DataViz Documents To Go 1.0

Palm OS veteran comes to the iPhone

By Tony Smith • Get more from this author

27th June 2009 09:02 GMT

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Not sure which group a given document belongs too? DTG provides a search tool to help you find the file you want. But moving a file from one group to the other involves opening it and navigating several iPhone pages to manually save the file into the relevant folder.

Editor vs viewer: Word (left) and Numbers

We tried DTG with a range of supported files and noticed a number of small inconsistencies between original and DTG-viewed versions of the same document. DTG worked best with Word, but here's why: so far as we can see, only Word files are rendered using DTG code. All the rest are displayed using the iPhone OS' own viewers, the same ones employed to view attachments in Mail, for instance.

The result is not only inconsistencies between documents but between document types too. The pinch-to-zoom works well with, say, a PDF but not with a Word document - you use DTG's toolbar-placed magnify icon for that.

So while the Word 'module' lets you do more with the contents of the file, ironically it's the least iPhone-like of the lot. DTG has a muddled feel as a result.

This is all about the unfinished nature of the app. There are a host of document sync-and-view apps out there - File Magnet is a good one - so what DTG really needs is editing tools, but here they're limited to one type of file.

Where'd the Done button go? And what's up with the search system?

Then there are the inevitable pre-release bugs: a Word search facility that didn't file 'hole' in 'rabbit-hole' even though both whole-word searching and case-sensitivity were disabled. We tried to delete a couple of the pre-loaded sample documents and the Done button didn't appear leaving us with the only option of quitting the app.

Verdict

We've always liked DTG as a viewer and editor on the Palm platform, but this release is very disappointing. DataViz still has a lot of work to do to fill out the feature list - get the editing going, essentially - and polish up the many rough edges. It really should have waited before putting DTG on the App Store - or at least not charged downloaders for the privilege of beta-testing its software. We expect the finished version will score will, but this half-baked offering won't. ®