Go do that to-do that you do so well

One thing that has always puzzled me about the iPhone, and the Mac, is the lack of a built-in Apple integrated planner. The whole reason I finally switched from a paper planner to the iPhone was that I apparently naively expected such features. But until recently I still carried around paper lists in the same pocket as that phone that has all those newfangled whosit thingamajigs.

Sure, iCal is a decent calendar and syncs To Do items but not Notes, and Mail syncs Notes and To Do, but with a different looking interface for To Do (and equally feature-weak). Maybe it’s just me because I’m visually oriented, but the difference in the display of the lists throws me off.

And the folksy charm of the default font Marker Felt in Notes is a hair’s bredth from the evil that is Comic Sans. Change it on the Mac at least in the preferences before it blinds you with its beauty. And for now we’re stuck with the yellow lined legal pad background apparently.

In either case, the To Do list is a weak afterthought grafted onto Mail and iCal, and there is no built-in Apple app that syncs to the To Do list on the iPhone. Only Notes sync (via Apple’s MobileMe service, $99 a year), which I am using right now as a word processor on my phone to write this blog.

Personally, my iLife needs a powerful, flexible planner way more than it needs Garage Band, wicked sweet though it be.  So, after searching the available to-do iPhone apps available,  I am currently putting an app called Todo 3.0 through its paces.

It pretty much rocks so far. It crashes every once in a while, but so far the crashes are harmless. The app immediately restarts, doesn’t crash the phone, and I haven’t lost any data. 

A to do item can be a Normal item, or a List, or a full on Project. An item or subitem can also be to email, text, or call a contact, vist a map location, or visit a web site, all integrated with the appropriate built-in iPhone apps. 4 levels of priority, tagging items with tags and contexts, many customized ways of sorting the views your stuff, search, and lots of other handy and sensible features.

And via a WiFi connection only, it syncs with the To Do list on your Mac’s iCal and Mail. There’s a calendar interface similar to the iCal on the iPhone for picking dates, hopefully it will be more robust in the future.

I still wish that Apple would introduce a real to-do solution so that there would be total integration, and automatic, over the air syncing with MobileMe. But in the meantime, for $10 (and free demo) from appigo.com, Todo will do for now.