Once upon a time, all of the basic features that we use a smartphone for were previously handled by the standard PDA, and before that, pen and paper. I used to carry the FranklinCovey planner system with me, where I faithfully checked off my task list as I completed them. FranklinCovey has done well to embrace the digital age, and now they have a Task app in Apple’s App Store – FCmobilelife can be found here for $5.99.

Given there seems to be as many task and to-do apps as there are fart apps, how well does FranklinCovey’s FCmobilelife Tasks hold up? Will it help you prioritize and get things done? Read on for a quick review!

Under The Hood

FCmobilelife uses the proven FranklinCovey methodology for creating tasks and prioritizing them in a way that will increase efficiency in getting things done. It takes advantage of the easy-to-use iPhone interface by delivering an attractive interface for managing your personal and business tasks.

Like the FranklinCovey paper version before it, FCmobilelife allows you to input a task and rank it using the ABC-123 system of prioritization, but this is just scratching the surface of it’s capability. You can also add notes to your tasks to really flesh them out and give them more detail, if needed. The app provides a means of tracking due dates of tasks, assigning categories, and create recurring tasks using the Complete-and-Forward feature.

The use of spoken tasks and managing attachments really beef up this app, and to make things easier, you can simply drag and drop a task to instantly reposition it for a higher or lower priority based on your changing priorities. The beauty of this app is that it’s as powerful or simple as you want it to be. If you want to simply create a to-do list each day and check them off as you go, then it’s easy as pie to set up your tasks. If, on the other hand, you want to add attachments (photos), voice record your task, add due dates and categorize your tasks, you have everything you need in this app to be a power user.

FCmobilelife is quite polished and easy to use, but there are a couple minor problems I have with this app. First, it can be a bit sluggish when changing to different views and, most notably, when scrolling through a list. The animated transitions are nice from screen to screen, but I’d like to see it happen with a bit more speed. Also, if you want a simple to-do app without the prioritization, this app is not the best for that kind of simplicity. It would be nice if there were either a 4th view for a bare-bones to-do list, or an option to disable the minimum two-step process of entering tasks when using the Master list view.

A Quick Run-Through

Before dropping down your $5.99 for this app, take a look at the demo video that FranklinCovey has put together on YouTube. It gives you a nice walk-through of this app so you can get a good sense of it’s capabilities.

To summarize the video, FCmobilelife has several views to choose from: Today, Plan, and Master views. The Today view gives you a look at current due tasks in order of priority – A (vital), B (important), and C (optional) tasks. Under each priority, the tasks are further prioritized by numbering 1, 2, 3 and so on. The Plan view presents a list of tasks also sorted by priority, but condenses your task list into an easier view for all your items. The Master list view are tasks that have not been designated a due date or priority. This view is great for entering tasks on the fly that you want to return to and prioritize later.

All past due items can be moved forward to the next day with the press of a button. If you wish to sort your tasks differently, then just press the “Sort” button at the top left and then drag items to a higher or lower priority, or even delete them. When creating a task, you can name it and assign a priority and due date. Spoken tasks are also great when you don’t have the means or time for entering text. Completed tasks are automatically archived for you by date, so you can always go back and view your accomplishments.

Conclusion

FCmobilelife is a great app for those looking for a fairly simple way of managing tasks or the power user who is steeped in FranklinCovey’s culture and methodology for prioritization. The interface is polished and the features are powerful. The need for a little more snappiness and the lack of a bare-bones task creation option is just enough to prevent me from awarding a 5-star rating, but I can definitely recommend 4 stars. Give the demo video a look – if you want a solid task manager, then $5.99 isn’t much to pay for a winner like FCmobilelife.

Pros

• Packed with features
• Simple, polished user interface
• Voice tasks
• Filtering mechanism and recurring tasks
• Photo attachments

Cons

• Sluggish list scrolling and transitions
• No “bare-bones” way to create simple to-do’s

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

App Review: FCmobilelife Tasks by FranklinCovey for iPhone

Over the last few weeks, one of our all-star forum reviewers, msbaylor, has been putting a massive amount of iPhone To-Do apps through their paces: Things, Appigo’s ToDo, Toodledo, Done, Zenbe Lists, Ultimate ToDos, and Firetask. Well now he’s to-done, and you can check out his colossal review roundup on our forums (along with screenshots and videos aplenty!)

On behalf of everyone seeking that holy grail of To-Do nirvana, we can’t thank Matt enough for going to all this trouble. Here’s what he wanted, but read it quick so you can get to the good stuff!

• Sync (not at additional cost)
• Sleek/non-confusing interface
• sub-tasks
• due-date
• priority

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Forum Mega-Review: iPhone To-Do App Showdown

This is really exciting news for anyone looking for this type of syncing. Personally, I have moved beyond Apple’s todo’s and use Toodledo for my task purposes and Appigo’s Todo just happens to do over-the-air syncing for free with that site; even on EDGE. However, if you still use iCal’s todo feature, this just might be your killer app!

If you are a Windows user, Appigo says they are working on a Windows/Outlook syncing tool as well.

(Via TUAW)

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

iPhone Todo List Syncing Comes to iCal

Recently our friends at sister site TreoCentral pointed us to this snippet: Apple was seriously interested in purchasing Palm back in 1997.  This is interesting for all sorts of reasons, but chief amongst them for me is this: Had the deal gone through, we might have seen the iPhone not only come to market earlier, but possibly seen it prevent other smartphone manufacturers (like RIM) from being able to compete.  It’s an interesting ‘what could have been’ scenario: just as Apple was killing off their Newton line, it would pick up the Palm Pilot and add functionality to it at presumably a more rapid pace than Palm did.

It’s also notable that even back in 1997, the powers-that-be in Apple recognized that they would need to transition from a strictly-computer company to a consumer products company:

A perhaps little known fact: in the Summer of 1997, Steve Jobs called Eric Benhamou, 3Com’s CEO (the company owned Palm). “Give me the Palm and come and join my Board of Directors. Only Apple can make Palm a true consumer brand.” Nothing happened. Apple’s foray into the product segment had to wait ten more years.

Of course, neither Apple nor Palm were in a position to really get things moving quickly at that time.  Palm would have to wait until their first (of many) convoluted ownership shakeups sorted itself out and Apple itself was still in the midst of redefining itself for the Steve Jobs era. The parallels between Palm now and Apple then are also fun to think about — both in dire need of a turnaround, both written off by much of the industry, and both have/had Jon Rubinstein playing a key role in revitalizing hardware.

I could go on and on playing “What If?” but instead there’s something else that this little snippet brings to mind: Palm got something right with the original Palm Pilot way back in 1997 and I really wish Apple would take a closer look at that 1997 tech.

Read on to find out what Palm got right way back in the mid to late 90s.

Pitting the PalmPilot against the Newton was (and is) an interesting exercise. The Newton clearly had aims to become the next major computing platform (the iPhone has similar aims and better chances), it was powerful, networked, and generally ambitious. The PalmPilot: it had aims to replace your organizer and that’s about it. It was a simpler device because Palm recognized that it would need to be pocketable and (relatively) inexpensive.

Back then, at least, the PalmPilot won out — and one lesson that Apple clearly took from that was the simplicity and pocketability trump power in handheld devices. That’s not to say that the iPhone isn’t powerful (it is), but Apple has taken a strategy of unveiling that power bit-by-bit as they’re ready to do so. First and foremost, Apple focused on nailing down the core functionality and a consistent UI.

The PalmPilot was a compelling device for many many people for several years (and continues to be some a smaller group). In the form the the PalmOS Treo and the Central, the PalmOS continues to be a useful, though simple, OS for millions. What about the PalmOS was so compelling then and remains compelling now. I could point to a few things, but for most I think it was simply the ability to create and sync the “Four Pillars of PIM.”

The what now? The Four Pillars of PIM are the 4 applications that were given separate buttons on the original PalmPilot. They were the essential core things you would want to do with a pocket organizer. You’d want to be able to enter data both on your computer and on the device itself and have that data seamlessly sync. The Four Pillars of PIM:

• Calendar
• Contacts
• Memos
• ToDo

On all of these applications on the PalmOS, you can create new entries incredibly quickly and you can enter your data on the desktop and sync it over. You can probably tell where I’m going with this, but I’ll come out and say it anyway: the iPhone only gets 2 of the four. Contacts and Calendar sync seamlessly (and now wirelessly!), but Notes on the iPhone lives in its own little world and ToDo/Tasks is nowhere to be seen.

Now, I understand that both of these gaps can be filled with 3rd party applications on the iPhone, but those apps require you to sign up for some 3rd party’s website and then further find ways to sync or access your data there. What should happen is that these last two Pillars should sync over — either through iTunes, Exchange, or MobileMe. Exchange, you might note, fully supports syncing both ToDo and Memos. It does so with Windows Mobile, in fact, just fine.

What’s especially frustrating is that there have been signs that we’d see support for these features. Over a year ago we reported on a warning error that popped up in Mail’s Notes feature. Here, take a gander for yourself:

“Rich text notes may not be editable on iPhone and other devices.” If you are using a Mac with 10.5, you can go create that error yourself right now.

What’s more, when Apple updated OS X’s Mail.app client back then they not only added notes but they also integrated ToDos. Whereas previously they had only lived in the Calendar Application, now they were in Mail. In short, Apple seemed to be setting up Mail.app to have similar functionality to Microsoft’s Exchange email client. The implication was that they’d be able to sync all four Pillars of PIM on both platforms. The reality is that something is keeping Apple from finishing off these features that they clearly have started.

I wish I could say I knew what’s stopping them. I suspect that Apple’s more concerned with other issues (like getting push notifications worked out) that they believe are more important than Notes and ToDo.

I’m happy that in addition to the Four Pillars of PIM our devices now have other, equally essential features like Push Email, SMS, Web browsing, and Telephony (the Four Pillars of COM, if you will). I’m equally happy that syncing PIM information is moving to wireless push instead of tethering and manually syncing. All this pleases me and overall we’re obviously much much better off now than we were a decade ago. Still…

People used to talk about the “Zen of Palm.” It was 1 part minimizing taps, 1 part removing features that weren’t necessary, 1 part speed, 1 part intuitive UI, and, well, a lot more. Nowadays people refer to “iPhone-Likeness” in a very similar way. But part of the “Zen of Palm” is that they recognized what the four most important organizer functions were and made those functions seamless, easy, and immediate. Having to sort though 3rd party apps, pick one, then try to re-work your current set of notes and ToDos to fit with some new system is definitely not “iPhone-Like.” It’s janky, and Apple needs to fix it ASAP.

In other words, yes, I’m already looking forward to iPhone OS 2.3.

One last bit: the PalmPilot also had a feature that’s sorely lacking on the iPhone and, in fact, on most non-PalmOS devices: decent device-wide search capabilities. One field that searched through the databases of every core app and many 3rd party apps. If the PalmPilot was able to do this, you’d like to think the iPhone could.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

The Four Pillars of PIM — TiPb of the Iceberg