Michael Schilder

Well another queue done, I got into the much whispered about Tempo calendaring app on the iPhone. For some obtuse reason, it's not available on the Canadian iTunes store, so I had to download it off the US store, but for all that, it works just fine (it even defaulted to Celsius temperature...so it's not that ignorant of my regional expectations)

So, how is it? It's good...he says with some trepidation and reservation. It's clear this is a work in progress, but it shows some ambitious promise. Unlike Sunrise, it connects to your phone's local calendars (included my work Exchange calendar), and does all the normal things you'd expect it to do at first. An Agenda view, a List view, a day view, a week view, and a month view. The interface is clean and simplistic.

The good:

Can connect to LinkedIn, and show LinkedIn profiles for your meeting contacts. This can get a little quirky. My calendar has one meeting that simply refers to "Mike" in the title, and decided to pick up on that, and show the LinkedIn profile of a Mike that actually had noting to do with the event at all, but it means well (I guess?).

Provides a fast location link that passes straight through to the Google Maps app. It's a little overenthusiastic mind you. Work meetings that simply list a boardroom name, still want to search google maps for that boardroom name...sometimes with amusing results.

You can connect your mail account, and it will show you recent correspondence between you and your meeting guests. So far, it has done an OK job of finding such email, but the separate link it creates for attachments in those emails has not worked at all, giving me error messages when it tries to download the file.

The Agenda view, which shows only 1 day at a time, also shows you the weather for your current location. A nice touch.

The week view is actually the nicest week view I have ever seen on iOS. It solves the problem of limited real estate by letting you touch a day, and that day widens up to show the appointments in lovely detail, while collapsing the other 6 days down to narrow ribbons of coloured blobs. You get a sense stuff is happening on that day, but you can focus on a day at a time. I love this implementation. I only wish it shaded the current day for quicker contextual setup.

The popup notification alert actually has more data in it than I got from my previous calendaring app, formatting its summary over 4 lines. I liked that.

The bad:Tempo seems to have a bit of a split personality, with some erratic approaches to some things.

As mentioned, it seems to struggle with attachments in emails. It will display that a meeting organizer sent you a file...but I haven't been able to make it open that file.

The Agenda view uses up about 1/3 of your screen with a lovely picture...that is chosen apparently randomly (by the Tempo team). Today, it's a beach somewhere tropical. Very lovely...and totally meaningless to my agenda. I'd be just as happy if they scrapped that. You can substitute your own photo...but how about no photo at all?

The List view seems to be identical the Agenda view, without the picture, and the option of seeing more than 1 day at a time...so why an Agenda view?

The day view is as you'd expect, and you can long touch and appointment to move it...which is lovely...except you can't do this on the week view (where I may prefer to when it comes to moving appointments to a different day). Long touching in the week view...does nothing at all.

Speaking of long touching, doing so in the Agenda or List view has a completely different behaviour, bring up 3 options. Edit event, Delete event, and "Move to Next Day". Why not give me options like that in other views? I don't know. How I delete an entry in Day view? I have to open it up, click edit, scroll to the bottom, and use the "Delete Event" button.

It just leaves the app feeling a bit conflicted about its own vision. I also feel it's in need of some swipe events. You can swipe in week view to go to another week for instance, but I was expecting to be able to swipe out of a specific event. 

App.net now has a free tier. If you can get someone to send you an invite, then you can sign up for free, and remain free with some (surprisingly light) limitations. You can only follow 40 people, and you have less file storage room.

The one outstanding problem with app.net is one of public relations. ADN is not a Twitter clone, but it damn well LOOKS like a Twitter clone to the uninitiated. Free or not, people see something that is nearly indistinguishable from Twitter (albeit without ads, and a higher character limit) and the "What's the point" questions start trickling out.

The point is not so much what it is, but what it could be. App.net is attempting to be an architecture, a backbone to other applications. The real point is the 100% open API. Other web sites, other applications, are allowed unfettered access to the information in app.net (subject to your authorization when it comes to your account). The real benefit will be realized by the applications that use this API in clever ways. Already there are chat rooms, cloud based file managers, contact management apps, etc...

Mailbox is finally out, I have waited through my queue, and finally...I get to try it. In a word..."brilliant".

In 4 words? "Brilliant, but not perfect"

Let me start by saying that I have never strived for inbox 0. Who cares. Gmail lets you search all your mail easily enough. I make sure I have read everything, but apart from that, I just let it sit in my inbox. What does it matter? Well, with around 27,000 emails in my inbox (yep), I was caught off guard with the app badge...which I don't think was ever designed to show exceptionally large numbers.

Ok fine. I can archive it. Archives are still searchable. Thankfully, Mailbox actually includes a function to help you get there, and it will, if you ask it, archive ALL of your email that is read. Boom! (well..not boom...it took a while). I now have inbox zero.

So the app? As I said..."brilliant". Flawless push notifications, great reading experience, conversation threading (in a way that Sparrow never quite mastered), etc... The bread and butter however is managing entries in your inbox to help you keep it organized.

Swipe left: Archive

Swipe left more: Delete

Swipe right: a menu pops up to defer the message. For example, I select "Tonight" and the message vanishes, and then reappears tonight. 

Swipe right more: I get to assign it to a ToDo list

This is what the deferral screen looks like.

It's really all remarkably smooth and easy to use. There is even a small bar at the bottom of your inbox, where you can swipe right to archive all inbox messages in one go, so you don't have to do them one by one (and if you have the option turned on, will also mark them as read).

There are a few flaws:

At present, you can't save a message as draft. You have to finish it, or abandon it.

Searching your email only appears to search what is downloaded to the app. There is no "Search on Server" option (or I can't see it).

You can't move to previous or next message. You have to go to the inbox, and then to the next message.

You can't turn archived messages into tasks, you have to move them back to the inbox first, then act on them. Maybe that's intentional...but it seems unnecessary.

It has almost no support for gmail labels. I don't really use these beyond what my filters set for me...but it's a big deal for some people.

While you can have multiple accounts (up to 5), you only get 1 email signature (they are promising to fix this)

I am in the midst of a big debate in my mind. Whether to upgrade to a new Windows Phone 8 devide (likely the Lumia 920), or to the iPhone 5. They both have LTE, so that's a wash. Reports seem to indicate the iPhone camera is better, but the Lumia takes better low light pictures...so it's unclear how I should react to that. As to pros...

iPhone:

Guaranteed upgrade. There is nothing that risks being a downgrade for me (no missing app, no incompatibility, etc...)

By all accounts, blazing fast hardware (smoking the Lumia, or the HTC).

By far the greatest app ecosystem, and despite my misgivings about the basic iOS interface, the apps are where I spend 95% of my time, and some of them are just brilliant

Better integration with the rest of my hardware (Mac and iPad)

more storage. 

Easier to get. Fido definitely supports it (vs just getting an unlocked phone and sticking in the Fido sim), and I can just get it (and service it) at the Apple store.

Apple has a new VP in charge of the iOS user experience...and that means some of my reservations of the OS may go away (this is a big maybe though)

Lumia

Fresh experience. Gives me something new to sink my teeth in. Leaving behind a tired basic interface that hasn't really evolved. I really like the videos I have seen of the WP8 interface. It's a nice design, and I want to play with it.

A more integrated experience. More systems work together, FB messaging and Skype baked in, the camera lens concept is a good one.

Live tiles - getting to actually see some live data from the start screen or the lock screen is great.

I get to use my Micro USB cables, and they are easier to come by in any case (once Mophie makes an iPhone 5 batter case though, this advantage will be mitigated)

The ability to specify a person as a tile giving tight access to all contact points for that person, their pictures, their FB updates, etc... This goes back to the integrated experience, the fact I don't have to go to one app for messaging, another for pictures, another for email...where instead I can go to one spot for interactions with that person.

I like the underdog (yes...it's a reason)

I have been watching a LOT of video reviews of WP8 and the Lumia (and the HTC 8x), and I am not sure I am any closer to deciding. The Lumia is not actually out yet (a week or two?), and Mophie also hasn't made their battery case for the iPhone 5 yet (but probably won't make one at all for the Lumia)...all factors which have made me happy to wait for now in any case. I'm not in a rush, but I am getting to the stage where I want to make a decision.

I love the new outlook.com, love it. I have tentatively moved over from gmail entirely (with one hesitation in that they still haven't resolved this)

I am actually excited to try out Windows 8. It's quite probable I will get the release copy, and install it on my Mac via Boot Camp.

I have been following Windows 8 phone somewhat closely, and there is part of me that wishes I could get one to try out. I love my iPhone, but it's all I have had for years, colour me curious.

Everything I have heard about IE 10 is suggesting it will be an excellent offering in the browser space (and lately my Chrome has gotten kind of sluggish).

Even MSN messenger, which I hadn't used for quite a while, has come a long way (on Windows, it still sucks on Mac) and I've gone back to it for my IM use while on my work Windows machine.

Skydrive is no better or worse than various other sync services, except it's nicely bundled into Outlook and Win 8, and I technically have the most space already (25 GB)

Microsoft has invented a new web mail experience that is the first real candidate anyone has put forward that makes me doubt my love for gmail.

I love clean UIs. I love a page that is simple, clean, no glitz, no flash (both the Adobe kind, and the figurative kind). For me, gmail was the first mail service to provide this. It was simple, clean, polished. Not everyone liked it...but I did, a lot.

However gmail has had one major issue. It's conceited (or rather...Google is). It has excellent integration with Google Plus, Google talk, Youtube (owned by Google), but that's it. Google is never likely to allow integration with other services out there, they want to push G+ so hard.

Outlook lacks that particular conceit. The service, including the contact listings, are quite happy to integrate with Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, and yes, Google. All the relevant data of your contacts is blended together, and the site also supports integrated chat with Facebook (and of course MSN messenger) as well as direct posting on people's FB wall.

Other advantages:

Tight integration with Skydrive, letting me send files by linking to them in Skydrive, rather than embedding the attachment in the email (email attachments have to DIE)

Message flagging that makes it stay at the top of the inbox

Sweeping: The idea behind this is to clean up all emails from a given sender, optionally blocking future emails from the same person, and easy way to handle unwelcome content. This can also be tuned to for instance keep the most recent 10 messages, and sweep the older ones.

No ads in personal emails from friends. This isn't a big deal to me honestly, gmail ads are not intrusive...but I'll take it.

Skype integration is coming soon.

Disadvantages

No IMAP. The service has Exchange ActiveSync (so does Gmail), but not all clients can use it. My preferred client at home is Sparrow, which happily does IMAP, but not ActiveSync. My iPhone will do ActiveSync at least, but it's still a drawback.

The calendar application is leagues behind Google calendar. I am not sure if MS is planning to do an overhaul here as well, but it just can't hold a candle to Google on this front (but nothing wrong with using email from one company, and calendar from another)

I feel horribly behind the times on this one, but it occurred to me yesterday that I have VMWare Fusion on my Mac, and why the heck haven't I tried Windows 8 yet? I think I imagined it would be an involved, arduous process.

It wasn't.

It was actually super easy to set up. I went to the Win 8 download page, grabbed the ISO, started up a new VM with it, let it run, and presto...Windows 8

I have only had maybe 45 minutes with it so far, so my impressions are limited. There is a lot in the system that relies on anchoring to the edge, or putting your mouse in the corner, and that's a challenge on a VM, since the mouse can easily go past that corner and outside the VM, so a lot of those anchors were awkward. I am also not accustomed to the keyboard shortcuts, and honestly, there is very little guidance available. You have to stumble across where things like settings are, and how to get back to the start page, and so forth.

There are also some oddities that I have not yet figured out.

How do I get the rest of my Google calendars to show up (I only get my main one)?

Does IE have the equivalent of a bookmark bar for my favourite bookmarklets?

Does the app store have a search?!? (seriously...this one boggles my mind)

Thankfully, most of the gestures with my Mac trackpad worked, so the experience of actually moving around wasn't bad.