If I worked in Palm, Inc.'s interface design department, I'd reorganize this window to look something like Figure E.

FIGURE E


In my perfect world, the add/edit contact window would look something like this. Roll over picture for a larger image.

At a glance, you can see that the items in the top pane correspond with the fields on the Palm handheld. The items in the lower pane are synchronized to the note on the handheld. And finally, those items that don't synchronize with the handheld at all are bracketed with parentheses.

Now to wrap it all up
You don't think I asked for too much, do you? Well, perhaps, but I don't expect the software developers at Palm, Inc. to implement every last item on my wish list. In fact, I'd be happy if even half of these issues were addressed in the next release of Palm Desktop for Macintosh.

Once again, I don't want to seem ungrateful for all that Palm, Inc. has done for the Macintosh minority within the Palm community over the last several years. Despite our numbers, we certainly have been well taken care of. However, our overall user experience still falls short in several areas. I'm thinking particularly of the first five items on my list. This performance gap can be quite frustrating at times.

Obviously, eventual parity with our fellow Palm handheld owners on the Windows side of the aisle is a goal we Mac users share with Palm, Inc. Palm has made wonderful progress toward this goal in the past, and hopefully the next version of Palm Desktop for Macintosh will bring us a couple steps closer.

David H. Ringstrom, CPA is a freelance writer and is president of Accounting Advisors, Inc. He can be reached via email at david@accountingadvisors.com or on the Web at http://www.accountingadvisors.com.