mbaierl.com Blog

<ViCoreEx> Apple verteilt jetzt gratis Schutzhüllen für das iPhone 4?
<ViCoreEx> Das ist ja als wenn Opel bei defekten Benzinschläuchen sagt: “Hey Leute, hier habt ihr Klebeband!”

After careful consideration I ordered it:

(from Geek And Poke)

Long long time ago I wrote about The Hit List – that it is going to be the best GTD software on earth.

A little after that I wrote about how to not write software and especially about how to not communicate with users.

Finally it is time to say that The Hit List is not going to be a hit…. let me quote some statistics from CAS:

Last tweet: December, 2009
Last forum post: December, 2009
Last blog post: September, 2009
Last significant (non-fix) upgrade to THL: May, 2009

To me this looks like THL is finally dead…. too bad, would have had a great future!

RIP, The Hit List!

Two non-published Dilberts talking about the “issue” of a lost 4th generation iPhone:

Hilarious!

You can read the full story at  Scott Adams Blog post.

A while ago I wrote about The Hit List – a clean, powerful GTD application for the Mac. Over a year passed since that posting so I’d love to give an updated about The Hit List and the development of that particular application.

THL is still beta

The Hit List lets you plan, forget, then act when the time is right. (source)

THL for the iPhone is vaporware

The competition….

My recommendation

On Wednesday the mysterious Apple iPad has been announced. Phase 2. And because a lot of people know that I’m an Apple fanboy and feel the urge to discuss “what does not work on the iPad and why it is crap” with me I’d like to finally outline a few thoughts about this device….

What the iPad is and what it is not

• The iPad is not a computer replacement. It is not meant to be your only computer in a household. Yes, it might work out for some special cases (my mum, my dad) but the average geek will still need a separate computer for development, hacking etc.
• The iPad does support multi-tasking. You can listen to music while browsing the Web. All well-coded applications will remember the application state, so going to a link while reading a mail will open up the very same mail once you open up the mail application again. IM has proven to work very well using Push notifications and I bet there will be better support for Push in the next release of the iPad OS (list all notifications etc.).
• The iPad cannot make phone calls and therefore is also no cell phone replacement. Well, you can make calls using i.e. Skype and a Bluetooth headset. Who wants such a large cell phone anyway? I never really understood that kind of comment…. it’s no phone at all! The iPad is a iPod Touch on steroids and targets unusable, slow Netbooks with Windows on it. So it is also no cell phone replacement.
• The iPad has three (3!) different keyboards. You can use the onscreen keyboard, which (according to my experience with the iPhone) will work very well in most cases. As alternatives you can use a Bluetooth keyboard or use the keyboard-dock. Plenty of options for faster typing.
• The pricing is quite ok – yes, you can get laptops for the same price, but take into account the quality of these low-end devices. Apple stuff is always a bit more expensive (no need to complain!), but on the other hand you get a device that just works. No fiddling with Firewalls, no RegEdit, all stuff that you don’t really need.

What I miss on the iPad
These features would make the iPad of real use to me and I think they are missing in the current version of the device:

• Wireless sync. I don’t see any reason for plugging the iPad to my computer to sync music and videos. Why can’t it sync over the air (when it is plugged to a power source)?
• Multi-User support. No need for two iPads in our household, but two separated user accounts would be great.
• Airtunes support to stream music directly to the speakers, instead of just remote-controlling the MacBook.
• A front-mounted camera would be great for Skype or iChat video conferencing. Eventually also to detect who is using the iPad (see multi-user support above).
• Cheaper e-Books. I don’t understand why I should pay the same price for an e-Book as for a paper book. The publisher saves money on printing, I have to buy a reader… so get cheaper!
• Tethering through an iPhone. I have an iPhone, so why do I need an additional 3G contract? Let me tether through the iPhone, because contract in Austria allow me to use my 3GB monthly volume how I want to use it. Could also use the iPhone GPS location…

Will I buy it?
Let me quote someone here:

To hell with it! It’s not something I need. It doesn’t solve any problems I have. I can resist. I am strong. I may be “Mr. Mac,” but I am also “Mr. Practical.”
Which is exactly what I said when the iPhone came out. 3 days later I was in the Apple Store eagerly holding out my credit card to anyone who would take it. (source)

So: I don’t know yet. Most probably I’ll skip the first generation and wait for an upgrade. It is also depending on the iPhone 4 which is to be released this summer (yes, my contract is finally over!) and what features it offers. And of course what features Apple will add to the iPad over time…

Youtube: Encyclopaedia Niavaranica – Michael Niavarani über das Iphone

Via m3.

I use one WLAN very frequently that uses WPA2 Enterprise for authentication; this also means that the certificate used for authorization has to be renewed every year. Getting the new certificate is not really that much of an issue, but renewing it was really hard this time….

In OSX 10.5 the certificate has to be imported into Keychain Access, which worked as expected. But for some reason the certificate was not used for authentication, the dialog for WPA2 Enterprise networks always defaulted back to the 1Password certificate. The first in list. Which obviously failed.
It took me a while to figure out where exactly the certificate has to be chosen in the Network Preferences pane – in a dialog that is very well hidden:

The iPhone was even worse – importing the certificate (and creating a new profile with it) was not a big deal. But again, only the first, old, expired certificate was used. Nothing easier then that, just remove the profile. Interestingly the certificate was still there in the “add WLAN” dialog. Removed the newly imported certificate – the old one is still there. Reset network settings – the certificate is still there. WTF?!?!
What finally worked was installing the old, expired certificate and then removing it again, without installing the new one. This removed the profile *and* the certificate from the phone. Then installing and using the new certificate was simple and worked as usual.
My guess is that the two profiles/certificates with the same name somehow confused the iPhone – so the process is to remove the old certificate before adding the new one.

While I hope this blog post helps others when they have to exchange their WPA2 Enterprise Certificate it will definitely help me next year on August 28th when I have renew mine again

Since the review of Todo and Things a lot of things happened (and I don’t mean the US elections!) and recently a new Todo application has been added to Apples AppStore – the Remember The Milk app for the iPhone. Time to compare it with Appigo’s Todo application, which I use since September and was updated several times since then.

Remember The Milk for iPhone
It was just a matter of time until RTM would launch their own application. And while Todo can also sync with RTM this app is of course highly optimized for the own service. It features everything needed for GTD so I just want to outline the postive and negative highlights:

• RTM supports tags, locations and searching for tasks.
• It even allows saving the searches (“smart searches”) and re-use them at a later time – a very handy feature!
• The biggest drawback is the requirement for a Remember The Milk Pro account which costs USD 25,- per year. So while the application seems to be free it requires yearly payments to keep the service up and running.
• Another feature I was missing is “quick adding”, which is available in Todo. In RTM you have click many more times to simply add a task without further options to the Inbox. In Todo just click the quick-add button, enter the task title and press “Done” to add the task (with the default settings) to the current list. Very handy to take quick notes at any time.
• Also I dislike the blue title bar, which perfectly fits with the RTM corporate identity but makes the app look like any 99 cent todo application out there…

Todo (Appigo)
Since the last review two new releases have been published by Appigo. While the first one “only” contained bug fixes and translations the update to version 1.4 introduced a lot of great new features:

• Todo now supports contexts, which are automatically synced with Toodledo.
• It also syncs tags, which are a very handy way to categorize tasks even further.
• Todo learned searching tasks, unfortunately it does not offer to store the search like RTM does. Maybe this is included in a future release?

Whom to choose this time?
Based on the pros/cons above the USD 25,- price tag for the Remember The Milk application seems a bit high to me. Certainly you get a lot of options and access to one of the best GTD list managers out there. Nevertheless if you already have a working system it is not worth switching and migrating all your tasks, especially because both Appigo and Toodledo are updating their products constantly.
If you start from scratch also check out Toodledo for the iPhone, which supports all features available but yet has to proof that it is working as reliable as Todo.

Since the Apple AppStore launched I was looking for a ToDo application – the iPhone itself does not synchronize iCal ToDo’s and it also only offers a simple list. No way to implement GTD with iCal. Until now all free applications in the AppStore turned out to be very basic and a one-way solution. Enter task on the iPhone, view them there, that’s it. But it would be great to have a Desktop app to also manage my tasks, synchronization and an open interface to my data.

Finally there are two canditades which I’m going to review – Appigo’s Todo and Things from CulturedCode. These candidated have been chosen because of their price tag and because they had a lot of positive reviews within the AppStore. Please note that I did the review without actually buying the apps as only the winner will make it onto my iPhone.

Things (CulturedCode)
According to the screen designs a very clean, iPhone like interface is offered; not like some free apps which hinder the workflow and look… Java based. More important, what else is offered?

• Things stores its data as XML which allows to re-use it easily.
• CulturedCode offers a native desktop application for the Mac to sync the data with.
• The data is synced locally and not stored on an external server.
• The costs for the desktop application are pretty high – 49 USD.
• The application is Mac only right now.

Todo (Appigo)
The screen design of Todo looks very similar than of its competition – it’s “just” a Todo application, so there is not a lot of room for innovation (but a lot can go wrong – check out the Freebies!). Lets talk about the unique features of Todo:

• Todo is able to sync its data to Remember The Milk (pro account only) or Toodledo.
• Syncing is done over the air, so it’s not as secure as a local synchronization.
• I had a deeper look into Toodledo – even in its free version it offers a lot of features including a simple, open API, a Firefox plugin, Dashboard integration etc.
• Toodledo is free, the Pro account is reasonable priced ($14.95/year!), but not needed.

Whom to choose?
Based on the bullets above I’m going to invest my money into Appigo’s Todo application. The main reason is the synchronization with Tooledo, which offers an API and seems to have a larger community behind it. Yes, I cannot store confidential information there, but in days of social networks a secured Todo account with a strong password is not that much of a problem compared to public profiles at social networking sites. And I can access my Todos whenever I have a browser available, no need for a Mac. Let’s see how it goes!

I’ll blog more about Todo, GTD and Toodledo in the future, just subscribe to the RSS feed to stay up to date. And another wish for Apple – would be great to test apps out of the AppStore for i.e. a day without any payment!