Day 6 without my iPhone

Today was a day for contacting Apple to see where my repaired/replaced iPhone is. Thanks to the nice people at ups.com, I've been able to track its movements. Apparently it left Apple HQ in the UK early this morning, was last recorded in Dublin this evening, and should reach me in Galway tomorrow morning. Needless to say, I can't wait. Just hope they were able to fix it.

So I'm almost free of the non-iPhone drudgery of the past week or so.

I've been too bust at work today to miss any of the games I play on the iPhone, so I won't write about those just yet. However, one app comes to mind as being something I normally use on a daily basis: it's called HomeBudget with Sync.

There is a free Lite version, but I use the fully featured version, currently €3.99 in the App Store. The free version doesn't have the "sync" function, and that's one of the best bits about this app. What's it for? Well, it's simply a way to track what you spend and what you earn over time. You can easily set up regular recurring incomes (such as salaries) and regular outgoings (mortgage, car repayments, etc.), but where the app really comes in handy is for recording those occasional little (and sometimes not so little) expenses. Things like cups of coffee, right up to fuel for the car. Anything you spend money on can be recorded in the pre-installed categories, and if you have a one-off expense, it's very easy to set up your own category for it.

So why is the paid version worth €3.99? Simple: it lets you use any number of iDevices and automatically syncs in the cloud between them. And if you use the same Apple ID when installing, you can have it on more than one device for the single €3.99 fee. So we have it on my iPhone, my wifes iPhone and our iPad, all for €3.99. And when I put an expense in on my iPhone, it appears on my wifes app automatically when she opens it on her iPhone. And on the iPad, when the app is started there. Great way to keep an eye on those expenses.

The app can then summarize your outgoings either based on a series of dates, or by category. So it can help identify where the largest expenses are, and possibly identify where savings can be made too. It graphs all this on a trend line showing your projected income and estimated expenses into the future too, based on past data. Brilliant, and sometimes scary.

So for the last few days I've not been able to input things like coffee, fuel for the car, or groceries like I normally would. Luckily I made some notes, and although the app defaults to entering details for the current day, you can back-date entries too.

Hopefully I'll have my iPhone back tomorrow, so I'll let you know how that goes!

Day 5 without my iPhone

As expected, in work today I came across a productivity issue that my iPhone would have handled with ease for me.

A colleague contacted me and he wanted me to have a look at a file he was trying to import from Excel to Numbers on his iPad. Normally I'd ask him to email the file, or use Dropbox, to get it onto iPhone. Then I'd have a look at it on the Numbers app.

So the productivity apps I missed today are: Dropbox and Numbers

Dropbox is a great app, and it's free! It works in a way that the iCloud is going to work, but it's available right now. The app requires you to register, and in doing so you get 2GB of online storage for any type of file.




If you have Dropbox installed on all your devices (iPhone, iPad, Mac, PC, Unix), then the files on it are available on any of those devices. Very handy, and you can set up folders that are shared with your colleagues so you can work collaboratively. And as a bonus, you get an increased storage amount if you introduce friends to the service. Placing files in the Dropbox folder/s is very easy....just a matter of dragging it to the icon on the screen if you're on your desktop. Quick tip: if you drag and drop, the file will "move" from its current location on your local hard-drive, so if you want to keep a copy locally, simply copy and paste it to Dropbox instead.

Now, if I had my iPhone with me, and if my colleague had shared his Excel file with me on it, my next step would have been to have a look at it in Numbers.

Numbers (for iPhone and iPad) is currently €7.99 on iTunes, so it's one of the more expensive apps that I've bought. It's universal, in that a single download works on both iPad and iPhone, so if you have two devices the price seems better value.

It is part of the iWork suite, which you might be familiar with as Apples answer to Office. Along with Pages (Word) and Keynote (Powerpoint), these apps are a real alternative to Office programs. I find that the animations and transitions in Keynote, for example, are far slicker than those available in Powerpoint, and since getting the iPad last Christmas I haven't made a single presentation on Powerpoint (or on a desktop computer for that matter).

Numbers is not as function-rich as Excel, and the slightly cut-down version available for iPhone and iPad losses some more functionality. For example, I haven't found a way to merge cells on the mobile version. Like most apps, though, updates may add functionality as time goes by. For now, though, as a mobile means of viewing spreadsheets, it's fine. Don't get me wrong when I say it losses some functionality: I'm referring to high end spreadsheet functions. All the more basic stuff is here, including formulae and some statistical analysis tools. I use it in the classroom as a quick and easy way to record attendance, and for that it's perfect.

Sharing files from Numbers (and Pages and Keynote) is very simple. You can export for later synching through iTunes, or you can email from within the app itself. You get a choice of formats, including native format, Microsoft Office formats and PDF. One of my biggest concerns before migrating to Apple was compatibility with colleagues that are not yet in the "post-PC world", but because you can export in a number of formats, that's not a problem.




Numbers picture from "maths.net.au"

Day 4 without my iPhone

Sunday is not usually an overly productive day for me, so I wouldn't be using my iPhone for anything more than social networking today normally. Therefore, you'd think I wouldn't miss it more than yesterday or the day before.

But: for the first time since giving up the iPhone on Thursday morning, I went to the UPS website to see of I could track the progress of at least the delivery of the phone back to Apple. It turns out the phone arrived at Apple HQ in the UK on Friday afternoon. So it's in safe hands, and hopefully it will be examined during office hours tomorrow. I couldn't resist checking on it any longer, so although I am managing (albeit in a very slow, awkward and off-puttingly tedious way)without it, I clearly have a longing to get it back.

Couple of apps I missed today: weather apps.

I use two weather apps, Irish Weather and Weather+ Free. Both are free. The Irish Weather app gives a very detailed province-by-province forecast, whereas the Weather+ Free app gives a more summarised forecast and current conditions. I find Weather+ Free is handy when traveling, as you can easily add cities to customise the app to display the conditions wherever you are around the globe.

This morning I was wondering whether I should get fuel for the lawnmower, on the off-chance that the weather would clear up enough to cut the grass. Usually I'd have a quick look at one of the weather apps to help me decide, but without the iPhone today I didn't have that opportunity. As it turned out, the weather was quite showery and I couldn't get out to cut the lawn, so it's a moot point in this case!


I'm beginning to really miss a few of the games I played on the iPhone too, but I'll get to those in another post.

Tomorrow will be a big test, when I am back at work and I start missing my productivity apps. More to follow....





Pictures from "ccsusmartboard2011.wikispaces.com"

Day 3 without my iPhone

Day 3, and I'm doing okay without the iPhone. I haven't become too grumpy to live with, and I haven't shriveled away into a sobbing heap in the corner of a room.

One app that I really could have done with earlier today was Teamviewer. It's available on the iPad too, but when I was out and about I didn't have the iPad with me. Essentially what the app does is it allows you to remotely access any computer that you have the program running on.

I have it running on my office computer, so any time I need to get a file from there, I just log on to my iPhone and the phone screen mirrors the monitor of my office desktop. I then have access to not only the files, but also the programs on the desktop.

So, on occasion, I have actually run AutoCAD on my iPhone, although technically the program was running on my desktop, using it's RAM and processor speed. The only thing that might, literally, slow you down on the iPhone is if you have a slow internet connection, because that's how it connects to your remote computers. So it won't work unless you have decent 3G or wi-fi coverage.

Another possible annoyance is the size of the iPhone screen. This is where Teamviewer for iPad comes in handy: the real estate of the larger screen makes navigation around the remote monitor much easier.

The app itself is free, although if you use it for commercial purposes you are informed that you should purchase the Pro version (currently €80). I use my version for personal use only, so for a free app it's extremely powerful.

So while I was out and about today, I needed to look up a phone number. Normally I'd have had that information to hand on the iPhone, but today I didn't have the option of going online, connecting to my office desktop, and looking up the number.

As with most of my gripes so far, the reason why I miss the iPhone can be summed up as "convenience". So far, I've managed to get around most of the bits and bobs that I've missed, but at a much much slower pace. I've only just been able to look up that number now that I've arrived home, but I needed it 3 hours ago, and if I had had my iPhone, I wouldn't have had to wait.

Photo from "myfitnesspal.com"

Day 1 without my iPhone

So the microphone has started giving trouble on my iPhone 4. It started about a month ago, but just like going to the doctor, I've been putting off the inevitable.......a trip back to Apple for my iPhone.

Apparently it's a known issue with the iPhone 4, and it manifests itself as intermittent microphone break-down. About once or twice a week it would stop working so that people on the other end of a call couldn't hear me. When I tried it on speakerphone, they still couldn't hear me. In fact, the only way to make a call when the problem occurred was to use the Apple headset with built-in mic. Not a very handy solution.

Anyhow, Apple took my iPhone away this morning, for about a week or so (I'm told.....let's hope it's no longer).

So that means I have to use an old phone that I had lying around the house. I had a choice of 2 handsets:

Nokia 6120  

or

Samsung Tocco 

Both are handsets I used in the past for a year or so. I tried the Nokia first, thinking the novelty of a small phone would be fun. It wasn't. The sim card lasted about 20 minutes in it: I found the screen was way too small and the navigation with the buttons far too slow for my liking.

I should say, this series of posts won't be about knocking either of these phones. They were both pretty much state of the art when they came out first. The times have changed, though.

So I tried the sim in the Tocco next, and it's been in there all day now. It's still a bit of a pain using the native Samsung browser, and the screen is nowhere near as responsive as the iPhone. More importantly, it's the lack of apps that is the main problem. I will stick with the Tocco until I get the iPhone back, because at least it doesn't have fiddly buttons and the screen is a reasonable size.

Over the next few days I'll report on how I'm getting on. I already sorely miss the iPhone, and I reckon my time away from it will really highlight the things I like and miss about it most: the apps.

So watch out here for some renewed enthusiasm for the apps I used to use every day!

Number 1 app that I miss: e-mail. This CAN be set up on the Tocco, but nowhere near as easily as on the iPhone, and with no unified inbox. So, after spending 20 minutes trying to set up an email account on the Tocco, I gave up. So it means I won't be able to check my mails as often as before. Good or bad thing? Time will tell. Right now, it has frustrated me that I couldn't check mails whenever I wanted (waiting for the coffee machine to finish filling the cup, waiting in the queue at the phone shop, and in that rush-hour traffic jam).

Photos from blog.mobiles.co.uk  mobile.engadget.com iphoneangels.co.uk

Blogpress (iPhone and iPad)

I use this app to write blogs on both of my iDevices. I have accounts through Blogger (google), but this app works with all the blog hosts, such as WordPress, Tumblr, Joomla, TypePad and Live Spaces. Adding a blog from these providers is really quick and easy.

Once the blog has been added, writing new posts is very easy. You can add links, pictures and use some RTF font effects too (through HTML, but you don't need to know how to code, the app looks after that for you).

You can save posts on the device for editing and later publishing, or you can publish directly after writing the post. You can also view posts that have already been published, and edit them if you need to.

There's also a facility to automatically send your posts to a twitter and/or facebook account, so sharing is taken care of for you without any further effort.

This is a great app, although the current price of €2.39 is a little steep, in my opinion. If you have a good internet connection all the time, you can do your blogging through the web page of your service provider instead. Where Blogpress really comes in handy is when you want to write/edit while offline.

9/10

Blogpress website