Steal This Idea » 1995 Palm calendar creams the 2008 iPhone’s

Let me just start off by saying, I think the iPhone is close to being a masterpiece. I am blown away by the imagination and quality it exhibits. Way to go, Apple designers; please get in touch with me and let me take you out to lunch.

That said, I’m disappointed in some of its designs. The particular object of my ire is the calendar app. The Palm 100 calendar UI from 1995 laps it in terms of moment-to-moment usage. In this article I want to show how a thirteen year old UI designed for a 160×160 pixel, monochrome display on a cheap, slow CPU is so much more effective than a 2008 iPhone with a larger, high-res screen and fast CPU.

Here is a real-world example of what I mean. When I have a tentative appointment, I append a question mark to show that it isn’t confirmed. For example: “Dinner with Rich?” Later, when the appointment is confirmed, I will removed the question mark. Here’s how to remove that question mark on every Palm device from the first PalmPilot to the latest Palm Centro:

Tap at the end of the appointment text, to place the cursor there
Press (or gesture) backspace

That is it. Two steps and you are done. You can now turn off the device or navigate away to some other task. The direct manipulation is similar to how you might do it with a paper agenda.

Now, here is how you remove that question mark on the iPhone 3G:

You can’t edit the appointment text from the day view, so tap it to open it up in the “Event” details screen.
Well you can’t edit the text here either, so tap the “Edit” button in the top right corner
Unfortunatly the “Edit” view doesn’t let you edit. Instead it shows the components of the appointment. Go ahead and tap the event name to tell the iPhone you want to edit it.
You are now in the “Title & Location” field with the cursor blinking on the appointment, with the on-screen keyboard shown.
Press backspace.
Press Save to get back to the “Edit” screen
Press Done to get back to the “Event” screen
Press the back button at the top left corner (labeled with the Date)

Them’s a lot of steps. And a lot of modes. And a lot of thinking to do an every day task. Four times as many steps as the 1995 Palm. This design conduct is unbecoming of an Apple product.

This is not an obscure task. We are not changing some technical configuration on a one-time basis. We are making an adjustment to the title of an event. It’s the sort of thing that everyone who uses the calendar needs to do all the time. No excuses here: common, frequent tasks should be the most streamlined.

And it’s not just this task. Creating a typical appointment on the Palm takes two steps versus about ten steps on the iPhone. Five times more steps. (And that is being generous with the horrendous spinning slot-machine style time picking UI.)

Palm, and in particular the guys chiefly responsible for its UI design, Rob Haitani and Jeff Hawkins, understood that for a PIM device to replace the reliable, always-on paper-based planner, it would have to be simple, direct and fast. When you are trying to capture an appointment while on the phone, only a sliver of your attention is available to spend on the UI. The Palm’s UI is direct enough that you can do it during a conversation. With an iPhone, you’d better jot it down on paper and transcribe it into the device later if you want to avoid putting your caller on hold mentally.

Here are some other reasons why the old skool Palm’s calendar laps its young cousin.

In the day view:

If you have appointments far apart in the day, the Palm is intelligently condenses hours of the day, so you can almost always see all your day’s appointments without scrolling. This is important to give you the big picture. If something is concealed you might very well miss it. On the iPhone, if you set up an appointment at 7 AM, and another at 7 PM, it’s possible to look at the view and completely miss one of them…or either! We are talking missed appointments here. The iPhone tries to help by auto-scrolling as you step between days, but this ostensible bit of cool just adds UI friction.
The irritating iPhone slot-machine spinner UI. Please, just give us a calendar to tap

To change the a date of an appointment the Palm gives a standard calendar UI that you have seen on every travel planning site. Calendars are tried and true and have some great information visualization benefits. You get to see where the dates are relative to the week and month and relative to other important dates. Assigning a new date is a simple matter of tapping on it. The iPhone instead gives an atrocious spinning slot machine picker. It provides none of the contextual information and requires a lot of painstaking work to flick to the right date. It’s easy to inadvertenly touch something in the wrong column without even knowing it. I have had several appointments that have been off by hours because of this. Form gave function a beating the day that one was designed in Cupertino.

In the month view:

The month view on the Palm shows you roughly how busy you are on each day. The iPhone shows a dot on each day with an event. Any event: appointment, birthday, multi-day. The result is that just about every day has a dot, eliminating any useful information it might convey.
The Palm’s month view shows multi-day events with a dotted line that spans multiple days. I can recall when trips are happening or when visitors are in town. The iPhone just gives me that dot, so there is no way to see those big multi-day events.
On the iPhone, when you tap a day of the month, it tries to be helpful by showing the day’s events in a little pane at the bottom. The problem is, in six-row months like this one (August 2007) there is only enough height to show one appointment. You are supposed to scroll that little area vertically to see more. It’s like looking at your appointments through a straw. To make matters worse, there isn’t even an indication of there being more than one appointment. The scrollbar only appears when scrolling. In contrast, the Palm lets you tap on any date to see everything.

Furthermore:

The Palm has a Go To date function. You can get to most dates in two or three taps. It’s a wonderfully tuned UI. The iPhone makes you press and hold the Next Month button as it whirrs through the months. It’s attention-consuming and clunky by comparison.
On the Palm, you can get to the calendar in one step, even if the device is off, by pressing the calendar button. Brilliance! On the iPhone this is three to six steps which vary depending on the state in which the device was last left. (1. button on top 2. slide finger 3. press home if you were in another app 4. figure out where you are and slide left or right one or more times to get to the launcher page with the calendar app. 5. tap in the calendar. 6. switch calendar modes if necessary. 7. Navigate to today if necessary.) For a worker who checks her schedule twenty times a day, this makes a difference. Apple’s buttonphobia undoubtedly makes things look sleek and elegant but it really does hurt, every single day, many times a day to not have direct access to the most frequent and common tasks. [11/14/08 Update: see some ideas for addressing this problem without adding buttons.]
The Palm lets you search for an event (”When is Peggy’s wedding?”); the iPhone does not offer this. This is an important SSNiF that should be covered.
Why can’t you flick left and right to go to adjacent days in the day view? Instead, you have to use the small arrow buttons at the top of the screen, obscuring the screen with your hand in the process.

In this giddy age of hi fidelity UIs, iPhone design team and those trying to emulate them would do well to carefully study the old, low-fi masters. Get the function right, then make it pretty. It’s the Apple way.

Please link to this article at: http://StealThisIdea.com/articles/palm-vs-iphone/

5 Responses to “1995 Palm calendar creams the 2008 iPhone’s”

michael wrote on October 6th, 2008 at 7:54 pm :
This article is straight to the point. I agree with it completely, and it should be sent directly to Apple’s designers!

I had previously been using the Windows Mobile Outlook calendar on an O2 Atom phone. It was fast and easy to use, all the information could be edited from the same page! And viewing your upcoming calendar events was as simple as turning the screen on - because the events are displayed on the home screen. In comparison, the iPhone calendar makes you constantly “press & wait” for the appropriate options.. I wish a new calender app would arrive to replace it! It’s HORRIBLE.
Tim wrote on October 20th, 2008 at 9:50 pm :
You are spot on with his article- everything described is true!
The iphone is a giant leap backwards in terms of time management. If I had not parted with so much money for the damn thing I wouldn’t be seraching the net for ways to solve the most basic, simple issues that my old Palm Tundsten cruised with.
And it seams that I am not alone!
Akos Janca wrote on October 30th, 2008 at 5:12 am :
Hi Philip and all,

I’ve just found this article while searching for a Palm-style calendar for my new iPhone 3G…
All the above is true and I feel it myself every day, regardless of loving the *great* phone. I got a 10 year-old Palm user experience, with 5 devices (last is/was Centro). Reading your iPhone love/hate list I found I think pretty much the same about this question. Thank you for summarizing it so well.
And please inform us if you find a better calendar (notes, todo, etc.)!
P.S. Let me share I’ve found two interesting applications: SaiSuke and SmartTime.

Regards,
Akos
Joanne wrote on November 6th, 2008 at 10:44 am :
Philip,

Thank you so much for your article. I have been going mad trying to find a solution to this calendar problem. I don’t want to have to carry around both iphone and my old Tungsten T5, but it seems for now I will.

As well as all your valid comments, I have found the repeat function to be the most rubbish of all. I put all of my kids movements with regards to school, after school clubs, etc. on my palm, but 1) it doesn’t obscure the whole day by colouring it in and 2) I can pick and choose which days to repeat (as school times are different on a Friday). It is so flexible and I felt sure the iphone would be even better, but have been disappointed. I have looked at Google calendar as a possible replacement, but it doesn’t support these features either.

I guess we will just have to wait for someone to produce an app which is worth using!

Joanne
Paul wrote on November 14th, 2008 at 10:30 am :
Everyone,

Havent quite got new iphone yet because of that darn Calendar functionality not being as good as windows pocket mobile. Let me know before It’s too late & I settle for a normal XDA, PDA etc.

Was thinking about the Samsung Omnia. Any comments?

Paul

1995 Palm calendar creams the 2008 iPhone’s

5 Responses to “1995 Palm calendar creams the 2008 iPhone’s”

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1995 Palm calendar creams the 2008 iPhone’s Philip Haine The iPhone has a few things to learn from its grandpa. Share with others SubscribeBloglinesDiggdel.icio.usFacebookRedditStumbleUponTechnorati Let me just start off by saying, I think the iPhone is close to being a masterpiece. I am blown away by the imagination and quality it exhibits. Way to go, Apple designers; please get in touch with me and let me take you out to lunch. That said, I’m disappointed in some of its designs. The particular object of my ire is the calendar app. The Palm 100 calendar UI from 1995 laps it in terms of moment-to-moment usage. In this article I want to show how a thirteen year old UI designed for a 160×160 pixel, monochrome display on a cheap, slow CPU is so much more effective than a 2008 iPhone with a larger, high-res screen and fast CPU. Here is a real-world example of what I mean. When I have a tentative appointment, I append a question mark to show that it isn’t confirmed. For example: “Dinner with Rich?” Later, when the appointment is confirmed, I will removed the question mark. Here’s how to remove that question mark on every Palm device from the first PalmPilot to the latest Palm Centro: Tap at the end of the appointment text, to place the cursor there Press (or gesture) backspace That is it. Two steps and you are done. You can now turn off the device or navigate away to some other task. The direct manipulation is similar to how you might do it with a paper agenda. Now, here is how you remove that question mark on the iPhone 3G: You can’t edit the appointment text from the day view, so tap it to open it up in the “Event” details screen. Well you can’t edit the text here either, so tap the “Edit” button in the top right corner Unfortunatly the “Edit” view doesn’t let you edit. Instead it shows the components of the appointment. Go ahead and tap the event name to tell the iPhone you want to edit it. You are now in the “Title & Location” field with the cursor blinking on the appointment, with the on-screen keyboard shown. Press backspace. Press Save to get back to the “Edit” screen Press Done to get back to the “Event” screen Press the back button at the top left corner (labeled with the Date) Them’s a lot of steps. And a lot of modes. And a lot of thinking to do an every day task. Four times as many steps as the 1995 Palm. This design conduct is unbecoming of an Apple product. This is not an obscure task. We are not changing some technical configuration on a one-time basis. We are making an adjustment to the title of an event. It’s the sort of thing that everyone who uses the calendar needs to do all the time. No excuses here: common, frequent tasks should be the most streamlined. And it’s not just this task. Creating a typical appointment on the Palm takes two steps versus about ten steps on the iPhone. Five times more steps. (And that is being generous with the horrendous spinning slot-machine style time picking UI.) Palm, and in particular the guys chiefly responsible for its UI design, Rob Haitani and Jeff Hawkins, understood that for a PIM device to replace the reliable, always-on paper-based planner, it would have to be simple, direct and fast. When you are trying to capture an appointment while on the phone, only a sliver of your attention is available to spend on the UI. The Palm’s UI is direct enough that you can do it during a conversation. With an iPhone, you’d better jot it down on paper and transcribe it into the device later if you want to avoid putting your caller on hold mentally. Here are some other reasons why the old skool Palm’s calendar laps its young cousin. In the day view: If you have appointments far apart in the day, the Palm is intelligently condenses hours of the day, so you can almost always see all your day’s appointments without scrolling. This is important to give you the big picture. If something is concealed you might very well miss it. On the iPhone, if you set up an appointment at 7 AM, and another at 7 PM, it’s possible to look at the view and completely miss one of them…or either! We are talking missed appointments here. The iPhone tries to help by auto-scrolling as you step between days, but this ostensible bit of cool just adds UI friction. The irritating iPhone slot-machine spinner UI. Please, just give us a calendar to tap To change the a date of an appointment the Palm gives a standard calendar UI that you have seen on every travel planning site. Calendars are tried and true and have some great information visualization benefits. You get to see where the dates are relative to the week and month and relative to other important dates. Assigning a new date is a simple matter of tapping on it. The iPhone instead gives an atrocious spinning slot machine picker. It provides none of the contextual information and requires a lot of painstaking work to flick to the right date. It’s easy to inadvertenly touch something in the wrong column without even knowing it. I have had several appointments that have been off by hours because of this. Form gave function a beating the day that one was designed in Cupertino. In the month view: The month view on the Palm shows you roughly how busy you are on each day. The iPhone shows a dot on each day with an event. Any event: appointment, birthday, multi-day. The result is that just about every day has a dot, eliminating any useful information it might convey. The Palm’s month view shows multi-day events with a dotted line that spans multiple days. I can recall when trips are happening or when visitors are in town. The iPhone just gives me that dot, so there is no way to see those big multi-day events. On the iPhone, when you tap a day of the month, it tries to be helpful by showing the day’s events in a little pane at the bottom. The problem is, in six-row months like this one (August 2007) there is only enough height to show one appointment. You are supposed to scroll that little area vertically to see more. It’s like looking at your appointments through a straw. To make matters worse, there isn’t even an indication of there being more than one appointment. The scrollbar only appears when scrolling. In contrast, the Palm lets you tap on any date to see everything. Furthermore: The Palm has a Go To date function. You can get to most dates in two or three taps. It’s a wonderfully tuned UI. The iPhone makes you press and hold the Next Month button as it whirrs through the months. It’s attention-consuming and clunky by comparison. On the Palm, you can get to the calendar in one step, even if the device is off, by pressing the calendar button. Brilliance! On the iPhone this is three to six steps which vary depending on the state in which the device was last left. (1. button on top 2. slide finger 3. press home if you were in another app 4. figure out where you are and slide left or right one or more times to get to the launcher page with the calendar app. 5. tap in the calendar. 6. switch calendar modes if necessary. 7. Navigate to today if necessary.) For a worker who checks her schedule twenty times a day, this makes a difference. Apple’s buttonphobia undoubtedly makes things look sleek and elegant but it really does hurt, every single day, many times a day to not have direct access to the most frequent and common tasks. [11/14/08 Update: see some ideas for addressing this problem without adding buttons.] The Palm lets you search for an event (”When is Peggy’s wedding?”); the iPhone does not offer this. This is an important SSNiF that should be covered. Why can’t you flick left and right to go to adjacent days in the day view? Instead, you have to use the small arrow buttons at the top of the screen, obscuring the screen with your hand in the process. In this giddy age of hi fidelity UIs, iPhone design team and those trying to emulate them would do well to carefully study the old, low-fi masters. Get the function right, then make it pretty. It’s the Apple way. Please link to this article at: http://StealThisIdea.com/articles/palm-vs-iphone/ See also: iPhone love/hate list – Philip Haine is a product designer and product vision specialist. He founded Obvious Design, LLC in 1997 and did a lot of design & vision work for Palm Computing, PalmOne and PalmSource. Share with others SubscribeBloglinesDiggdel.icio.usFacebookRedditStumbleUponTechnorati Posted by Philip Haine on Thursday, August 7th, 2008 at 2:00 am. See similar articles in: Analysis, Commentary, Critique, Great Designs, Product Design. 5 Responses to “1995 Palm calendar creams the 2008 iPhone’s” michael wrote on October 6th, 2008 at 7:54 pm : This article is straight to the point. I agree with it completely, and it should be sent directly to Apple’s designers! I had previously been using the Windows Mobile Outlook calendar on an O2 Atom phone. It was fast and easy to use, all the information could be edited from the same page! And viewing your upcoming calendar events was as simple as turning the screen on - because the events are displayed on the home screen. In comparison, the iPhone calendar makes you constantly “press & wait” for the appropriate options.. I wish a new calender app would arrive to replace it! It’s HORRIBLE. Tim wrote on October 20th, 2008 at 9:50 pm : You are spot on with his article- everything described is true! The iphone is a giant leap backwards in terms of time management. If I had not parted with so much money for the damn thing I wouldn’t be seraching the net for ways to solve the most basic, simple issues that my old Palm Tundsten cruised with. And it seams that I am not alone! Akos Janca wrote on October 30th, 2008 at 5:12 am : Hi Philip and all, I’ve just found this article while searching for a Palm-style calendar for my new iPhone 3G… All the above is true and I feel it myself every day, regardless of loving the great phone. I got a 10 year-old Palm user experience, with 5 devices (last is/was Centro). Reading your iPhone love/hate list I found I think pretty much the same about this question. Thank you for summarizing it so well. And please inform us if you find a better calendar (notes, todo, etc.)! P.S. Let me share I’ve found two interesting applications: SaiSuke and SmartTime. Regards, Akos Joanne wrote on November 6th, 2008 at 10:44 am : Philip, Thank you so much for your article. I have been going mad trying to find a solution to this calendar problem. I don’t want to have to carry around both iphone and my old Tungsten T5, but it seems for now I will. As well as all your valid comments, I have found the repeat function to be the most rubbish of all. I put all of my kids movements with regards to school, after school clubs, etc. on my palm, but 1) it doesn’t obscure the whole day by colouring it in and 2) I can pick and choose which days to repeat (as school times are different on a Friday). It is so flexible and I felt sure the iphone would be even better, but have been disappointed. I have looked at Google calendar as a possible replacement, but it doesn’t support these features either. I guess we will just have to wait for someone to produce an app which is worth using! Joanne Paul wrote on November 14th, 2008 at 10:30 am : Everyone, Havent quite got new iphone yet because of that darn Calendar functionality not being as good as windows pocket mobile. Let me know before It’s too late & I settle for a normal XDA, PDA etc. Was thinking about the Samsung Omnia. Any comments? Paul Leave a Reply Name (required) Mail (will not be published) (required) Website	Product Vision & Strategy Needs Analysis (4) Strategy (1) Vision Process (9) Visions to Steal (13) Product Design Design Tools & Resources (1) Designs to Steal (24) Great Designs (6) Research Topics (7) Other Analysis (17) Commentary (48) Critique (13) Humor (2) Predictions (6) Quick Ideas (5) Stolen Ideas (2) Meta Register Log in RSS Feed About