Laptop to iPhone notes app?

I am also looking for this. What I really want is the same I used to have under the Palm OS on my Treo 650. Notes in categories that sync to my Mac.

I now use MissingSync for iPhone to transfer the notes to my Mac, but the other way round doesn't work. I considered MegaPhone, but I don't think that the iPhone rebooting after editting a note on your Mac is practical.

Did Apple ever say anything about why the notes-application on the iPhone is cripple? I really miss the hundreds of notes I have been making since 1996 on my Palm devices.

I searched for Missing Sync Application but it doesn't come up for iPhones...where/how did you get it?

http://www.markspace.com/missingsync_iphone.php is where I bought the MissingSync for iPhone application. It is not as good as the one for Palm, far less features. I am waiting for a better product.

Try reQall. I use this for both Notes and To-Do, and it is accessible via any web browser at www.reqall.com. It works really well! I love it.

You can read about syncing To-Do items here.

reQall doesn't really suit me. Apparently it goes through a server where you can let iCal download the stuff you have created using reQall. I am looking something that works both ways without my personal information going through the internet. After all, my iPhone and my Mac are both on the same table connected with a USB cable. Why would I want to send all my personal data across the Atlantic ocean to sync?

And it seems I also have to delete the alarms, attachments and todo's to make it a feed before I can synchronise notes.

I am only looking for a really, really basic feature that has been present in all Palms, even back in the days they were called PalmPilots and didn't use USB.

Is it so crazy to ask for something this basic?

I begin to wonder that the design of the iPhone OS and the iTunes syncing does not allow such a feature, because otherwise it would have been possible from the beginning. I would love to see a technical explanation about this, preferably from Apple.

If it is not and it won't be possible PalmOS-style, than it is a reason to get rid of the iPhone completely and make this publicly known.

Have you looked at the "Zenbe" app?

I browsed through the entire productivity category in the App Store and none of the apps there are like the Tasks and Notes applications under Palm OS. They don't sync with the desktop. It baffles me.

Because none of them do and MissingSync only syncs one way I have the impression that it is technically difficult/impossible because of the way Apple designed the communication iPhone-iTunes. Perhaps it is a legacy design from the iPod era, perhaps it is their business model with a focus on online services like Mobile Me.

Would love to hear the final word about it.

The main problem is that Apple has not made the USB connection available to 3rd party developers for synching data. Maybe they will add it later. For now, app developers can sync data via WiFi, but they still have to have an app on the Mac/PC side with which they can sync the data.

I wish that Apple themselves had made the Notes app sync to a host computer, but OS X (on the Mac) does not even have a notes app built into it.

I have a collection of notes that has been growing since the mid-'90s from when I first started using the original Palm Pilot. We could sync notes from the Palm to their desktop app or (later) to MS Outlook. My notes later moved to a Pocket PC, which I still use. I'd really like to have equivalents of the apps on my Pocket PC on the iPhone. The big road-block is the lack of USB sync capability.

I know Apple has put some limitations on what 3rd party developers can do to protect against malicious code/data, but I don't think the blocking of USB synching is part of that. Every other hand-held platform has provision for synching, and I've never had a problem with any of them -- Palm (since the early '90s!), Pocket PC, and Blackberry. I'd expect the iPhone platform to outdo any of those, since its developers can learn from all that has come before. In any case, the limited sync capabilities are keeping just about every type of app I want off the iPhone.

I'd love to see:

- full-featured PDA capabilities (contact, calendar, ToDo, Notes)
- documents (Word, Excel, etc.)
- financial info (maybe an iPhone version of Quicken)
- fitness/activity tracking and logging

But all of these require a robust and reliable synching mechanism.

I have nothing against games, tip calculators, electronic levels, and that cute cowbell, but I'm really looking for this otherwise-great platform to do the things that my Palm was doing more than a decade ago.

I've been using pogonotes, you can also create a shortcut to the desktop for easy access.
hope this help

Get Evernote. They have a free iPhone app that you will find in the App Store. After you register online, you can create notes on the Web, on the iPhone, or on the iPhone. Notes will sync to all three. In addition, you can record voice notes, take photos (it will run an OCR routine on uploaded pics) and there's also a Web Clipper utility on the Mac that allows you to easily paste info from web pages into your Evernote note list. It's pretty slick. And free. Only negative is that the iPhone app currently will not let you edit previously created notes. The developer has already posted that this will be included in the next update.

I understand that it is because of limitations Apple has put on developers we can't get basic syncing features like you describe them?

Is there a discussion in the developer community about this?







<Edited by Moderator>

This is an embarrassment
I've been writing notes on my palm since the early 90's and syncing them with my computer back and forth.
I bought an iPhone specifically because I wanted to use my notes on it, and now I discover that notes are not syncable!

Apple needs to respond to this concern ASAP,,, It's truly a shame,, I'm wishing I'd not bought the iphone now

Try PhoneView (www.ecamm.com). This works for editing iPhone notes on your laptop and copying notes in both directions over USB as well as allowing you to move files, photos, phonelogs and SMS messages. It works quite well with the exception that when you upload a new or edited note it reboots the iPhone as part of the process. No harm is done, it just takes a minute or two to transfer the note. Reading notes from the iPhone does not require the reboot. Try the demo - if you like it is $20.

I've tried missingsync and looked for other programs but this is the only one I've found that does the job.