iPhone: Wot no To Do list?
I realise that I’m probably in the minority here, but anyway…
The one thing that piqued my interest when I heard Apple was making a phone was the possibility of syncing my iCal calendar events and To Dos with a nice, sexy, Apple-designed PDA-phone. I currently use Missing Sync to sync with my Tungsten T2 – and while both Missing Sync and the Tungsten work, they’re not the most reliable of beasts. And I’d like to have my PDA and phone in one handy gadget. I’m a big GTD fan, so being able to sync events and To Dos is pretty much essential.
Frankly, you can keep your music playback and Google Maps – all I want is a nice way to manage my events and To Dos on the move.
So I was somewhat taken aback to discover that, not only does the iPhone not sync iCal To Dos, but it doesn’t actually have a To Do feature at all! What the…?!
It gets worse. Although it will sync iCal events, it apparently dumps all events into a single calendar. Much like the bad old days with my Tungsten, before I switched from iSync to Missing Sync. Extremely lame.
Come on, Apple – you made iCal, you made the iPhone. Can you not at least get them talking properly to each other?!
All this is probably moot anyway – I live in Australia, so probably won’t get my hands on an iPhone until 2015… 😉
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July 9th, 2007 at 6:39 pm
its 130a here in los angeles….. and after spending the last four hours transcribing all my handwritten notes into my ibook’s ical — which included all my events as well as all my To Do notes that i have to get done this week — i synced up my new $650 iphone (the 8G) which cost me half of next month’s rent —- so i could have a really productive week starting tomorrow — and i realize the freakn thing doesnt sync up the To Do items nor does it even have a to do list capability —- i just dont understand the mindset of engineers who design apps like ical and products like iphone and then dont even talk to each other to make friggin life a little easier —- honestly i couldve sat in the middle of the freakn street and stroked myself for the last four hours and gotten more accomplished — now im freakn exhausted and annoyed — and tomorrow’s gonna suck…. hey thanks apple…. maybe steve could take his 56% profitability on the phone and pay for a bunch of dwarves to hand massage me while they tell me all the to do items im supposed to be doing tomorrow
July 9th, 2007 at 6:49 pm
lol. That doesn’t sound like the best day ever! :-/
Is it really true that it has no To Do capability at all? Unbelievable! On the plus side, if enough people complain about it then Apple are sure to slip To Dos into a future firmware update, I guess…
July 10th, 2007 at 1:55 pm
Wow…… I too am really pissed off about this…… wtf was apple thinking when they did this, i mean come on….. I am actually thinking of returning the phone because of this feature….. this is really crappy….
August 22nd, 2007 at 1:02 am
If iTunes is anything to go by, then as soon as you plugged in your iPhone it would ask “do you want to sync your calendar?” then when you click Yes it would promptly *delete* any to-do’s you’d added whilst on the move.
Somehow I always feel Apple miss the whole point of computers: instead of providing a variety of ways for people to work with their environment in the manner that suits them best, you have to choose Apple’s way, or none at all 😉
August 22nd, 2008 at 1:08 pm
A Work-around…..
I’m pissed off about the no “To Do” list thing also, but I have a work-around that works well for me. Here it is:
Go to your address book and click “file”, then select “new card”. Name it whatever you want, such as “To Do List” or “Notes”, but put a “-” in front of it. That way your address book will store it either as the first contact or the last. Either way it will be easy to go to the end and select later. Make your list there and it will sync along with your address book. I’ve been doing this for a couple weeks now and it works just fine.
Hope that helps you guys,
Tanner
September 25th, 2008 at 12:34 am
I converted to Mac 18 months ago after a long exposure to Microsoft. The one thing that made me (significantly) less productive? Using a Palm with a Mac sucks. Even using Missing Sync software, the synicing is unreliable, and if you can’t trust your data, you don’t use the system.
Now I have a shiny 16Gb iPhone and can’t even have a todo list…
On what planet does this lack of interoperability between the products of THE SAME COMPANY make sense? Apple is all about design? Clearly not of systems involving fallible human beings.
Oh, the irony – I’d be better off with Microsoft.
September 26th, 2008 at 5:51 pm
@David: It does seem amazing doesn’t it. This is the one thing that’s making me think twice about buying an iPhone. If it had a built-in, reliable To Do list that synced seamlessly with iCal, I’d be down my local phone shop tomorrow.
October 1st, 2008 at 8:22 am
I think it’s incredibly ridiculous that Apple has such a glaring omission in their products. How can you not include a To Do list on the iPhone?
On a side note, even the To Do list within their iCal application doesn’t allow for recurring To Do’s. Another amazing omission.
http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html
http://www.apple.com/feedback/ical.html
March 12th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
I’d recommend taking a look at Noter2. It’s easy to use and best of all it syncs with your computer. http://dbelement.com/apps/noter2
October 18th, 2010 at 7:50 pm
hi,
I’ve just started a petition to see how many of us are really are “slightly frustrated” about this omission.
http://www.gopetition.com/petition/39922.html
feel free to spread the word (or the link). I’m naive enough to think that if there’s enough of us that signs it, maybe Apple will do something about the problem.
The ball is in your court,
All the very best