A plea for data detectors on the iPhone

It's one of those features that every iPhone user now uses, I'm sure of it.

It's the ability to recognize and use the email addresses, addresses and phone numbers that appear in the content you interact with you on phone. It's a feature that has saved my butt on many occasions. But I want it to recognize dates and certain action words to automate making appointments and other to-dos.

It's a function I'm familiar with as a Mac user. Right now such functionality is only available in Mail.app. I use data detectors and can chose things to create a 'to-do' within an email or note. It was something I used to really enjoy doing to keep me on target before the iPhone came out because – believe it or not – I had better task management on other phones but the small screen made it difficult to enter tasks on the go.

In the past, I chose phones that could iSync'd and tasks were part of the package. Why Apple has not implemented simple iSync task syncing is beyond me. I'm stuck using programs that are not really integrated into my workflow and crap falls through the cracks.

I hit one of those moments a short while ago when interacting with email on my iPhone. Having to leave a program to capture a task messes up the flow because you are constantly flipping in and out of programs and that's really annoying.

I want to be able to highlight a portion of text and have one of the options be /To Do/. Then I could add due dates, alarms, notes etc. Then move on to the next email.

Given the infrastructure exists, it's just a matter of implementing it. I hope they do so soon. Task management is the biggest weakness of the iPhone right now.

I've said so before. It's causing my eye to wander, Apple.