Where is tasks and notes on the iPhone?

I love the iPhone – grudgingly of course as it is an Apple product – it really has moved the mobile phone forward and everyone else has been left scrambling to catch up. Both Microsoft and Nokia are seriously struggling. But there are still major gaps.

One of the toughest things for Apple, is that it is trying to target two very different markets: business and consumer. It has had the consumer aspect tied up with its interface, music and phone capabilities (though it needs a better camera). On the business side, the simple support for Microsoft Exchange has helped it to quickly penetrate the business user. The number of iPhones in our office has rocketed and is now the most popular phone in the office – beating Microsoft phones.

But there is a downside – it syncs Email/Calendar/Contacts but does not sync Tasks and Notes (unlike mobile phones which use Windows Mobile).

There are some 3rd party solutions out there:

KeyTasks – Good interface but it does not seem to sync properly and there is no category support.

TaskData – It does not have a great interface and again no category support.

Surprisingly there is no Exchange Notes sync app that I am aware of. There is however a great app out there that provides this funcitonality (without the Exchange Sync). It is called Evernote. It allows you to type out notes, record voice clips, capture photos and even has some basic to do functionality. The only thing it really needs is Exchange sync support – and possibly the ability to record video clips but I guess we are waiting for Apple to support that first.

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Given its GPS functionality and superior mapping software, the lack of turn by turn GPS applications on the iPhone was a glaring omission. Especially as Windows Mobiles have had this functionality for years now.

Well it looks like that will quickly be rectified with the release of version 2.1 of the iPhone. This version will allow developers to do exactly that – what is the betting developers at TomTom and Garmin are busy downloading the latest developer’s version right now?

As per my previous post, my posts are out of whack as I am behind on them. To summarise one of them.. I got an iPhone and it is the best convergence device I have ever had. It really does replace my mp3 player,PDA and phone.

One of the major reasons for buying the iPhone was its ability to push my work email out to me immediately (using our Microsoft Exchange servers). It works great (though it does not sync my Outlook tasks for some reason?!). One of the issues I had when I used this push email functionality on my Windows Mobile phone was how it worked with my personal email/calendar/contacts. I could use Windows Live’s services but it is slow, clunky and therefore impossible to really use productively. So I had to make do combining my work and personal information and using the mobile browser for email.

On the iPhone, Apple have released MobileMe to provide a solution to this. It looks like an interesting solution which allows me to maintain a separate personal and work contact list and have upto date email/contacts/calendars on the move for my personal stuff. Despite the marketing speak it is not push ala Microsoft Exchange but pulling contacts and the calendar every minute so it is so near instantaneous – not that that really matters to most people (there are mutterings about email being pull as well but I can’t confirm that – anyone know what the reality is on this?). Anyhow, the real problem for me is that it requires me to use a mobileme email account (someone@me.com). I use my own personal domain for emails running on Google’s Apps so switching accounts really isn’t an option. Maybe one day they will offer a similar service to Google. Not sure it would be a priority for them.

There is push email on Yahoo but again similar to MobileMe, I have to use their email addresses and the personal contact list merges with your work one. I’m not sure if thats better or worse than having it separate. I suppose the most important thing is that it does not sync back to my work computer. There does not seem to be any sort of calendar sync.

So as I am already using Google, the obvious solution would be Gmail push on the iPhone. Google released push email on Helio (a US mobile carrier) a while back but there is currently nothing for the iPhone, so right now I am stuck either syncing via IMAP or using my mobile browser. Of course that also means no personal contacts list integrated with the phone or a calendar. It looks like there is possible a timeline to this happening though it isn’t till September at least. I wonder though if it will allow a separate personal contact list or will Apple keep that functionality to itself.