The iPhone Ate My Calendar (or: The Difference Between an iPod and a PDA)

Using an iPhone is a bit like being married to a photo model or movie star, specially when travelling to Europe, like I have done a few times this summer. Sexed up by the news, but still unavailable on the market, everybody wants to see my iPhone and even touch it. I was recently at the e-Content Summit in Croatia, interviewed by several news outlets - all of them wanted to see the iPhone. In fact, in one of the interviews the iPhone was obviously much more interesting than I was, it got photographed in the hands of the journalist and in various other poses and angles, while I was left waiting in the background.

But Hollywood stardom is also linked to neurotic behaviour, much reported in the gossip press. While the iPhone is no doubt is the sexiest PDA I have ever had, it is also clearly the most neurotic, unpredictable and destructive one.

A few words about my user history: My first PDA was a Palm Pilot in 1997. Since then I have had PalmPilots, iPaqs and a Treo 650. I have by now a large address book and a large calendar - storing ten years of my professional and personal history. In my job it is very important that I can rely on my PDA. Sorry to say, the iPhone is giving me a lot of really bad headaches.

Soon after I bought the iPhone, I noticed that something was not working the way it should. Entries made in the iPhone calendar were not synced into iCal on my computer. Sometimes the new entries remained on the iPhone after a sync, other times they were erased - gone without a trace. A search on the Internet showed that exactly the same error had been reported by Ryan Block in Engadget's iPhone review. The Engadget review did not make a big thing out of it. They should have!

I called Apple support, who were - as usual - accessible and friendly. They did not recognize the problem (I told them Engadget had reported on it). With their help, the sync history was reset and some files were removed. This seemed to work, so I happily assumed that the trouble now was behind me.

After only another week or two, the iPhone-iCal sync started misbehaving again. This time I lost a number of appointments and was confronted by people who were wondering where I gone to. Again - friendly Apple support, same fixes as last time, seemed to work.

Two weeks ago I went on travel in Europe. Lots of new people and prospects for collaboration in the future. Good business. Lots of contacts entered into the address book and lots of meetings entered into the calendar. Then, as I one evening synced my iPhone - 9/11, ironically - my iCal displayed a peculiar error. Beginning back in 1997, a number of events had been converted into recurring events with no end date! Every day of 2007 was now filled with hundreds of events, beginning with appointments from ten years ago! I have never seen anything like it in my ten years of PDA usage. I called the Apple support, this time it took over one hour of phone queues and redirections before anyone attempted to help me. I was on the line with a product specialist for another hour, and we had to break off in the middle. I then closed my computer and refrained from using it until landing again on US soil.

To recapitulate the situation: I had a serious sync problem, a corrupt iCal on the Mac, but a seemingly OK calendar on the iPhone. What I wanted to do now was to replace the calendar on the Mac with the one on the iPhone. Should be simple enough, one might think. Wrong!

Here is where the Apple policy of giving the customer what the customer needs, in the simplest possible way, without confusing options, changes face into a corporate-style bullying lock-in data policy giving the user that feeling of being a helpless individual dressed up in a Don Quixote suit and a straight jacket. Unintentionally, no doubt, perhaps even with the best of intentions. But whatever the intentions may be, it was of little help; go on reading:

I ordered a time at the Genius Bar in the Apple Store in Palo Alto, thinking that what they don't know there, they won't know anywhere. It is, literally, the home store of Steve Jobs. When I came to the store, it turned out that I knew more than the young guy serving me. (He said he knew where to find the reset sync history button on PC, but not on a Mac.) We did some fooling around, but the problem was not resolved. I had also asked him to back up the data on my phone, assuming that, since the iPhone is a full-fledged UNIX computer, copying data from it should be no problem, being only a matter of user permissions. I knew that the phone is well locked up, but it seemed natural that Apple service technicians would have a skeleton key. But, alas... The young genius told me he had access to no more tools than I had! But he was not unpleasant, he helped me in any way he could, supplying me with a ball-point pen and a sheets of US letter paper, onto which I copied the events in my calendar for the next few months. This is apparently the only way to back up the iPhone calendar if something screws up with the sync.

So I went home, and had another bash with an Apple product specialists over the phone. I was very clear that I did not want to loose any data, and thinking that since I now was speaking to a highly ranking product specialist, perhaps there should be some way of making a copy of my precious data on the iPhone before throwing it into the gladiator arena for a sync-battle with the computer. She said this was not possible. I could see my data on the iPhone, but I could not reach it. It was like a Hollywood drama, where the hero touches the fingertips of a friend through a bullet-proof window, as the room behind the window is filling up with water. So close, but so far away.

We set everything up, trying to fix the possible errors. I had reverted iCal to Aug 22 (the last date that seemed to be OK, the corruption had gone on for a while without me noticing it). I pressed the "Sync" button in iTunes and closed my eyes. They iCal dot not take in my data, and the iPhone calendar was completely erased. Ouch. The product specialist recommended me to migrate my data to a new account on the computer, or - if this did not work - re-install the system. Sigh.

At this point, I reverted to using the stack of printer paper as my calendar. No use in using the iPhone, nor the iCal before the error was fixed. After a few days, tired of inking my future on dead trees for the first time in ten years, I yesterday started reconstructing my calendar in Google Calendar.

Epilogue: Et Tu, Address Book.

Today I noticed when looking into my Adress Book, things have gone bad there too. I had not noticed until now, but addresses entered into the iPhone were not synced into the Adress Book, but erased. Any addresses previously existing in the Address Book, but modified on the iPhone, were erased from both the Address Book and the iPhone.

Conclusion: The iPhone is a Half-Baked PDA, Lacks Backup Possibilities.

I can accept many of the flaws of the iPhone, such as the lack of a search function, no copy-paste, and other missing functionalities. That is a question of convenience.

What I can definitely NOT accept is corruption and loss of data in the calendar and in the address book.

The most loyal Apple supporters may argue that I have myself to blame, that this error is exotic and won't affect most people, perhaps that I should have reinstalled the system before switching from Treo+Missing Sync (which I had before) to the iPhone. Perhaps so. But nevertheless, I do suggest that Apple has overlooked something important in the iPhone design.

Sync is a complicated thing, this is why other PDAs, like Palm and PocketPC, make it possible to back up the handset separately. When I had troubles with my previsous PDAs, I could make a backup of the handset, a backup of the computer, thus always being able to revert back if the fix failed. Not with iPhone. This is the most serious flaw of the iPhone. As long as it is not possible to make backup copies of the iPhone, it is not suitable for professionals who depend on their calendars and address books.

The flaw may well be a matter of mindset at Apple HQ, in which case it is uncertain how easy it can be fixed. I believe that the competitive edge of Apple lies in its uncompromising user-centered industrial design and its caring respect for the average users limited tech-skills. While at other tech companies designers seem to work for engineers, at Apple engineers seem to work for designers. While PC builds on offering options, Apple delivers scenarios.

Apple repeatedly reinvents simplicity, this is the genius of the Jobs administration.

In the case of the iPhone - so obviously based on the iPod - a techie mindset would have been needed at an early development stage to challenge the way data is handled. An iPod is not a PDA, they belong to different worlds.

Here is the crucial difference:

iPod: The iPod has no data input device and contains no original data. It only stores copies of data from the computer it syncs with. The iPod therefore requires no backup, it is only the computer that requires back-up. If the sync corrupts the data on the iPod, just overwrite it at the next successful sync with the correct data from the computer.

iPhone: The iPhone has a data input device and does contain original data, i.e. all entries in the Address Book, Calendar, Notes etc made since the last successful sync. The iPhone therefore requires backup, in order to protect that data if the sync fails.

Dear Steve Jobs, you are a genius, and the iPhone has revolutionized the concept of the smart phone. But this is a glitch you might want to fix before releasing the phone in Europe, where the expectations are unbelievably high.