Last weekend I got myself an Apple iTouch after seeing my wifes iPhone and all of the cools apps and features. I used to own a Palm and after moving my MP3s and getting a couple of podcasts I started to get interested in syncing this iTouch with my Outlook and using it as a pda. Disappointing to say the least.
First of all I looked around for a plugin or app that would do more than mail and contacts. I thought there would a native app to sync my notes and tasks, something that my work Blackberry does easily enough and I found that it was very difficult if at all possible.
Here is what I found first in searching around. There was one guy griping like me and no really good fix except for hacking around two different third party apps. I then looked around for desktop apps that I could start to use to sync anything with iTouch and was again disappointed.
The way that I look at my shiny new iTouch is that it is a media player and game player and just like with almost all other handheld devices I would want to be reminded of stuff and use it as reference and very rarely will enter data to it as it is difficult to get any typing pace for inputting.
So of course there is a temporary but effective method. As we all know there is wifi on the iTouch but otherwise you are off the grid. If this is not good enough then get an iPhone or eventually the iPad and have always on Internet. So right now I have Google Apps or Remember the Milk for tasks or notes. With these apps I can enter info on a desktop or from the iTouch when in the vicinity of a wifi connection and also view the data wherever there is wifi. For anytime that I have no wifi I can just use any of the free info apps to help me remember until later when I am at a computer.
Maybe David Allen would be proud of this method. Easy updates and then looking later at the stuff when I am at the computer to really track it.
Of course when I mention these drawbacks I also have to mention that even without a phone I still have a great PDA. I can have alarms, calendar, contacts all at my fingertips and if I meet anyone I can get the critical info from them. And let us also remember that this iTouch really is supposed to be a very simple PDA and really is supposed to be a media and game player like Apple markets the thing.
