Standard Works

Yes, you are wrong. I haven't tried all the book readers for iPhone, but for the ones I have, I see no advantage over the Palm readers. Which Palm and iPhone readers have you used?

I guess is you haven't used a Palm PDA very much. I used one for 11 years. For one thing, if you created the scriptures or DL'd them into iSilo format, you could have links to any other document.

Second, if using MarkMyScriptures (hereafter MMS), it is true that there is no link to the scriptures from the church magazines. However, because of MMS architecture combined with the speed of PalmOS, you could look up a reference in a flash. Plus, with the MMS Web app, you could download ANYTHING that was on the church's website in two mouse clicks without creating it like we have to now AND highlight the content as you wanted, which we can't currently do with created docs. You could also bookmark this dl'd content, something we can't currently do, either.

Plus, you could EASILY create your talk in this app. Many did. You do that in MMS by using the create your own Topical Guide/Index feature of MMS. Copy any scripture verse, quote, what have you into your talk. If you didn't want to read your talk from your PDA at the pulpit, you could export it and then print it out. Also in MMS, you had a palette of 11 colors from which to choose to highlight, underline, or change the color of the text. And of course, you could use any combination of the above. If you didn't like the palette, you could customize it choosing from 224 colors. Shall I go on? There is absolutely no way that this app is "more advanced" than any scripture app on the Palm. No way! Yes, this app has some very nice features that was not in MMS, but this app is still an infant. MMS was very advanced. One day, LDS Scriptures WILL be more advanced. But that isn't today.

As far as everything else goes, I used DateBk5 on the PalmOS for my PIM and there is NOTHING, I repeat NOTHING in the iPhone OS that even matches it for speed, features, and *efficiency.* I'm using the best that iPhone OS has to offer and that is Pocket Informant. It's good, but nowhere near the maturity level of DateBk5. It has a long, long ways to go. What I have to do with Pocket Informant in an of itself is a royal PAIN. To sync my events with Outlook (Until they release their direct Outlook sync conduit) I have to sync PI with Google Calendar, then sync Google Calendar with Outlook. AND if I want alarms associated with my appointments, I have to then sync Outlook with the built-in Calendar. (As you may know, Apple has limited access to the Calendar API's, therefore not allowing things like alarms in 3rd party calendar apps.) THAT'S SYNCING FOUR TIMES!

As a matter of fact, iPhone OS has a long, long way to go. Wow, I just paid $9.95 to "upgrade" my Touch so that I can now copy/paste and search. Not impressed. Palm devices could do that from the get go. As a matter of fact, most PDA's that I know of could do that. We just now got that capability?!!! For $10 bucks?!!! What an insult! Also, either because of the OS or the iPhone chipset, or both, speed is definitely an issue. Opening apps, docs, reading large docs, any memory/processor intensive activity is sluggish compared to the ARM processor-fueled Palm OS.

Docs2Go on the Palm was second to none. It's first iteration was for the Palm OS as a matter of fact. Edit and sync Word, Excel, Outlook, Powerpoint, etc. Yes, we can do that now on our iPhone/Touch platform, but this is just to make the point that iPhone is NOT ahead of Palm on this front, either. The one big difference is that I had one of those ultra-cool Stowaway keyboards for my Palm device. I used a keyboard to create docs in Word on the Palm or take notes. A real keyboard. With same tactile specs as my laptop keyboard. Now with Bluetooth enabled, we hopefully will see some keyboards for the iPhone, but even still, for some stupid engineering reason, the iPhone keyboard will have to have separate drivers written for each specific app. Not one driver that covers any app on your iPhone, but it will need coding specifically for each specific app. Go figure.

Contacts? Well we all know that iPhone Contacts is pretty stark when it comes to features. From Day 1, I could sync all my Outlook Contacts AND their categories to my Palm. With my Touch, I finally figured out that I had to create a folder in Outlook for each category that I wanted in iPhone Contacts. Then I had to either move or copy each of my contacts in respective categories to its corresponding folder then sync with iTunes. A lot of work. Every new contact has to be put in its proper folder as well. Of course, we won't even consider that with DataViz (creator of Docs2Go) BeyondContacts for Palm you had complete sync with Outlook. Email, calendar, notes, tasks, categories, multiple categories (for contacts, email, appts, etc. with more than one category) color coding, etc.--all there.

Notes? Even with the "new" and "improved" Notes that I got for my $10 upgrade, it still is bare-bones. I can't do categories with it like I could with my native Notes app on the Palm.

Oh, yeah, let's talk about syncing, another glaring weakness with the iPhone. Right now I have to do a sync for Docs2Go, Aji Reader, Pocket Informant, Files, LDS Scriptures, and Contacts. That is SIX separate syncs! With the Palm, I was able to do one sync and it synced ALL at once. Why can't we do that with iPhone OS? Stupid.

So did I miss anything? Well, I miss my Sony Clie, that's for sure. And it came out, when? Seven years ago?