I recently (about a month ago) acquired an iPod Touch as my primary PDA to replace my Palm TX
The thing that kept me loyal to Palm for so many years were the apps. Thousands of apps, free or reasonably priced, that work on all Palm devices. Some of them, I used for years. Some I swapped out as something better became available. But there was always an app that did what I wanted it to do.
I got the iPod Touch for two reasons. One, it was shiny. Two, the Palm desktop on Macs is terrible, and the replacement (Missing Sync) is better, but still falls way short of what I expect.)
What surprised me the most about the iPod Touch (and, of course, the iPhone too, since they are essentially the same device for this purpose) is the lack of availability of apps. No, I didn't stumble on this blind - I knew it before I bought. But the more I think about it, the more it astonishes me. Why would Apple do this? They ship a device without even the minimum of usable apps, and then make it so that nobody can write apps for the device but them. Surely they realize that once folks get over the shiny, they'll be pissed off by this?
In order to run apps on this device, you have to "jailbreak" it. Now, if you're a geek like me, that's fine. But most ordinary people are going to take one look at the various jailbreak websites and run screaming. Yeah, it's fairly easy, but it's a little intimidating to do something to a $500 device that looks and sounds illegal. Is it illegal? I don't think anybody knows. And how many people on the planet know what the "BSD Subsystem" is? Come on, Apple, you can do better than this for your customers.
What I expect on a PDA, at a bare minimum is the following:
A ToDo app. (Missing completely)
A calendar that I can sync with my desktop. (Present, but I can't edit events on the device. I have to edit them on the computer, unless I create them on the device. So, only about half-present.)
An address book. (Present, and mostly fine, except that I can't delete contacts from the device. Have to do that on the computer.)
Notebook. (Present, but I can't sync the notes to anything on the desktop, so of very limited usefulness.)
Email. (Present and very nice.)
Web browser. (Present and exceptionally nice.)
So, Apple, step up a little here. Provide an API so that folks can develop apps without having to feel like criminals. Provide a way to install those apps easily.
Yes, I know, you can use web-based applications, but this is utterly worthless for a PDA. I use my PDA when I don't have access to my computer. That tends to coincide with when I don't have a wireless network available. See the problem?
Look at the success of Palm. It's 98% due to their decision from the very beginning to enable third-party application developers. This helped Palm, and it helped thousands of small app dev shops, as well as hobbyists. It's obvious that your customers want this - that's why there's the jailbreak sites. And it will make the device more popular, and thus sell more, so it will help you.
The thing is, it's not a PDA that they're selling, but a media player with some extra features. Apple has never, in my mind, been about options. They expect you to use what you're given, and when it no longer suits your needs, to buy new equipment. They don't worry about how you'll feel when you get over the shiny, because they'll sell you something else shiny to replace it. That doesn't mean I don't want one. :)
You can say all you want that it's not a PDA, except that ... it *is* a PDA. It has calendaring and email. It's a PDA. If they don't choose to market it as a PDA, that doesn't mean it's not one. It just means that they're stupid and missing an opportunity. The iPhone, in particular, is *absolutely* a PDA. It's a smart phone, which, by definition, is the fusion of a phone and a PDA. To use "it's not a PDA" as an excuse for it being a sucky PDA just doesn't cut it, because business customers are buying it as a PDA.
The question really is whether Apple can give customers what they want, or whether they will rely indefinitely on the assumption that their customers are fanatical idiots who will buy whatever Steve says they should buy.
Of course, the vast hordes of fanatical idiots don't help my case any, and, in fact, hurt everyone when they buy inferior products for inflated prices, simply because the Apple marketing machine tells them that it's shiny. And of course the fact that I have one too also doesn't help my case much. *Sigh*
I can delete contacts from my iPhone, so I assume you can from your iPod Touch as well. Go into the contact's page, tap the edit button, scroll to the bottom. There should be a big red 'Delete Contact' button.
I can also edit any entry on my calendar it seems...
And there is a DevKit for creating applications for the phone. And there will be hundreds, if not thousands, or free apps very soon.
Yep. And the $100 price tag ensures that very few of them will be developed by hobbyists or Sourceforge projects. I still think it's a very unfortunate decision. But I wish devfund lots of success.
Dr. Bacchus - Knowing what you have already known and confirmed with this post is why I hesitated to add the iPod Touch to the short list of approved and supported PDA's where I work. The recent announcement of the new enterprise support by Apple in iPhone v.2 will no doubt trickle down to the iPod Touch products as well. At least I am banking on it. when that happens, the iPhone and iPod Touch will be a much better PDA.
Of course, the lack of numerous 3rd party applications is another problem. But, I believe time will resolve that. Just a reminder, the product has been out for less than a year. And, because of it's huge early market share and fan base there should be a lot of motivation by both for-profit and open source applications. I will be curious about what this market will look like on the iPhone's second anniversary. I predict it will be significantly different and better. I also predict that the iPod Touch and iPhone will be standard equipment where I work. (I hope my staff is not reading this.)
...="tag">ipod touch and pda Despite my misgivings, I upgraded my ipod touch to the 2.0 firmware, and have been nothing but impressed. They've address...
First of all, I realize that my response is being posted when many (but not all) of the issues have been addressed.
I had been a palm user for ten years when I purchased my ipod touch almost a month ago. For almost the past year I had been planning to eventually leave the palm for another PDA solution. The quality of palm hardware has never been acceptable, in my opinion and I have always taken full advantage of the Best Buy extended warranty. I considered it a necessary cost in order to not have to purchase a new device every two years. I can say with full confidence that I NEVER returned a PDA unless there was a genuine problem with the device. Many times it was due to the battery dying. I did own several palm lifedrive devices before I purchased the TX. I probably owned at lease 6 to 8 TX’s which all had to be returned because of the screen.
I had considered looking at windows mobile when the time came and my Best Buy extended warranty was getting ready to expire. Once again, my Palm TX screen had failed and was getting worse by the day. I had “heard” that palm was not planning to market any stand-alone PDA’s, that they would only be marketing palm OS smart phones. As I had events in my palm as far back as early 1998, is was critical that I be able to transition my old data to whatever new platform I ended up going with. I really didn’t want to leave the palm platform, but felt compelled to, partially in protest for what I feel has been a let-down in the quality of their devices. I choose to continue to have a separate PDA from my mobile phone and don’t plan on ever going to the smart phone solution.
Then a month ago a friend was showing off his new iphone, so I went to an apple store and spoke with a sales person who showed me the native calendar and contact applications, as well as some of the 3rd party applications available on the itunes store. I then borrowed my sister-in-law’s 8GB ipod touch for a few days and did a test run using it as a replacement for my palm. I was able to hotsync my palm TX to Outlook (Vista) and then sync from Outlook to the touch without too much trouble. At the time and to date, no native task or memo functions exist on the touch.
I then returned my TX to Best Buy and used the credit to purchase an ipod touch (16GB… with the extended warranty). I also had to purchase the 2.0 update in order to have access to the 3rd party applications. I very much agree with the original posting, that the native email (using yahoo) and safari applications are fantastic compared to the palm OS. The touch wi-fi connection is also far superior to the best performance I was ever able to achieve on the TX. To access my yahoo email on the TX, I had to access it through blazer. Using the native email application on the touch is much more user friendly.
I am less happy having to use Outlook rather than the palm desktop application. The palm desktop application has progressed decently through the years. However, one feature that the new (ACCESS) version for Vista left out was the ability to set an alarm for a task. You can still set an alarm from the palm itself, but not on the desktop. I have no idea why they would have left such a crucial option out of the new version. I very much wish that the touch could sync with the palm desktop so I wouldn’t have to use Outlook. I’m sure that millions of people around the world swear by the functionality of Outlook, but I’ve never liked the “clunkyness” of it. Palm desktop has always seemed more refined and more user friendly. I imagine that I could possibly set up a routine of importing and exporting my data from Outlook to palm in conjunction with my syncing, but that would probably be more trouble than it’s worth. I’ve never used (and don’t plan to) the Outlook email client. I just access my yahoo mail from IE, or now from the touch if I have a wi-fi connection available. I’m mostly happy with the native calendar and contact applications on the touch. The ability to edit is somewhat less than the palm and the inability to cut/copy/paste is also disappointing. For instance, you can’t duplicate an event to schedule it to another date. Also, there doesn’t seem to be any sort of search function within the calendar application for finding an event containing some text. On palm devices, you can input text and it will search the entire device for that text.
Regarding the absence of a native task and memo, I’m actually dealing with that aspect. I have access to my lap top daily in order to be reminded of the various scheduled and recurring tasks and I’ve found that I haven’t needed to access any of the memos. I know that there are some third party task and memo applications available. So far, the only task applications that will sync with Outlook can only do it via wi-fi rather than via the sync cable. I will probably wait that out for awhile to see if apple decides to add either of those as native applications.
The only other issue I’m somewhat concerned about is the number of ebooks I purchased for my palm. They are stored in my PC but as of now there seems to be now way to get them into itunes to sync to my touch. Several ebooks that I have I actually purchased with other industry (law) related resources on CD. As of now I’m unable to get any of them into the touch. I tried to drag ?
The music, video and photo applications are stellar on the touch. The equivalent applications on the Palm worked well also. I agree that there are so many more great applications available for palm. I hear the comments that the ipod is not supposed to be a PDA, but it’s almost as if they decided to stop JUST short of a few small additions that could make it so.
All in all, I’m pleased with the transition so far and hope that the deficiencies will be dealt with, either by apple or by 3rd party applications.
If anyone has any updated information or comments, by all means…
What formats are your Palm ebooks in?
The latest version of ereader for the iPhone/iPod Touch has added some very helpful synching, transfer functions... and can go to web sites such as manybooks.net and fetch .pdb ereader files.
Various blogs have discussed how to convert other Palm book formats or text docs to ereader...
Perhaps yours are already in ereader format!
My ebooks are in “.pdb” format. After reading your reply, I right-click’ed each file and changed “Type of file:” to “iTunes Music Player (.pdb)”. I’ve then tried to double click, right click or drag them onto the iTunes window. In each case the iTunes window does come to the front, but with no other positive result.
When I first read your reply I did the above without success and also tried to access my palm ebook account from the ereader application on the ipod touch. It wouldn’t connect, but tried it again as I was typing this reply…
It worked! Thanks for the suggestion. However, I also have two ebook resources on disk that I purchased. Is there a site out there where I could possibly upload those two ebooks to and then access/load them onto my touch?
Or, can you direct me to some sites that describe how to convert them? I’m curious, if I can covert them into the appropriate format, how do I get them into the touch from my PC?
Thanks for the reply.
I cannot tell when your last comment was posted. Maybe you've already found this. Although it doesn't sync via iTunes (apparently), you can via eReader.
http://www.ereader.com/personal-content
I just bought the iPod Touch 32G 2nd Generation a few days ago. I was wondering if anyone knew how to transfer files from the Palm Lifedrive to the iPod Touch, specifically the Calendar and Contacts. I don't want to waste time recreating the Calendar, To Do list, or the Contacts if I don't have to.
Thanks, Heidi
Heidi
It is easy. Open your Palm Desktop on your computer. Go to File>Export. You will have options to export the calendar as vCAL and the contacts as vCARD; you should create file names such PalmCalendar and PalmAddressBook rather than use the default "untitled." Save them on your computer's desktop. Then open iCAL and import vCAL, and open Address Book and import cCARD files.
Gary
Heidi:
The way I did it was to sync my palm to outlook instead of the palm desktop, then sync the ipod to outlook. All calendar, contact, task and memo items transferred to outlook with only a few minor issues. As I stated above, as far as I know, no easy/automatic method exists (yet) to sync outlook tasks or memos to the ipod. I really hope this might be fixed, that apple would create native task and memo applications that would automatically sync with outlook. I still don't like using outlook at all, and wish I could have continued using palm desktop.
I hope you solved your issues.
abp
I need to transfer memo from my PDA to my I touch.
Thanks
After going through atleast 10 PDAs in the past 13 years, I can say touch/iphone is the greatest PDA ever made. It's such a pleasure you use, especially compared to windows mobile.
Maybe somebody can help me?
I always had a palm and used it as an address book which I can easily backup and as a memo pad where I can store important info and which I can also easily backup and search.
With iPod I do not see either any "memo" programs or I do not understand with what I can replicate their address book (I don't use Outlook and I would prefer to avoid buying one just for this purpose).
Can anybody suggest solutions for me? Oh, by the way, I am not very technologically advanced well, you can assume it from this request :)
Thank you,
Mikhail
I purchased i touch to replace aging Palm. I am an ER doc and have approx 250 "memos" of varying length. On the Palm they are listed alphabetically and can be rapidly searched in emergent situations. The problem I have with the i touch is the "notes" system are not listed alphabetically making a rapid search for certain notes take more time, example if you can't remember whether you filed a drug under its generic name or its trade name. Is their an application I can buy that anyone would recommend.
Michael:
I miss categories in Notes from Palm.
If you are running 3.* of the software, use the search ability when in Notes (really in *all* apps). Open Notes. You should be at the "top level" -- not looking at an individual note, but looking at all of them. Swipe "down" and you will get a Search box. That should help you find your notes. (Notes syncs with Notes in Mail on Mac and -- I think -- with Notes in Outlook, but you have to tell it to in iTunes when your iPod is plugged in.
-fred
I have a slew of docs on my palm. They are in Word format. I sync them on my pc and that has worked fine for years.
I, too would love to migrate off the palm to the touch, but haven't been able to find an app to load the docs from my pc back to the itouch.
-Mary
Has anyone tried docs to go for Palm? I've a Tungsten E2 and have lots of memos that I reference often. But I would also like to be able to save files to my palm.
hi, I am going to try the outlook for my memos, instead of retyping them all in notes, does anyone know If I could type data onto the computer and then transfer to notes? I was able to buy Isilo and then transfer CMC to my ipod touch from the palm. Try ISilo as it supports pda files.