A great tip that I found over on Lifehacker shows us how to get calendar updates from iCal via SMS.
As you know, text message inboxes have email addresses—for instance, 7125550000@vtext.com (for Verizon users). If you add your phone’s email address as an emailing option in your Address Book vCard, you can choose it as an option to email a reminder. Set the date, time and reminder and, Bam—you have a cell phone reminder.
Now you have another option to get those daily reminders that we all need sometimes. It could serve as a reminder for yourself or a way to help that forgetful significant other.
Read [Lifehacker]
I REALLY want to buy an iphone, but the lack of event/appointment reminders is stopping me. You see, I now use a palm centro cell phone. I can use it's calendar to set up all my daily meetings, appointments, whatever. Then, when one comes up, it goes off with a LOUD ring alert (set to any of several sounds). If it is in my pocket, or in another room, and I don't pick it up and hit OK, or cancel, it will continue to go off every 15 seconds until it gets my attention. I REALLY want to get an iphone, but I absolutely need to have the iCal app on the iphone to give me a real alert when a scheduled event comes up. The iphone will only give you a small notice on the screen and a SINGLE, quick chirp the way it works right now. IF you miss it, you're screwed. You can't hear it in your pocket, or in another room. And, it only gives that silly, pathetic, 1-single chirp! What good is that? As good as the rest of the iphone's features are, (awesome!), I can't believe it lacks the basic ability to have iCal give scheduled event alerts. It should go off in a LOUD sound, selectable by the user, and should go off initially for at least 15 seconds, and then every 15 seconds if you don't respond, so it WILL get your attention. I can't afford to miss meetings, lunches, scheduled calls, etc. I want to do my daily schedule on my mac, then have it auto sync to iphone thru mobileme, and give me REAL iCal alerts!!!! Until then, I can't take the chance on iphone.
Well, here we are, almost three years later, and there isn't really much improvement. I missed a paid meeting the other day because I didn't hear the alarm. Lame…
Worse yet, I tried to find an app that would sound persistent reminders
Apple wouldn't have to change much. the SMS app has a preference that allows you to set a reminder.
Ideally, there would be a new preference category called 'reminders" that would allow a single place to set reminder preferences globally. These would include for missed calls, missed texts, and upcoming appointments. It would allow them to be customizably snoozed, include vibrate, override for low battery, etc.
There would also be a calendar pref that allowed you to set a default reminder x minutes/hours/days out.
Or, an app that would sync with the calendar and do something like that… I tried to find one but couldn't. Anyone know if such a beast exists?
Hi,
Jake, I couldn't have said it any better than you did! It just amazes me that Apple hasn't FIXED this yet.
I've talked to an awful lot of people that agree with us on this. You would think we were asking for
something difficult or fancy, instead of what should be a BASIC feature.
-Blue