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The Address Book application in Mac OS X Snow Leopard has a new telephone number label for contacts: “iPhone.” (Credit to Jeff Carlson for bringing it to my attention.)

What I find just as interesting as its existence is its order in the list. The “iPhone” label comes before “mobile,” the label I used for all cellular numbers. Is that a subtle dig to put the iPhone above other mobile phones?

It is also the only label that rates a capital letter.

I have no idea how or if this label will survive through Entourage Sync Services and Exchange synchronization. Hm.

Update: I wouldn’t advise using this label right now if you use Sync Services or otherwise sync data elsewhere. I’ve already lost cell numbers in Entourage with Sync Services enabled when I flipped an existing “mobile” number to “iPhone” and back.

Update: I have tested it twice with dummy contacts and could not reproduce the problem that resulted in the number being removed from both Entourage and Address Book. (I believe this is odd because it happened to two of my existing contacts when I flipped them to “iPhone” and back to “mobile.”) However, the “iPhone” number does definitely get removed from Entourage through Sync Services, which means you would lose the number on anything connected to an Exchange account (if Entourage is synchronizing with Exchange). … Such as an iPhone with Exchange ActiveSync.

Apparently, I’ve been installing too many applications on my iPod touch. The other day, I got this warning from it while trying to use the App Store application to download a new app: “There is not enough space to download this application. Please delete some photos or videos.”

Trimming the applications list is a lot less satisfying than filling it up.

“Life Balance 3.x customers with Macintosh licenses can upgrade to version 4 for just $59.95,” claims Llamagraphics, the purveyor of the fine time management application, Life Balance.

This sounds like a great deal! Until I remember that the only reason I want to upgrade from version 3 to 5 (not 4) is for compatibility with the new iPhone version of Life Balance! So to get them both, I’d be spending:

Compare that to my current cost for Life Balance — which I’m not currently using because my Treo repeatedly made me want to throw it forcefully into the ground (loved the Palm, hated the defective phone!) and the desktop software looks like crap — which I’ve summarized below:

That’s right, folks. After an investment to date of $89.95 in this software, I’d have to shell out another $79.94 to stay current and get the application on the mobile device I currently use. I’d be paying more for the Mac upgrade than I’ve ever paid for any single purchase or upgrade from Llamagraphics in the past!

I’m surprised I’m even thinking about this. However, Life Balance has always made the most sense of any task management application, and has always done the best job of helping me prioritize. (Of other current applications, OmniFocus doesn’t make sense to me, and Things was great for entry but felt horrid at showing me what I needed to do next.) At the cost of Life Balance, despite how it worked for me, maybe it’s simply time to try something else.

The least expensive overall, and perhaps most interesting because it supports task sharing, is to go with Remember The Milk. I’m not sure I want to use a Web or “cloud” service for this, and there’s no desktop application per se, but I’m at the point in my life where sharing to-do’s with others (and outside the work environment) is compelling. The new Remember The Milk iPhone application may tip me in that direction.

I’m really going to have to dive into one new feature in iTunes 8: last night, I discovered that it has per-podcast settings. I’m pretty sure the settings were only available globally before, and I didn’t see anyone else talking about this change yet.

These settings can override the defaults for:

• how many episodes to download
• how long to keep episodes.

This is tremendous, although unfortunately it will lessen the opportunity for third party tools like Cast Away. (However, I’ve found Cast Away extremely complex.)

ABC News is but one news outlet saying that a Faster iPhone on Its Way, after AT&T Chief Executive Officer Randall Stephenson “spilled” this news last week. (Nevermind that, as others have said, Apple’s own CEO has said much the same thing already.)

What really annoys me is that every time I’ve looked into AT&T’s 3G coverage, the glaring lack of it has become apparent. Sure, you have to delve down into a lower level than their national coverage map, but you can look for yourself.

In New York State, only the New York City metro area had coverage when I’ve looked. (See The iPhone objections and At least 2G is better than nothing, and you can blame AT&T.) Forget upstate and its several MSAs in the top 100 in the nation by population.

So why, exactly, would a 3G iPhone be of broad interest in the U.S. if AT&T is the exclusive carrier? What good is a 3G iPhone if I can’t use 3G where I am? Is there something AT&T isn’t showing us? Right now, it seems like they are the bigger part of the problem, yet every story I see seems to focus on how this is Apple’s fault. I’m not trying to be a fanboy, but let’s at least get some balanced media coverage on this.

[Via MacInTouch.]

The Apple TV, for all intents and purposes, sounds as if it is an iPod that you put on your home network and connect to your TV. It shows up in the “Devices” list in iTunes.

The Apple TV is based on Mac OS X; that’s how people have done some hacking on it.

So why don’t the iPhone and iPod Touch — software for which is also derived from Mac OS X — have network-based synchronization? Are they merely one flashy keynote address away from having it? And why not have introduced it before the new Zunes came along with that feature?

(Of course, you could ask the same question about other technologies, including Bluetooth A2DP.)

Let’s summarize the week in Apple news so far:

• Declared October 26, 2007, as the ship date for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, and updated all sorts of marketing material about it — including a list of its 300+ new features (an almost unheard-of summary, and the closest I’ve seen to the old TechNotes covering each new Mac OS release).
• Increased the catalog of DRM-free music on the iTunes Store to 2 million tracks, and dropped the price to 99¢ from $1.29.
• Announced an SDK for developing native software for the iPhone and iPod touch, due in February 2008.

Now, after class action lawsuits regarding the iPhone’s tie to AT&T, I totally wish I’d sued PalmOne and Sprint about tying the Treo 650 to the Sprint CDMA network.

I wanted it on Verizon Wireless, but it didn’t arrive until almost a year later, in May 2005! During that time, I must have read everything about hacking the Sprint version to run on VZW. The sheer nerve of these companies, to make me waste my time like that! I’m sure many others would have joined with my righteous crusade!

The Macalope, in Always wait for something better. ALWAYS, discusses the iPhone’s “silly pundit zombie talking points that will not die.” This, of course, includes the hue and cry over the lack of GSM 3G networking.

While I really don’t know what the battery life trade-off would have been to put 3G on the iPhone, I do know I would like something faster. (Note: I don’t have an iPhone, so I’m speaking only in generalities.) I’ve had 1x-RTT from Verizon, and it was seriously not cool. Everyone likes faster networking, right? I’m no exception, I’ll admit it.

But realistically, even thought I’ve seen AT&T issue press releases about how many metro areas are covered by 3G equipment, mine isn’t. My dose of reality came on June 29, when I posted Having an EDGE. I looked again, and although my area is slathered in the orange of ubiquitous AT&T signal, the blue of 3G data networking is conspicuously absent, still. Even if I purchased a 3G-capable phone right now at a local AT&T retail outlet, this tells me I wouldn’t get 3G.

So what kind of advantage is that to me, technology columnists? Do you all live in New York and Los Angeles, or other places that have received their AT&T upgrades?

I live in one of the 100 largest metro areas in the country, home to one of AT&T’s top network engineers (I’ve been in one presentation by him), and don’t get that same advantage. I haven’t looked at the entire U.S. coverage map (because you have to zoom down to the city level or below to see 3G coverage), but it would seem awfully silly of AT&T to have as much coverage as I’ve seen them claim, but then bypass my area — as well as the other main metro areas in my whole state.

So if 2G or 2.5G networking is available an ubiquitous in the locale where I’m going to use it most, and I don’t need to depend on having Wi-Fi at my disposal at all times … eh, I’ll take it. The iPhone matches the AT&T network conditions around me. That’s certainly better than nothing, and I’ll remember that as I consider how to replace my current phone.

I did try out a relative’s Verizon Treo 700p, though, and the speediness of the EVDO connection — even in rural Maryland — was readily apparent. However, it still ran through the Blazer browser I loathed in 2005; I’d choose mobile Safari over that any day.

I like mashing compound words together. Ringtones. Audiobooks. They sound like they should go together, don’t they? With plus signs, as popularized [sic] by HP and Entertainment Weekly, not to mention all of those “all in one” Time Warner commercials.

Wouldn’t it be neat — and by that I mean I really don’t think so myself, I just had this amusing-to-me tangential thought while reading The scourge of the damned frog song — if one could make ringtones of audiobooks?!?

Rawk.