Software on Palms vs Software on iPod Touch/iPhone
In days gone by both Richard and I had various PDAs - we both started off with PalmPilot Professionals in the late 1990s, moved on to Handspring Visors in around 2000, then Richard went the mobile phone route and I had a Handera 330 and finally a Sony Clie TH55 before also going the mobile phone route. Richard is now an iPhone user, and I have an iPod Touch and a Nokia 6110 Navigator.
In 2005 I blogged about what software was on my Sony Clie, and long before that Richard had listed what he had on his Handspring Visor. There is quite a lot of commonality between those lists:
- Email: I used Snappermail back then, now I use either the IMAP facilities on the Nokia Navigator 6610 or on the iPod Touch. Richard uses his iPhone but did at one stage used Top Gun Postman to send and receive mobile email. No additional software needed
- ToDos: I used to use WP+ to manage recurring ToDos. Now I use Remember The Milk and the web access from either my phone or my iPod Touch
- Security: in days gone by both of us used Secret!. Now I use HandySafe on my phone. With the advent of the iPhone/iPod Touch applications, I'm sure there will be an equivalent purchase coming soon
- Data storage: I used to use Pilot DB which allowed me to create basic databases and store data. I've not replaced this and haven't missed it
- Timesheet: I used to use Timesheet, Richard used to use PunchClock. I don't currently do timesheeting, so don't have an application installed on either device.
- Backup: I used to use Flyzip to back up to the external memory card. Now I rely on the syncing between my mac and the device
- Games and entertainment: I still miss RocketMania - and excellent game which worked really nicely on a handheld device. I've installed some of the new iPod Touch game apps and am enjoying Hangman, Sudoko and Sol Free. Obviously having mobile internet access takes away quite a lot of the need for offline document readers, for all but airline travel. I'm currently trialing the great instapaper as an iPod Touch app to see how it behaves
Over the years, the pre-installed software has improved a lot, I remember having a hard time trying to find a Palm OS application which could handle both IMAP and HTML emails. I recall paying quite a lot of money for Snappermail at the time. I'm sure that there will be more and more iPhone/iPod Touch applications available as time progresses, and it'll be interesting to revisit this list again sometime.
Labels: applications
Posted by Jane at 9:00 AM
