a functional calendar. Alas, if I want a functional calendar, I have to dig out my old Tungsten to use wit my new phone!
i am soooo releived to know that the xanax i have been forced to take over all this is not just my problem. my 680 blew up about 6 weeks ago and tried the pixi, what a waste the syncing caused me to have 4 of everything. including stuff i had long since deleted. the 680 was to overwrite any and all. i was fortunate enough to get one last sync out of the 680 before burial.. i now have an iphone and somehow it was able to accept items from the 680-outlook-itunes conversion where the word custom appears in frequency and the items show every 6 days or whatever. i was on the phone with apple for 45 minutes asking how to access “custom” the phone showed it and can operate it, but i can’t make one?????
thanx u guys, i have MS and this thing is like losing a limb.
i will keep up with this site and hopefully we will have a solution soooooooon
ditto to everything that everyone says here. especially the post from sept 15 2009. describes my situation exactly.
Yes.
I wrote:
http://www.robertcailliau.eu/n/I/iPhones/ziPhones-en.xhtml
But has anyone seen anything better for the iPhone? I’m not going to waste a lot of money & time to buy all available agenda apps and test them out.
Busycal is what I use instead of iCal on my Macs. But what for the phone?
Periodically I check back here to see if there is any new developments since I posted last August. In doing that, I ran across some other suggestions about conversion from Palm calendar to other sorts of stuff.
In particular, I ran across a suggestion for using a product called “Companionlink” which seems, if I read it correctly, to allow one to continue to use Palm Desktop software on the desktop, and sync it through Google Calendar to the Iphone.
Since the folk here seem to really understand the true pain of the loss of the Palm Calendar, I thought I would ask: Have any of you tried it, and had any thoughts? I love my Zire, as I said several months ago, but it is getting harder and harder to carry 2 electronic gizmos around, esp. since the new Palm Pre doesn’t seem to do the trick anyway.
One issue I have is that I don’t really want my calendar and other info on a cloud as the only place to get it, nor just on my eensy phone screen. I want it on my nice desktop, too, and not just “Read only” as Google Calendar seems to do.
At least the Zire hardware would remain a good backup system…
Um, sorry for grammar typos – that’s what happens at 10pm with no “preview” button …;-)
I just discovered this article. In the past, I had a Nokia and a Palm Zire. I decided to merge both in a single device and got an iPhone on August 2008.
After 2 weeks, I got crazy with the calendar. The UI is very nice but the applications are toy applications. I put my iPhone in a drawer and got a Palm Treo 600 on ebay. I synced it with JPilot on my Linux workstation and my 10 years of calendar, notes and adresses history (out of different palms) were in the box in just two minutes.
I’ve been very happy with it until I went for some weeks to Japan where my GSM Palm couldn’t work. I took my iPhone out of its banishment and played with Japanese learning tools, GPS to find my way in towns, photographs, wifi etc… I played a lot but the calendar keeps being so clumsy, almost unusable. Now, back home, I’m wondering whether I’ll go on with the iPhone or switch back again to my palm. I really don’t know what to do.
Thank you for the article and the posts
Agree totally! (Considered the beginning of the thread).
With such a calendar you will have no time for the meetings you schedule.
In case anyone is interested…
I caved and did a so-far $6.99 experiment: Got the app Calengoo for the iPhone (the $6.99), and obtained an evaluation copy (14 days free) of CompanionLink to move the Palm Desktop to Google Calendar, and from there to Calengoo on the iPhone.
I have to say, this worked surprisingly well. I wanted to weep when I found my palm calendar on my iPhone suddenly. (I only chose to go back 1 year on the iPhone; not sure how far it will go back.) It all seemed to come through quite nicely. I have seen no repeating appointments errors in my random sampling so far. They are appear to be on the calendar and set up as repeating.
One thing Calengoo does intelligently, and addresses the usability comments above:
For events, it kicks directly into the “title” area, instead of making you choose “Edit” for it. One less step.
For entering time of day, it offers a choice of (1) the annoying wheel OR, and better,
(2) a keypad (think telephone or calculator layout) to select numbers to fill in a date set up with a “mm/dd/yyyy **:** am/pm” format. It actually works well, although it takes a bit to think in terms of mm/dd/yyy – but there’s even a “skip” button which autofills that with the date/time, etc you started on. I’m not sure I’m describing it well, but I will say I find it much, much easier than the wheel! And was impressed that the developer understood and addressed that usibility question at all.
So far the syncing seems to work seemlessly. I’ve chosen a manual sync method for the Desktop right now. Calengoo is set to sync upon launch.
I chose an iPhone app rather than just going to Google Calendar directly because I wanted to have the calendar available on the phone, not tied to a cloud/connection. I tested it by putting the iPhone in “airplane mode” and could still access all the calendar info loaded, with a notation “offline” reminding me of the status.
For the same reason, I can see myself probably paying the $40 in 2 weeks to Companionlink to hang onto my Palm Desktop calendar – I really like having that on my desktop and not just on the cloud. Still haven’t decided, but it is tempting.
My prefernce, of course, would be to have a good direct phone/computer relationship not via google, but I didn’t see an option that gave me a good layout on the iPhone. And the Calengoo layout to me IS very good, pretty much as good as what I’ve seen on the Palm Pre, although it could be better since some parts are small. But I’ve already learned that there is no perfect in any of this right now.
I chose not to sync memos or contacts yet, simply because my focus was on the calendar. I’m not thrilled with how Companionlink loads memos up to Google Calendar (into the Contacts list with a preceding [Memo] notation before the “A” contact listings). And I just didn’t want to muck with contacts yet. Same thing with tasks, but then I don’t use the “tasks” secion as a real day to day “tasks” list but as a respository for discrete master lists I consult when necessary, e.g. “Vacation to do” etc.
Some reviewers criticized Calengoo as slow to load. It did take a bit longer to go from April to Dec to fill in a future dentist appointment, but I’m not sure my Zire would have loaded much faster (it’s graffiti always seems “sticky” to me) And there is a “go to date” feature on Calengoo I have not internalized yet, so didn’t think to use it immediately. But the dentist date flowed seemless from iPhone to Desktop calendar.
So far, in my 72 hrs testing this, it seems to be doing what I want and need, as a former attorney now stay at home mom. And made me happy enough to want to post about it here. Next step will be to sync over contacts and see how that goes.
Makes me sad to realize that my Zire may just be a hard drive backup. At least it doesn’t take up much room….
I think Companionlink might have a solution for anyone looking to keep the old PalmDesktop to connect to the Palm Pre, but I didn’t research that as much, figuring I was unlikely to give up the iPhone when my contract comes up next year, simply because of all the other stuff already on it at this point. I will say that fiddling with a friend’s new Palm Pre made me itch for a good calendar on my iPhone, but didn’t make me salivate with envy the way I had thought I would.
I hope this is helpful to everyone suffering the same way.
Awesome, thanks Kristen for the info!
I just picked up an iPad and was really surprised to see that the calendar was similarly modal as that on the iPhone. You still can’t just tap onto a day block and edit text directly — it brings up a form-based dialog box that resembles the iPhone UI.
- Philip
I just got rid of my Palm Tungsten E2 because if it breaks I wont be able to have it fixed…
I have an iPhone 3GS now But the contact management and search aspect on iPhone is nowhere a clever and intuitive as Palm.
I need to be able to search my contacts (as I could with palm)All the customers on a street, in a city,last 4 digits of phone number etc.etc Does anyone know of such an app. for the iPhone?
Cheers,
Owen
If you’re an iPhone user, looking for a calendar that’s fast and simple like the Palm one used to be, check out my latest app: http://www.calvetica.com
It was designed around my experience using a Treo for many years. Hope you like it.
Update if anyone is interested:
I have been doing the calengoo/companionlink experiment I described above and all continues very well. Actually, it is no longer an experiment; it is business as usual now.
I did buy Companionlink and really like still being able to use the palm desktop.
Calengoo still is terrific. Just a beautifully designed app. Recently loaded it onto my new iPad- it works for both platforms and I didn’t have to buy it twice. I think it looks great on the iPad. The week view is a little busy when one has a large mix of all day and single events but not a huge problem.
I have really taken advantage of color coding because it looks so good on calengoo. I never did it much on palm since my zire was black and white and the desktop color icons are small. But google/calengoo makes it beautiful and now works so well.
I’m sad to leave palm behind but pleased with this fix – the only thing better would be direct wireless sync between calengoo and palm desktop but that’s not going to happen.
If only there was a good solution for contacts; transferring them is just ugly.