Category: Apple

  • Windows Mobile’s Weak Week View

    What happens when a bunch of Windows Mobile enthusiasts (my fellow Windows Mobile MVPs) get together? Well, there’s a lot of talk about mobile devices (no surprise). And, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that the Windows Mobile calendar gets a lot of discussion time since it is probably one of the most used applications on a Smartphone (eithre more or less than Contacts depending on who you talk to). One common complaint is the near uselessness of the Calendar’s week view. I tend to mostly use the Agenda (list of appointments) and Month views myself. The Week view is just, well, weak. Apple must feel the same way since their iPhone/iPod touch calendar doesn’t even have a week view. The week view would be more useful to me if it didn’t assume that a week is defined as starting either on Sunday or Monday and ending on Friday or Saturday. I’d prefer a rolling-week view myself where the view starts on the current day and pushes out a week in advance. Why? Because by Wednesday or Thursday, I’d like to see Saturday and Sunday at the same time without advancing an entire week just to see the Sunday after the coming Saturday. For me, the weekend is a unified pair. It is not two days split across two weeks.

    I think AgendaOne and Pocket Informant (as well as other add-on products) let you see a calendar week view in this relative fashion. But, it would be nice if the built-in Windows Mobile Calendar just let us see a week either in the traditional paper fashion or in a relative fashion.

  • Definitely Need a ChargePod

    ChargePod

    Fellow MVP Sven Johannsen pointed me to the Callpod Chargepod (Amazon affiliate page) multi-device charger (manufacturer page). I’m traveling to Seattle to attend the Microsoft MVP Global Summit and wish I had known about this thing earlier. The sad thing, though, is that charging six devices at once is not quite enough 🙂 But, it sure would help!

  • The iPod touch Paradox: It is Easier to Control a non-touch iPod by Just Touch

    The funny thing about the iPod touch is that I use it for everything except listening to music and podcasts. Why? Touch devices like the iPod touch and Pocket PC are two-handed devices. Both require you to cradle it one hand and manipulate it with the other. Non-touch iPods, like non-touch Windows Mobile smartphones, are designed from the ground up to be one-handed devices. I can adjust the volume, go backwards and forwards through a song list, pause or play on a non-touch iPod without looking at the navigation wheel. This is pretty much impossible for me on the iPod touch.

    I’m heading to Seattle to attend the Microsoft Global MVP Summit next week. And, I was just debating whether to take an iPod video or iPod touch with me. Yeah, it would be more P.C. to take a Zune, but as I’ve mentioned here before, it takes forever to get video podcasts and other video files on the 1st generation Zune. And, I’m planning to catch up on a bunch of video podcasts on the flights to and from SeaTac. I’ll probably take the iPod touch to get a better video viewing experience. But, I really wish Apple had an iPod touch with a navigation wheel to provide tactile feedback.

  • Website Exploit Can Freeze or Crash iPhone/iPod touch

    According to CNET… A new exploit will either lock up your iPhone or iPod Touch or crash your Safari browser on your PC or Mac OS desktop if you simply visit a maliciously coded Web site.

    Web code locks up iPhones and iPod Touch

    The current workaround is to disable Javascript in the Safari brower. Yuck. CNET’s article provides the 4-step process to disable JavaScript.

  • ActiveSync for the iPhone? Keep in Mind it is Exchange ActiveSync, Not Desktop

    Apple announced that they licensed ActiveSync from Microsoft to let the iPhone directly sync with Microsoft Exchange. I could make some snide remarks about ActiveSync here (all well deserved). But, the thing to remember is this: They are NOT talking about syncing an iPhone to a PC using ActiveSync. This is purely an over-the-air sync directly to the Exchange Server. I hope the iPhone experience with Exchange Server is a good one. Nothing is worse than the desktop ActiveSync/WDMC experience that has been emotionally maiming Windows Mobile users for years.

    Here’s an interview with Microsoft’s corporate VP for Exchange to provide the details on this Microsoft-Apple licensing.

    Q&A: Microsoft Helps Connect Apple iPhone Users to Microsoft’s Exchange Server

  • Linkedin Mobile Looks So Much Better on an iPhone/iPod touch

    Linkedin Mobile on iPod touch and T-Mobile Dash

    Linkedin is the latest big social network site to mobile enable itself. You can find the mobile friendly site at…

    mobile.linkedin.com

    It would have been nice if they adopted the “m.” prefix to reduce the amount of tapping on a small keyboard or screen. But, oh well…

    The real story here though is that once again the barebones display designed for WAP-ish devices like Windows Mobile that can’t deal with a rich web site design looks horrible compared to the much richer iPhone/iPod touch version. You can probably figure out which is which in the photo above. One is an iPod touch. The other is a T-Mobile Dash Windows Mobile 6 smartphone (amateur edition).