- An Introduction to OneNote Mobile for iPhone
- A Game-Changing OneNote Client
- A Hopeful Leading Indicator
A Hopeful Leading Indicator
I'm hopeful OneNote Mobile for iPhone will be the first of many OneNote clients for non-Microsoft operating system platforms. Android smartphones would be the next logical target for OneNote Mobile, but Microsoft hasn't announced any plans to introduce a OneNote Mobile for Android client. For now, I expect most Android smartphone users who want a note-taking application that synchronizes with their other devices will find Evernote attractive. Android smartphone users who want to use OneNote can also consider the MobileNoter OneNote client for Android devices, but it isn't as seamless as the OneNote Mobile clients create by Microsoft.
As an iPad user, I'd prefer to see Microsoft create a full version of OneNote optimized for the iPad, rather than simply offering OneNote Mobile for iPhone without the ability to effectively use the iPad display size (OneNote Mobile for iPhone can be used on the iPad, but it runs as an iPhone-sized application, rather than using the full iPad display). Similarly, as the variety of compelling Android tablet and slate devices expands in the near-term future (with products such as the Motorola Xoom), it'd be ideal to also have a full OneNote client for larger form-factor Android devices.
A full OneNote client for Mac OS would address another long-standing OneNote customer community request. I find it perplexing that Microsoft offers Mac Office without OneNote. Although OneNote Web App can be used in Safari on Mac OS, it's not a full substitute for a native OneNote client.
As a final note, I'm also hopeful some of the features introduced in OneNote Mobile for the iPhone will eventually be added to the OneNote 2010 client. For example, I'd like to have a recently-viewed note index in OneNote 2010 (OneNote 2010 supports the Windows 7 taskbar-based convention for listing recently-used content, but does so at the notebook level rather than page-level).
Peter O'Kelly is an independent software industry analyst/consultant focused on topics at the intersection of collaboration and information architecture. He has worked in product and strategy roles for Lotus Development Corp., IBM, Groove Networks, Macromedia, and Microsoft, and previously worked as an analyst/consultant for Burton Group and the Patricia Seybold Group. Peter's blog can be found at http://pbokelly.blogspot.com/.