How to live WITHOUT the iPhone

In my iPhone 2.0 review, I mentioned that, “…the iPhone isn’t the first (device) to mobilize and synchronize your life, however before the iPhone it took about 3 devices to do this.” So what are those 3 other devices, and how can you live without the iPhone? Right now I’m having to manage to live without the iPhone (because right now I just can’t afford the phone or the plan), however it is possible to manage without it – while mobilizing your life and keeping it all in sync. First, lets look at the equipment: I have a cell phone, a PDA, and finally a Cell Phone.

So first we have the cell phone, in the iPhone its definitely a core component (after all it is the iPhone), nonetheless any phone will do the same phone functions that the iPhone does (except visual voice mail) and in most cases – more (like MMS). As great as the iPhone is there are benefits to not using the iPhone as a phone, to put it simply; with other phones you have a TON more freedom. With the iPhone you’re virtually stuck with AT&T (or whatever carrier the iPhone is sold for in your country). Most phones do have internet, unfortunately to the iPhones advantage they only offer that dreadful “mobile internet.” Still with the increasing amount of people wanting to surf the web on the go, an increasing number of websites are creating mobile versions for normal cellphones. These mobile versions aren’t stunning, but they definitely get the job done. One word of caution though, check with your carrier to see how much they charge for data, it might be cheaper to go with an unlimited data plan. So getting a regular cell phone might not only be cheaper for you, but better suited to your needs.

The next piece of equipment that the iPhone “replaces” is the PDA (Personal Digital Assistant). The two subcategories underneath the PDA umbrella are Palm Pilots and Pocket PC’s. However, since this is primarily an OS X focused blog and I haven’t spent much time with Pocket PC’s, I’m just going to be looking at Palm Pilots in this article. The only downside to Palm is that their software feels kind of outdated and old, but besides that it does what it needs to and even a bit more. Setting up your palm is pretty simple, but there’s a feature within Mac OS X that helps you keep all your stuff in sync. In iSync (that program that used to manage a lot of your stuff until most of its tasks got separated into other programs and we all kinda forgot about) there’s a feature that lets you enable iSync on a Palm device (pictured below).

 After you click on the option in the menu bar iSync will set up everything for you. It’s amazingly simple and painless. 

After its all set up you can select what calendars and contacts you’d like to sync with iSync, then everything on your palm with be in sync with iCal (even to-do’s) and Address Book. You don’t have to do anything after that, when you sync your palm pilot with Hot Sync, iSync will do everything on its own, you don’t need to start anything. There are also a ton of different applications you can find on the web (and on Palm’s online store) to put on your Palm device and help you mobilize and synchronize your life even more. One application that came with my handheld, which I highly recommend, is Documents to Go (found here) which lets you take your Word documents and Excel Documents with you. The only downside to this app is that it crashes if you export from Pages. If you don’t have Microsoft Word on your computer than you can choose to use Bean as an alternative (which is what I’ve been using to write some of these articles on the go) and it works great (check out the review here). Even thought the iPhone can view documents like this app can, it still can’t edit them. I, personally, use Palm’s Tungsten E2, but Palm also has a few other options out.

Then finally we have the iPod, there’s not really a whole lot to say about getting an iPod instead of an iPhone, except its difference in storage and price. So those are just a few tips on how you can live without the iPhone, even though its still an amazing and revolutionary product, we don’t all have to have it.

iPhone 2.0 Review

My life is completely digital, and as most of you would agree, it seems like I’m always looking for a new way to make my life easier. One of the most popular ways to simplify your life right now can be done by doing 2 things. First, making your life mobile: usually with small gadgets like sub-notebooks, smart-phones, PDA’s, and more. The second way is by integrating your life – keeping all of your stuff in sync. Now Apple has created a way to do this: the iPhone. The iPhone not only helps you make your life mobile, but it also intigrates it. Sure the iPhone isn’t the first to mobilize and synchronize your life, however before the iPhone it took about 3 devices to do this. This is one of the things that’s made the iPhone the successful product that it is today. Well now with the iPhone 2.0 software, they’ve managed to make that even better.

First off, you have the App Store.   This has made the iPhone into a legitimate mobile-computer. Even though the original iPhone software had tons of PDA like qualilies, the ability to add 3rd party applications really separated the two. However with this app store the iPhone has now topped PDA’s (in this aspect).   Not just because it can install apps, but the quality and power of these apps. For example normal PDA apps are usually slow, ugly, and pretty useless. So, with this in mind, the iPhone manages to pull ahead. Also, on the iPhone you have the ability to download these apps anywhere you have coverage (unless they’re bigger than 10MB then you must use wi-fi). Another thing that the majority of PDA’s can’t do. So the App Store has really helped people continue to mobilize their lives, while keeping it on one small device.

So the App Store definitely improves on the iPhone’s ability to make your work life mobile, but what about keeping it all in sync? Well, when the iPhone was originally released it would sync exactly like it does now. However, if your appointment changed or got cancelled it wouldn’t show up until your next sync. Thats why Apple imbedded push-sevices into the new software. Apple first targeted the business market by adding Microsoft Exchange support. However, Apple felt that push is something the average consumer should also have access to so they introduced Mobile Me. Mobile Me is Apple’s Dot-Mac replacement; basically what it does is give you a lot of the features you’d have with Enterprise – just on a personal level instead of a business level. It’s still $99 a year (which breaks down to like $8.25 a month – even though you pay yearly). So it will push all your contacts, calendars, and mail accounts. (Note: Mobile Me also has more features than the ones mentioned above, but they weren’t really relevant to the 2.0 review – these features will be talked about in other articles.)

Apple manages to pack in one more feature that lets you sync and mobilize your life even more: Email Attachment Support. This new feature lets you open iWork and Microsoft Power Point files. This is a great feature, because now you get to view your important work documents that you might need on the go. The only downside to this great new feature is that you can’t edit these documents. I’d love to see Apple come out with an app on the App store that’s basically like “Pages to go” so to speak (and they could easily charge about $20 for it).

Then of course Apple threw in a few extra features to make the iPhone easier to use: including mass move and delete of email, contact search, image saving (from both email and web), and a scientific calculator mode (when you rotate the phone into landscape mode). However, the last thing they did in the 2.0 update was continue to spread their horizons by adding a ton of new languages into the iPhone (you can find a full list on Apple’s site).

So in conclusion, the iPhone 2.0 update is packed full of features and a very welcome update. Are there still things that need fixed/improving? Yes. However I think that Apple definitely knows what they’re doing and how to keep improving their already great platform.

The 2.0 Update is free for all iPhone users and $10 for iPod Touch owners.

Note: I don’t want any comments saying “why do you keep saying iPhone 2.0 if its for both the touch and the iPhone?!?!” Well, Apple actually calls it the iPhone 2.0 software (even for the iPod Touch it’s called the “iPhone 2.0 software for iPod Touch”)