Comments on: iPhone wishlist item one: To-do lists

By: Richard

Richard — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 03:50:06 +0000

Well it took me a while to get around to upgrading my previous device and getting an iPhone. I love it, really think it’s awesome, but this oversight in not including iCal to-do items is ridiculous. I mean, it includes all the individual calendars, and to-do items are associated with these calendars, so why oh why doesn’t it include them? Thanks for creating this forum to rant about this issue. Apple, are you reading this? Is Bill Gates paying you to drop back to his pace?

By: Rob

Rob — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 22:19:13 +0000

This comment comes a long time after the article and most of the above comments. There is still no built-in “To Do” integration with the iPhone (sorry, Leopard didn’t save the day). And while there are some ideas in the comments above, none are nearly as simple or elegant as a decent task (to do) manager. I mean, how did Palm have a solid task manager for 10+ years before the iPhone appeared, and yet Apple failed to implement many of the features? And why no ability to access the task list on the iPhone? It just seems odd… As a longtime Palm user, who recently switched to Apple’s iPhone and iCal application, I’ve spent literally 20+ hours researching and testing various applications, trying to figure out a system that comes close to the one I “upgraded” from when I switched from my Palm device (and Palm Desktop for Mac) to the iPhone and iCal (on the Mac). My peeve about iCal is that tasks display on a separate list, rather than on the calendar itself. So it’s very confusing when trying to see what appontments and tasks you have a month from Tuesday, so you’ll know if you have time to schedule a dentist appointment. Why not just have date-based tasks right on the calendar with the events, so you can see your appoints AND tasks for each and every day? The problem with the workaround method of managing “tasks” as “events” is that there isn’t a nice box to check when you complete them, and no great way to organize completed vs. uncompleted tasks.

If you’re interested, see my continually updating blog/rant about this issue here: http://liquidsoapdispenser.wordpress.com/2009/07/21/palm-to-do-list-to-ical-events/

By: andrea

andrea — Tue, 13 May 2008 00:05:42 +0000

For topcat….can you explain how to do the to do’s in IMAP email? (What’s IMAP email?)

By: Kevin

Kevin — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 01:18:36 +0000

ical does nothing for us wintel users. Also, if you use an online solution such as sbcyahoo for sincing and backup, mac users are out of luck. I even considered buying a new mac instead of a new PC, but opted out due to my heavy need for Outlook support and on-line calendaring for my staff.

It is clear that Jobs is going for the consumer/creative types and not for task-oriented/outlook reliant professionals. Too bad. I want an iphone and a reason to dump Sprint yesterday.

By: topcat

topcat — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 08:41:19 +0000

I agree that the launch of Leopard could coincide with the addition of to do lists on the iPhone.
Until then, it’s no big deal. If you use some kind of IMAP email it’s simple to create folders to manage your to dos.
You can do the same thing for notes, too.
Try it. It’s simple and it works. You can even incorporate repeating to dos, by creating repeating events in iCal with email reminders.

By: Follower

Follower — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 18:46:50 +0000

Apple’s next-generation to-do/calendaring functionality is being billed as a big part of Mac OS X Leopard. Rather than try to shoehorn something in that worked with the iPhone (already running a subset of Leopard) and the current Tiger on the Mac desktop, I have a strong suspicion that the iPhone will suddenly get a robust to-do/calendar/reminder system on the day that Leopard is released. (Assuming you upgrade your Mac, of course.) I don’t know what they’re planning for the Windows side of things, but expect a new version of iTunes to come out right about then, too, maybe with the new calendaring protocols tweaked to play nice with Outlook.

By: Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 16:21:49 +0000

Interesting — what a weird oversight by Apple.

There’s plenty of 3rd party stuff like Ta-Da and Toodledo though.