With his permission, I'm going to use Tom Joyce's extended mail and his points. In his words “This started as a comment on Ewan's article, but it grew to the extent I thought it might make a counter article...”
To start with, I agree with Ewan to the extent that I miss the 5mx Agenda's flexibility. However, there are things a Filofax can't do for me that mean S60's Calendar, for all its faults, is indispensable to me.
It's always there. With the exception of the rare occasion I beat my phone so heavily it unexpectedly runs out of power, I always have access to my calendar, because my phone goes pretty much everywhere with me, more so even than my wallet. A filofax would be too bulky for my trouser pockets (and that's from someone who regularly carries an E90)... Until such time as my glasses get sufficient computing power and a head up display capability, the phone will remain the device most often with me and therefore most suitable for planning my life.
That's a perfectly fair point, and while there are various sizes of Filofax, the popular sizes are about a paperback book size. The form factor of smartphones makes them candidates for always being on you. If you know you have a bag with you, then the size becomes less of an issue, but it will always be there. I will counter that Filofaxes don't need charging and can be used on aircraft, though.
Reminders. Yes, I probably ought to check what I'm supposed to be doing, but it's bl**dy handy to have something in your pocket start to bleep/vibrate when you've got n minutes to get to a doctor's appointment that had slipped your mind.
I'm going to shoot this one down. Any good system for (ahem) Getting Things Done has, at its core, putting information into a place so it can be found when needed. My filofax has a bookmark, and part of my routine is to flip open to the correct page and day and see what I need to do. If you are organised, then having a minute by minute countdown to an event is just not needed and adds to the stress in your life.
Having your smartphone just do it for you may make it seem easier, but counter-intuitively I think it makes you rely more on the smartphone than yourself.
Importabilty. Can I mention traintimes.org.uk's excellent feature of saving a selected journey straight to Calendar. It's a feature not widely enough used by big companies to help their customers, but I found a site where I could ping the 6 Nations and Lions tour dates straight into my phone and I dare say there are enthusiast sites doing the same for less important information.
Comparing a few clicks on a web site, then on your phone, to picking up a pencil and writing in the dates, I'm going to say that the time needed is about the same. Surely anything that you can write down is importable! And of course running a printout of google maps or a conference PDF through a printer is another import method I've used in the past.
There's also the ability to send calendar entries to other people, which can be handy on occasion.
I've got post-it notes. [Ewan: you're such a Luddite. And you're sacked - Ed]
Backupability. Or rather I should say, restorability. In the hopefully unlikely scenario of Ewan and I being pushed off a ferry and waiting half an hour for the SAR lads to fish us out of the drink, my E90 and his filofax would be either ruined or discarded with jackets etc to help us stay afloat. Luckily, I'd be able to restore my last backup (note to self: backup calendar and contacts when you get home after Easter) to the N73 currently sitting alone and unloved on my desk. Unless Ewan's a compulsive photocopier or Filofax backup
techniques have improved radically, he would get out of the sea only to find himself up the creek...
This is always the big argument, and one of the true strengths of a connected organiser and there's no easy answer from the Filofax crowd on this one. Sure I can counter the water issue (pencil will still be readable, even when wet), and point to the folders of old Filofax pages (so I would only lose up to two or three weeks of stuff), but that doesn't kill the clinical argument.
Back in the real world, it's kinda hard to forget a decent sized filofax, I've never lost mine, and even Tom admits to not having done a recent backup... which would leave him in exactly the same situation as I would be!
Psion said we'd use the Series 3a Agenda till 2049 - well, they got that bit right... not
So, yes, Nokia or Symbian Foundation or whoever, give us an Agenda app at least as good as Psion's, but do it in the knowledge that many of us are champing at the bit that is Calendar, knowing what's really possible. The N97 has all the hardware inputs the 5mx had, so what's stopping you?
But here's a point that Tom and I can agree on (and it seems that many of you will join us). We need a decent Agenda-style application on our smartphones. One that can provide a basic interface for the people happy with the current Calendar, but has the extra dialogs and information available for those of us who want to use it, with the flexibility that we know is still present in the underlying code and database.
What is the argument for dumbing down the feature set of Agenda? Is it the screen size? The Psion Siena had a screen resolution of 240x160 pixels. The current baseline for phones is 240x320 pixels, so there's more than enough screen real estate to get everything in. The rise of Qwerty-based devices means that input is not a problem, and for short textual entries with numbers, the ABC keyboard is sufficient (and the assumption is that a lot of syncing will be going on, to the Ovi web site or local PC or Mac PIM apps).
Is it that people expect something simple? That's not going to wash, especially on Eseries Enterprise devices that hook into massively detailed PIM suites. Neither is it because it is difficult to program.
PS: You know what would be really cool? An Agenda app that could import an events location field from Contacts (eg Bob's work address or Kate's home) or from Maps and then, using the phone's awareness of its own position and ability to calculate travelling times, alert you a suitable period before you need to head off.
Yes.
-- Ewan Spence and Tom Joyce, April 2009
Editor's comment: For what it's worth, I side firmly with Tom on the phone vs paper thing. And am happy to rely utterly on my phone to alert me to things that I need to do. I find it much less stressful, knowing that I don't have to worry about forgetting appointments, I'll get beeped the right/appropriate number of minutes before anything. E.g. a wedding 40 miles away - I'd set an alarm on the Calendar entry, set to go off an hour before - so that if I forgot completely (quite possible), I'd still have time to get dressed and drive there in time.
I'd also like to comment on the introduction of a more advanced Calendar app - surely this/these exist already in terms of third party software? What about Handy Calendar or AquaCalendar or Papyrus? I don't think there's that much mileage in complicating the built-in app that serves the 99% of people well - better to simply point power users to one of the apps just mentioned?
-- Steve Litchfield