Palm Focusing Exclusively on webOS Going Forward

i hope iPhone/a good Android/WinMob 7 is at Sprint soon.

Gekko wrote:
WebOS does not have a usable Calendar app or PIM. period. the "Synergy" feature makes the PIM "dog slow", buggy, and unusable. no serious PIM/business user can tolerate it.

You're preaching to the choir. For as long as I used PalmOS, ever since I'm with my Treo Pro on Windows Mobile I've stayed there and commited to continue doing so until another mobile OS steps up and offers meaningful and complete synchronisation with Outlook and/or Notes. The solutions currently on the market for Symbian and WebOS are rather useless for me...

I guess I once was a fan of Palm and no longer am. Unless they step up and offer a solution that offers at least the same functionality PalmOS had with its Calendar and Tasks application they lost a client with me.
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T|E -> T|X -> (N80IE?)

I read that Access may be exploring the possibility of a Garnet-powered device. Has anyone heard news on this front?

I disagree. In the next few years, I see Windows Mobile and Android competing for those irrelevant 10% HTC marketshare dollars. An AT&T Tilt with Android is no more compelling than one with Windows Mobile. They are both really just becoming catch-all operating systems.

This. Exactly this.

No?

Then what am I talking to you for?

LMAO!!!

my real problem with the calendar is the overall implementation of various features and functions and in many cases, the complete lack of industry-standard calendar features altogether.

For example,

* it takes far too many steps (taps & animated pop-ups) to make an appointment
* if an appointment title contains the "&" symbol, it cannot be changed on the Pre because changes won't sync back to the Google calendar - So you're thinking, 'well, that's just a bug, they'll fix it eventually.' Actually, the bug used to be if there was ANY symbol in an appointment title it wouldn't sync. They fixed that bug with the 1.1 update but somehow missed the "&" symbol. Really?
* moving from today to tomorrow or yesterday should be INSTANT (those 2-3 seconds per page, just to draw a calendar page, really add up if you need to flip through a week or two) and this is a BIG problem in my world
* the clumsy method for rescheduling appointments - if you want to move your appt to next Wednesday, FIRST you flip to the day you want to change the appointment to so you can find out what the date is BEFORE you navigate back to the appointment you want to change and edit it, because once you enter the dialog to change the appt. there are nothing but numerical options
* the total lack of a search function is crazy - but I wouldn't complain if they would just come out and say, 'yes. well add search in the calendar eventually.' I don't even need it soon.
* the horrible view options - the lack of an agenda view, a weekly view with text, or a usable monthly view seems crazy
* the fact that Palm feels it's necessary to have animations which only emphasize the slow performance of the calendar - Why bother animating the accordion?
* the appointment alert times are far too limited - for example, apparently no one at Palm ever puts airplane flights in their calendar with appointment reminders because there is no 2 hour reminder option. Then again, maybe they have a flight marked in the calendar and 2 hours ahead of it, they enter a separate appointment with an alert that says "flight in two hours." Then again, it may not even matter what alert times are available because...
* appointment alarms occasionally just don't go off

These are the kinds of things that make the calendar app. incomplete, and unreliable alarms make the calendar almost pointless.

Would I like to have floating events or the ability to assign different reminder tones to different appointments or different font sizes/styles? Should the Today view automatically show the portion of today that includes the current time when you first go to today, so you don't have to scroll? Should the calendar offer more views in landscape mode? Sure. But I'd put those kinds of things in the "Tweaks That Would Be Cool If They'd Get Around To It" category and I'm not especially outraged that they're not included in the first release of a new phone.

With Palm's PIM history, I expected an above average, better than iPhone or Blackberry PIM/calendar. If the calendar was JUST average, I'd sit quietly on the sidelines, waiting for Palm to tweak features along the way until I was happy (as I'm doing with the texting app., the phone app., the sound preferences, etc.) Since the calendar is so far below average, I'll throw in most any time somebody posts a calendar complaint thread.

Are the DtBk people working on WebOS options?

CES Dewar from Pimlico would rather I didn't quote him so I haven't written a post on it, but the short answer is no - he's not a big Javascript fan, and besides that is waiting for webOS devices to sell in greater numbers before he dives in.

think about this. you're telling us to open up and run an emulator app every time we want to access the friggin Calendar app. consider for a moment all of the ugly speed, ease, native, stability, syncing, and compatibility issues which would arise from trying to do this. not to mention the whole absurdity of needing to do this. sorry but suggesting this kludge as a viable option is dumb and naive. i'm not sure the kludge would even properly given the database and OS structure.

Gekko wrote:

larnapp said:

my real problem with the calendar is the overall implementation of various features and functions and in many cases, the complete lack of industry-standard calendar features altogether.

For example,

* it takes far too many steps (taps & animated pop-ups) to make an appointment

* if an appointment title contains the "&" symbol, it cannot be changed on the Pre because changes won't sync back to the Google calendar - So you're thinking, 'well, that's just a bug, they'll fix it eventually.' Actually, the bug used to be if there was ANY symbol in an appointment title it wouldn't sync. They fixed that bug with the 1.1 update but somehow missed the "&" symbol. Really?

So you concede that Palm fixed a bug in their calendar but insist that they won't fix another one?

* moving from today to tomorrow or yesterday should be INSTANT (those 2-3 seconds per page, just to draw a calendar page, really add up if you need to flip through a week or two) and this is a BIG problem in my world

This is the problem of with insisting that your three days with the Pre is the be all and end all of the Pre experience. Moving from one day to the next is instant now. (OK, maybe there is an occasional half-second today but nothing like the delays that happened before the 1.1 update.) Now, the Calendar itself is still slow to start up and moving from day to week to month view still has a delay of about two seconds.

* the clumsy method for rescheduling appointments - if you want to move your appt to next Wednesday, FIRST you flip to the day you want to change the appointment to so you can find out what the date is BEFORE you navigate back to the appointment you want to change and edit it, because once you enter the dialog to change the appt. there are nothing but numerical options

Of course if you want to move your appointment from the 17th to the 23rd, you just tap on the date and scroll to that date but yeah, I definitely preferred the little pop-up calendar from Garnet.

* the total lack of a search function is crazy - but I wouldn't complain if they would just come out and say, 'yes. well add search in the calendar eventually.' I don't even need it soon.

I disagree, I want a search function in the Calendar now.

* the appointment alert times are far too limited - for example, apparently no one at Palm ever puts airplane flights in their calendar with appointment reminders because there is no 2 hour reminder option. Then again, maybe they have a flight marked in the calendar and 2 hours ahead of it, they enter a separate appointment with an alert that says "flight in two hours." Then again, it may not even matter what alert times are available because...

Yeah, that's a pet peeve of mine too.

Would I like to have floating events or the ability to assign different reminder tones to different appointments or different font sizes/styles? Should the Today view automatically show the portion of today that includes the current time when you first go to today, so you don't have to scroll? Should the calendar offer more views in landscape mode? Sure. But I'd put those kinds of things in the "Tweaks That Would Be Cool If They'd Get Around To It" category and I'm not especially outraged that they're not included in the first release of a new phone.

Many lot of the tweaks you write about above, floating events for example, were never available in the default Garnet calendar or were gradually added over time. They were added by third party applications like Datebk and Agendus. That's something to keep mind when discussing the webOS Calendar. It's very likely that we will see third party calendars in the near future. There is already a homebrew Agenda http://www.precentral.net/homebrew-apps/agenda app available for the Pre and a Quick Event http://www.precentral.net/homebrew-apps/quick-event app which can theoretically speed up the entry of events through the use of specific phrases. (In reality, it doesn't parse phrases like "Dinner Sunday 6-8 at Bob's house" well enough to make it a good method for fast entry of events. The bottom line is that development on the Pre is growing and will continue to grow until a better calendar solution arrives and I'm pleased enough with the Pre's calendar to wait for it to come.

Screw convergence
Palm III->Visor Deluxe->Visor Platinum->Visor Prism->Tungsten E->Palm LifeDrive->Palm TX->Palm Pre
Visor Pro+VisorPhone->Treo 180g->Treo 270->Treo 600->Treo 680->T-Mobile G1->Palm Pre
http://mind-grapes.blogspot.com/