There were a lot of positives about the Pre. To name a few:

• Hands down, best rate plan available, by a long shot;
• Aside from the iPhone, probably the best darn phone out there;
• Good 3G data access;
• Nice size, comfortable fit in your hand or pocket;
• Physical Keyboard;
• Decent 3 megapixel, still camera;
• Good IMAP email with multiple account support;
• MMS is easy, free and fun.

There were significant negatives, though, that took precedence for me.

• Battery Life: What can I say, the battery life on the Pre is horrible. Unless you’re comfortable living in a state of paranoia that you may not be close to a power outlet, car charger or a USB port every few hours, the Pre is going to let you down big time here. Our Pre’s would barely make it to dinner time each day before they required recharging. And then, you have to leave it on the charger, which, for some strange reason juts awkwardly straight out from the side, making the phone unwieldy to hold and use while charging.
• It’s No iPhone: Perhaps the biggest problem we had with the Pre was that it just doesn’t measure up to the mature platform that is the iPhone OS. I am reasonably confident that if I had never owned an iPod Touch, and never knew how wonderful a mobile OS could be, I would have loved the Pre.
• OS/Interface: Compared to the iPhone OS, the Pre’s WebOS is slow, immature, sloppy and cluttered. As in the desktop OS market, Apple reigns supreme with its emphasis on user-friendliness and its mature and refined OS. I found the notifications on the Pre to be too small to see at a glance and hard to accurately touch. There are several “pages” of apps that you can slide left and right, like on the iPhone. But, what makes it cluttered and confusing is that each page, once you slide to it, also scrolls up and down. So, if you slide over to a page, you can’t see immediately if the app you need is right there, you also have to slide up and down. Also, the up and down sliding doesn’t “lock” into place, and it has a slippery sort of feel to it.
• Plastic Screen vs. Glass Screen: Speaking of slippery feel… I believe this particular problem is attributable to the fact that the Pre has a plastic screen, whereas the iPhone and iPod Touch have glass screens. The problem I found was that if there was any sweat on my hands whatsoever, the Pre would not respond. I missed several calls trying to slide the unlock button with sweaty hands. My fingers or thumbs would kind of stick to the screen and jump around, and the screen wouldn’t register the touch. This was very frustrating. The glass on the iPod Touch is much more responsive and forgiving to sweat.
• Form Factor: I felt the Pre was a pretty solid design at first. However, as compared to the rock-solid iPod Touch/iPhone form factor, the Pre felt a bit creaky and there was a fair amount of play related to the sliding mechanism that made the phone feel a little jiggly.

Commitment-phobia

The bottom line with the Pre, for us, was that they were ok phones with great rate plans, but also some pretty big drawbacks. I have no idea what will happen with the iPhone and its exclusivity agreement with satan AT&T or its extortionist outrageous text-messageless hellhole expensive rate plan. But, the one thing that really drove me crazy was the idea that I would settle for the Pre, and then 6 months to a year later, the iPhone would open up to Verizon or Sprint or would finally adopt a humane rate plan. I don’t know how I would survive the regret if such a thing were to happen while I was stuck with my Pre for another year-plus.

So, we returned our Pre’s, reactivated our Katanas, resumed our month-to-month posture with Sprint, and, in the process, discovered that for the last 2 years, Sprint has been charging us a bogus $3.50ish fee every month for living in a county in which we never lived. Even after the restocking fees for the Pre’s, we actually came out ahead.

Admittedly, texting on a 10-digit keypad sucks, but at least the Katana’s 2.5 year old battery still lasts me pretty much all weekend, and life is definitely sweeter without a cell phone contract.

Anyway, we’re happy we turned the Pre’s back in. My ownership of an iPod Touch has gone a long way toward mitigating the need for an iPhone – not the whole way, but a long way.

For now, I will sit hiding in the bushes with my trusty Katana and iPod Touch, fending off the evil temptations that lure me to the dark side AT&T. I don’t know how much longer I can last…

Why Pre?

My wife and I have been getting along pretty well with each of us having a cell phone, iPod Touch, and a digital camera (of the Canon SD variety). We completed our latest 2 year contract with Sprint a little over 6 months ago, and we loved being contract free. We have been waiting for the iPhone to end exclusivity with AT&T and we both know that iPhones would be great phones because of our wonderful experiences with our iPod Touches (iPods Touch?). Texting has taken a bigger role in our lives over the last several months and, as you know, texting with a numeric keypad is a huge pain in the bum (does that make me sound English?). We really wanted our next phones to have a full keyboard – physical or otherwise.

In the last couple of weeks I became pretty excited about the Palm Pre. I was excited about how it would merge all of my contacts and calendars from my work, google and facebook accounts. It looked like the Pre has a great web browser and a strong app platform that would be usable by literally millions of capable web developers.

The main factor that drove us to purchase the Pre was the price, however. It looked like the Pre was a good enough phone that the money we would save over going with the iPhone would be worth it – even if it ultimately didn’t turn out to be as good as the iPhone.

The jury is still out for me as to whether I will stick with the Pre. I will give it a few more days before I commit to sticking with it or consider moving to the iPhone or elsewhere.

Rate Plans

As of today (I will note that this blog was published on June 7, 2009, the day before whatever announcements Apple makes at WWDC 2009 on June 8), Sprint far and away has the best rate plans available. Here is the minimum plan for the Pre on Sprint, compared with a comparable plan on AT&T for the iPhone and a Blackberry Curve on Verizon:

Sprint (Pre) [info here] $129.99/month 2 Palm Pre’s ($400.00) 1500 Minutes Unlimited Data Unlimited Text (and MMS) 25 (approx.) TV channels GPS with turn by turn directions Total 2 year price including purchase price: $3,519.76

AT&T (iPhone) [info here] $179.99/month 2 iPhones ($400.00) 1400 Minutes Unlimited Data Unlimited Text (presently, no MMS for iPhone) GPS Total 2 year price including purchase price: $4,719.76

Verizon (Blackberry Curve) [info here] $229.95/Month 2 Blackberry Curves ($99.99) 1400 Minutes Unlimited Data Unlimited Text (not sure of MMS) GPS (Verizon Navigator) Total 2 year price including purchase price: $5,618.79

The Phone Itself

I read in some reviews that the Pre felt plasticky and light. I don’t really share the same impression – perhaps because I came into it with lower expectations. I came into it knowing that the iPhone was the best damned phone out there, and expected this to be a phone not made by Apple. That said, I was not disappointed in the Pre. It feels pretty solid for a phone not made by Apple. It’s a wonderful size – definitely thicker than the iPhone, but shorter, more rounded and a nicer fit in your pocket.

The sliding mechanism feels fairly sturdy, but it is not always a snap to slide open. You naturally want to slide it up from the bottom, but you need to put your thumb pretty much right in the middle of the screen to get the proper leverage to propel the top up (or the bottom down, depending on your perspective).

Even though the slider feels pretty sturdy, the phone does creak when you hold and touch it – a consequence of having moving parts, unlike the iPhone.

Physical Keyboard

Over the last 1.5 years or so, I have gotten pretty used to using the virtual keyboard on the iPod Touch. Apple was right when they told us that once we learned to trust the auto-correct on the virtual keyboard, we’d move a lot faster. I wouldn’t characterize my typing on the iPod Touch as flying, but it is certainly manageable. That said, I still hate to write any more than a couple sentences on it.

The Pre’s keyboard has been criticized by many for being too cramped. I don’t really have a problem with it, and I have some pretty big hands (me being 6’3″ and 230 pounds, and all). I find that I do type faster on the Pre, and that I don’t mind typing more. I won’t be drafting any motions on the thing, I’m sure, but it’s easier to bang out a couple paragraphs in an email.

This next point is more related to text manipulation than to the keyboard itself, but moving the cursor around on the Pre is a process that can be described as wonky – especially as compared to the iPhone. On the iPhone, you place your finger on the screen and hold it there until a bubble appears that zooms in on where your finger is and shows you the cursor that you can drag around and place anywhere with relative precision. On the Pre, you have to hold down the red/orange button on the keyboard and drag your finger on the screen. The wonky part is that the cursor doesn’t really follow your fingertip. It generally follows the direction of your finger, and in my experience thus far, is a little jumpy. This is a little disorienting because it’s a little like using a trackpad, where you move your finger on the pad and the cursor moves on the screen, only your finger’s already on the screen so you expect the cursor to be at your fingertip but it’s not. It’s workable, but not as effortless and smooth as the iPhone.

Copy and Paste works in basically the same way, only, instead of holding the red/orange button, you hold the shift button while dragging.

Multitasking

Frankly, I don’t find the multitasking to be a big deal. The speed with which apps launch on the Pre is about the same as with my iPod Touch (first generation). Certainly, when you leave apps running in the background, switching to them is faster than opening them up from scratch. Although, I will say that allowing things to load in the background is nice for when you don’t feel like waiting (web pages, contact & calendar syncing, emails, etc.). Of course, most of these occur in the background on the iPhone anyway – except web pages.

In practice, I tend to close out my apps when I’m done with them anyway because having a lot of open “cards” makes me feel disorganized, so, the ability to multitask on the Pre doesn’t really improve my life all that much. It’s a nice, but overhyped, feature.

Camera

The camera on the Pre is actually pretty good. It’s 3 megapixels and there’s no optical zoom (or digital zoom for that matter), so, you can’t expect it to completely replace your 8 megapixel point-and-shoot with 3x to 4x optical zoom and built in image stabilization. There is a flash, however, which makes it not only possible to take pictures in low light, but they actually come out pretty well – for a camera phone. It’s beyond dispute that the Pre takes far better pictures than the iPhone 3G. I am wondering how the next-gen iPhone will stack up.

Speaking of the camera in the next-gen iPhone… It’s a foregone conclusion that the next iPhone will take videos. The Pre’s camera does not presently take video, although, Palm has alluded that they could enable video recording with a software update. I won’t be holding my breath, however.

Even juicier rumors point to the 2009 iPhone as having a front facing camera that can be used to video-chat, as seen in these supposed spy-shots of the heretofore unreleased device here and possibly here.

For myself, however, I wonder if video isn’t one of those things that seems really awesome to have, but that you would rarely actually use it. I think the ability to quickly upload and share video would be the factor that determined how much I would use it.

… And speaking of sharing… The Pre does allow you to share the pictures you take – by email, MMS or by uploading to Facebook or Photobucket. I would like to have more options here – like Flickr and Picasa. And, as far as I can tell, there’s no way to upload pictures to short-url-picture-sharing services like twitpic or pic.im for use with Twitter.

Email

The email application for the Pre is actually pretty strong. I use three email accounts, primarily. Gmail for personal email, and Google Apps for My Domain for my work and EsquireMac email accounts – all using IMAP.

The one significant advantage Pre email has over the iPhone email app is that it provides a unified inbox view for “all inboxes.” A feature that Apple’s Mail.app has had for years, but strangely, the iPhone is missing.

Once you set the preferences properly with IMAP, you will receive your emails instantaneously. It works pretty much how you want it to work.

Apps

As many others have said, the App catalog for the Pre is very limited at present. I’ve downloaded Tweed (ok), Pandora (awesome), Accuweather (awesome), Spaz (don’t use it), LinkedIn (don’t use it), and FlightView (don’t use it).

The big deal, according to Palm, with its WebOS is that you can develop applications for the Pre using only basic web standards. I’m not smart enough to know this for sure, but the impression I’ve gotten from what I’ve read about WebOS is that the apps you can develop will be more powerful than the simple webapps the iPhone started out with, but not as powerful as the native third party apps that the iPhone presently hosts.

For now, there is no Fring or Skype on the Pre. I’m not sure if you could build a Fring or Skype client using solely WebOS, but I suspect you could. It would be nice to be able to make calls via WiFi that wouldn’t ding your monthly minute allotment.

The Pre does have a Tasks program that comes installed. It has a pretty nice interface, and supports multiple lists, but it has no sync capability. I suppose you could use something like Remember The Milk (of which I am not a big fan), but there are definitely no apps like Things, OmniFocus or the forthcoming The Hit List which all have excellent desktop Mac apps that sync with excellent iPhone apps.

Charging and Syncing

The Pre charges and syncs via a micro-USB cable and port that is on the right side of the device. Micro-USB cables are essentially ubiquitous, and you probably have a few laying around the house already, especially if you’ve ever bought a point-and-shoot camera or a portable USB hard drive. Although, if you’ve ever owned an iPod or two, you probably have just as many iPhone charger cables laying around, too.

The problem with the Pre in this regard is that the charging cable comes right out of the side of the device – making it very awkward to hold and use while charging. Compare this to the iPhone whose charging cable comes out of the bottom, making it much easier to use while plugged in.

Interacting with Your Mac

What you have heard is true: the Pre presents itself to iTunes as an iPod, and iTunes will sync with the Pre. It will not sync Apple DRM’d (that’s copy-protected for the uninitiated) files. It will sync playlists, podcasts, photos and videos (again, only non-DRM’d videos, though).

If you’ve taken pictures with your Pre, and plug it into your Mac, iPhoto will recognize that there are pictures on your Pre and will enable you to import them.

Unfortunately, there’s no way to sync bookmarks with the Pre’s browser. This is a big plus for me on my iPod Touch, and something of a downer with the Pre.

The Pre will show up on your desktop as a hard drive. In this regard, it is very easy to drag and drop new wallpapers and ringtones onto your Pre. Actually, as far as I can tell, you can copy any MP3 file to the ringtones directory and the Pre will allow you to select it as a ringtone – not too shabby.

Other than iTunes, iPhoto and the USB-drive functions I’ve described, I do not believe the Pre offers any further Mac-specific interactions.

Other Points of Interest

• The EVDO 3G data speed is pretty good, and the WiFi works pretty effortlessly, picking up recognized networks automatically.
• Voicemail still sucks, requiring you to call in and listen to them in order. Although the Pre does show you how many voicemails are waiting for you.
• Reception seems to be a little worse than my old Katana, but not horrible.
• Accessing the menu dropdown on the top left of the screen can be difficult, and often takes several attempts to hit the menu.
• There are no good cases for the Pre. And by good, I mean (a) protect the phone and (b) leave the phone and its functions easily accessible. The vertical slider form factor makes this a particularly disconcerting engineering feat, I’m sure.
• Battery Life is not very good. With moderate use, I have to charge it at least once, if not twice, per day.
• Speaking of battery life, the cover does come off, but is non-intuitive and labor-intensive. You won’t be changing the battery while driving, that’s for sure.
• Crashing and resetting: Each of our Pre’s have crashed once since we got them yesterday. There is no way to reset the power for a reboot without popping off the back case and removing and replacing the battery – a significant pain in the rear. Compare this with the iPhone’s ability to reset by simply holding the button(s) down for about 10 seconds.
• GPS seems to work now, but it took about 24 hours before I could get the Pre to find itself.

Conclusion

All in all, I’m a little disappointed in the Pre. That said, I’m not completely discouraged. As far as it goes, it’s not a bad phone, it does a lot, and it has a completely unbeatable rate plan. I have faith that the app catalog will grow exponentially over the next several months.

My wife shares about the same sentiments with me – it’s not a bad phone, but we’ve definitely been spoiled by our iPods Touch (iPod Touches?).

What are we going to do?

Well, if I keep the Pre, I don’t want to carry around my iPod Touch anymore – there’s too much duplicate functionality, and one of the biggest advantages of owning a Pre (or iPhone) for me is the ability to converge my three devices that go with me everywhere and make my pockets much happier – phone, camera, ipod.

That said, I can’t help but to have this feeling that I will miss Apple’s App store and iPhone OS if I get rid of my iPod Touch and don’t get an iPhone.

The iPhone plan is just too expensive. I can’t justify spending almost $200 (after taxes and fees) per month on a cell phone. I predicted at the beginning of this year that Apple would end its exclusivity with AT&T at the two-year mark. I hope I’m right because there needs to be some competitive downward pressure on the iPhone’s rate plans, and the sooner the better.

If the Pre doesn’t grow on us, we’ll either be downgrading back to our Katana’s or we’ll downgrade to a non-smart phone with a QWERTY keyboard for easier texting and a cheaper plan.

I will be anxiously awaiting Apple’s WWDC announcements tomorrow, and I am genuinely excited to see what’s in store for the 2009 iPhone – even if I never end up with one. I’m just geeky like that.

Finally – Any Questions?

If you have any questions about the Pre, or would like to know if it can do this or that, please feel free to leave me a comment below, shoot me an email or hit me up on twitter @esquiremac.

The beta download was version 0.9, indicating a more or less mature app. In fact, Andy Kim has stated that while he is very interested in hearing new feature requests, he is trying to get version 1.0 out the door quickly, and will give greater weight to feature requests in future versions. Thus, the 0.9 beta version I’m playing with is essentially feature-complete.

The Hit List is set to compete directly with OmniFocus and Things. You may recall that I compared the two and came out heavily in favor of Things.

I am impressed with The Hit List. This is one heck of a task management application. Of course, it has all of the basics you’d expect a competent GTD app to have: tags, contexts, quick entry method. Beyond the basics, The Hit List has a lot of polish and is very well thought out.

Check out this screen shot (click to enlarge):

Some of my favorite features:

Quick Entry with system-wide keyboard shortcut

Like Things, The Hit List gives you the ability to assign a system-wide hot key to call up a Quick Entry window so that you can quickly and easily enter a task without the need to leave whatever application you’re working on and call The Hit List into focus.

Start Date, Due Date, Estimated Time

When adding a task, you can specify a start date, due date, and the kicker is that you can enter an estimate for the time it will take you to complete the task. This will help you plan your activity for the day a little better.

Tabs

The interface exists in one main window, with the ability to have multiple tabs. This works much like a standard web browser, and you have the ability to drag the tabs around to re-order them.

Sub-Tasks

While other GTD apps allow you to have at least one or two levels of sub-tasks, The Hit List offers virtually unlimited sub-tasks and sub-sub-tasks, etc. I actually got bored creating nested tasks before it ever stopped me. (click to enlarge)

iPhone version

Evidently, an iPhone version that syncs with the desktop version is on the way:

No annoying floating palettes

One of my main complaints about OmniFocus was the annoying floating palettes. As I recall, I said:

The other big pain I found about OmniFocus was the inspector window that always hangs around. That does not make for a clutter-free desktop environment. [rant warning] I know you can get rid of it, but so much of your necessary and mundane functionality is in the inspector window that you can hardly do anything without it open. To me, the inspector window is like using footnotes in legal writing: Sometimes they’re great to use, but for the most part, you should say what you need to say in the body of your work. If it’s important, don’t bury it in a footnote. OmniFocus, to me, feels like a brief that is written with 30% of the text in the main body and 70% in the footnotes.

Timer (one exception to the no floating palettes)

You can click on a task and type “B” or just hit the begin button, and a timer window will pop up. Handy if you want to track your time on a particular task.

Keyboard navigation

Virtually every control necessary to use The Hit List has an intuitive keyboard shortcut – even things you might ordinarily drag and drop. Some people will use this, some people will not. For myself, the longer I use a computer, the more I find myself using keyboard shortcuts. Being that I have used a laptop as my full-time computer for the last 6 years now, I think using a traditional mouse is a huge drag (no pun intended), and much prefer the convenience of a trackpad right below the keyboard. Even so, I often find keyboard shortcuts to save time even as compared to the relatively short venture down to the trackpad.

/Tags, @Contexts

Of course, no GTD or task management application would be complete without contexts and tags. The Hit List makes tagging and context-ing dead simple. To start tagging, just type the “/” key and type whatever tag you wish to assign. The Hit List will automatically predict what tag you are trying to type. To assign a context, just type the “@” key and it will similarly start automatically predicting the context you are trying to type. Even cooler than that is The Hit List’s predictive tagging and contexts. As you type out the task you are entering, The Hit List predicts based on your prior entries what tags and/or contexts to assign to the task. This is done before ever stroking the / or @ keys. Way cool!

Ultra-Customizable iCal syncing

The Hit List allows you to sync specific iCal calendars with tasks marked with specific tags and/or contexts. I imagine this could come in handy.

Attach files and emails by drag-and-drop

One of the greatest and most essential features I love about Things is its ability to attach files and emails to tasks by dragging and dropping them (sometimes awesomely referred to as “dragon drop”). The Hit List features this functionality as well, however, in this Beta version, there are a few bugs. Don’t worry, Andy, I’m sending in those bug reports!

Conclusion

With The Hit List, the Potion Factory has taken the best features of OmniFocus and Things, learned from their mistakes, and added some great new features and interface and usability enhancements to come up with a task management app that is truly a step ahead of the competition. The Hit List will set the new standard for task management applications for the Mac. I share in TUAW’s prediction that The Hit List will “storm the gates.”

Potion Factory announced the private beta of The Hit List here. Unfortunately for those eager to try out The Hit List, at just over 300 beta testers, Andy has closed the door for the time being, but has indicated he may approve more people as needed.

How will The Hit List be priced? The Potion Factory is shooting for a $70 price target. This places them on the higher end between Things ($49) and OmniFocus ($79.95). It is my opinion, so far, that The Hit List outperforms both Things and OmniFocus and is the best looking and easiest to use of the trio. I consider the $70 price point to be very competitive in light of the quality of the app.

Recently, I have become a convert, and, although I have never read David Allen’s book, I have become convinced by some of the most rudimentary elements of his methodology (capture tasks, assign them to a context, assign them to a project, and move on)

One day, several weeks ago, I inexplicably became obsessed with finding a solid to do application that would be attractive, powerful, and easy enough to use that I’d actually use it.

To me, the most important element to any GTD application is the ability to dump a thought as soon as it comes to you. You think of something, capture it, and move on with whatever you were doing.

In order to manage my tasks in the past, I’ve used the Sticky-Notes application on my Mac, I’ve used TextEdit files, I’ve tried to use Mail.app’s built-in to do functionality, and I’ve used scraps of paper laying around as well as the palm of my hand. I know, chaos. But, I kind of reveled in my ability to be chaotic.

So, I don’t know what came over me a few weeks ago, but I have found what I think is a great solution for me.

I know a lot of folks are big fans of OmniFocus. I tried it out extensively, and I just couldn’t get into it. The interface felt a little wonky to me. I really didn’t like how the “items” didn’t have any sort of UI that made them feel like “items.” They are just kind of text fields, and you can’t really just click on the item itself without entering into a text field. This is a small complaint, but to me it is significant, and it made the app just feel not right. The other big pain I found about OmniFocus was the inspector window that always hangs around. That does not make for a clutter-free desktop environment. [rant warning] I know you can get rid of it, but so much of your necessary and mundane functionality is in the inspector window that you can hardly do anything without it open. To me, the inspector window is like using footnotes in legal writing: Sometimes they’re great to use, but for the most part, you should say what you need to say in the body of your work. If it’s important, don’t bury it in a footnote. OmniFocus, to me, feels like a brief that is written with 30% of the text in the main body and 70% in the footnotes. A very capable brief can be written that way, but it’s a pain in the ass to read [end of rant]. OmniFocus is plenty competent in terms of functionality, however, and it allows you to manage contexts and projects like any good GTD app. I just couldn’t get down with the feel of it.

Anyway, this post isn’t supposed to be about how much I don’t like OmniFocus, it’s supposed to be about why I have a thing for Things.

Things is a beautiful application from Cultured Code. Currently, Things is in beta, with version 0.9.4 being the latest release. The app is free while in beta, and will cost $49 when it is released “Summer 2008.” If you sign up for their newsletter at their website before its release, however, you can purchase it for $39.

In Things, you can set up a system-wide hot key that will bring up a window that allows you to enter a new to do with as much or as little information as you want. This is awesome for me, because I don’t want to leave whatever application I’m in just to make a silly to do. What is really nice, for me, is the fact that you can drag files into the notes section of the to do item, and it will create a link to that document. That works with emails as well, which is a huge help to me.

If you have been following me on Twitter lately (@esquiremac), you may have noticed me commenting on the zero-ness of my inbox. Now, when I get an email that I need to act on, but can’t or don’t want to right now, I hit command-shift-space and drag that email into my new to do window, make a quick note of what to do, set a due date and click save. Then, I file the email away from my inbox, and the inbox goes back to zero. Now, everything I have to do is in my Things app, and not lingering around haphazardly in my inbox.

The next best thing about Things, and the thing that actually sold me on Things, is the iPhone app and the ability to do two-way sync of your to do’s.  Cultured Code introduced Things for the iPhone and iPod Touch several weeks ago, but it did not allow for syncing. I was definitely not willing to shell out ten bucks for a stand alone to do app on my iPod Touch – especially after I had become proficient familiar with the desktop app. But, then Cultured Code announced that sync for the iPhone app had become their top priority and that it would be included in the next update to the iPhone app.

They delivered. The day they announced that the Things iPhone app would be updated with sync I plunked down my ten bucks and bought it. And, the day Things was updated, I downloaded the update.

The sync interface is actually quite clever. It operates over the local wifi network and requires your desktop app and your iPhone app to be running at the same time. This may be a pain to some, but it’s beautiful to me. I don’t have an iPhone, so I’m not used to ubiquitous internet, and therefore cannot demand that the app be synced whenever the heck I feel like it. I also applaud Cultured Code for not requiring me to sync my iPod through iTunes to sync my to dos. That would have been a huge buzzkill, and they are wise for avoiding that method. I don’t know whether they’re working on cloud-based sync, but I suspect they are.

Once you link your desktop app and your iPhone or iPod Touch through the preference pane of your desktop app, all you have to do to sync your to dos is to open your iPhone app any time your desktop app is running and on the same network. Instantly, the two apps sync.

I will admit that there are some bugs and limitations. For instance, there are no “Areas” in the iPhone app, and I have seen duplication once or twice. That said, it’s still very useful, and I have a ton of confidence in Cultured Code, and I know they are working on these issues as I type.

To put things in perspective for Things, they have been pushing towards a 1.0 release for many months, and then this iPhone thing came up, so they diverted their attention to build a great iPhone app. Now that they have gotten the basics of sync down, they are reshifting their focus to rolling out the 1.0 release. I cannot wait, and I wish them the best.

For more about Things from another Macs in the law office kind of guy, check out Jeffrey Kabbe’s fantastic write-up about Things here at Apple Briefs.

Now, I get to check off the “blog about Things” item on my to do list.

For some reason, firmware 1.1.4 no longer retains your login information, meaning that every time you visit a site that requires a login (Google Reader, Facebook, Digg, etc…), you have to login again. Even if you just logged in a minute ago, you have to login again.

Apparently, there was a problem with the cookies.

iRemember is a lightweight hack that makes a few tweaks and tells you it’s “safe to uninstall” before Installer even finishes cleaning up. Do you have a jailbroken iPhone or iPod touch with a foggy memory? Add http://repo.ispazio.net to your sources in Installer, refresh and search for iRemember. Your favorite web apps will give you a much warmer welcome.

via TUAW.

This, of course, assumes you have jailbroken your iPhone or iPod Touch.