Stephen M. Hackett on Apple’s Reminders app:

Reminders seems like a great little app for little tasks. But I don’t think it can replace OmniFocus, even for someone like me, who doesn’t use lots of the app’s features.

When Apple demoed Reminders and its location-based functionality at WWDC I had the same thought as Stephen (and as many of you did, too, I’m sure): could Reminders replace OmniFocus?

The answer is, of course, no way. For one, Reminders has no quick-entry and ubiquitous capture tools for the Mac. Secondly, Reminders is not nearly as robust and long-term project oriented as OmniFocus is.

So the next question is: can OmniFocus replace Reminders? Perhaps. But I don’t think it needs to. I am content to use both of them, side by side. For me, Siri is the interface into Apple’s Reminders app, using it for quick little one-off tasks and reminders. OmniFocus is still my primary to-do list and personal project management tool.

In short, you can tweet with Siri by simply using Siri to post to Twitter via SMS. You do it by linking your mobile phone number to your Twitter account and setting up a contact named Twitter with the phone number 40404. Easy peasy.

I mentioned in my iPhone 4S review yesterday that the vibration of my new iPhone is different. iFixit guys know why. In their teardown of the 4S, at step 16 they find the vibrator motor:

• Out comes the vibrator motor. It appears that Apple elected to go with the linear oscillating vibrator that we found in the Verizon iPhone 4 as opposed to the rotational electric motor with counterweight in the AT&T version.
• This vibrator motor is quieter, softer, and all-around less annoying than its counter-weighted predecessor.

(Thanks to the several readers who sent this in.)

Two little-known fields in iPhone contact cards are the Phonetic First and Last Names. Fill them in to help Siri understand your requests better and to keep Siri from mispronouncing the names of your friends and family.

To set a phonetic field just go to a contact’s entry from your iPhone, scroll to the bottom, and tap “Add Field”. From there you’ll find the fields you’re looking for.

There are 4 apps that far and away get the most usage on my iPad: OmniFocus, Simplenote, Reeder, and Instapaper. And Instapaper is my favorite and most-used of them all.

Today, Instapaper got a major update — version 4.0 — and this update is just stellar. I have been using the Instapaper betas for the past few months, and every update and change found in this new version is a welcomed one. The new icon is great, and I am a huge fan of the new grid layout for the home pages, as well as the new design and look of the sidebar.

Moreover, there are some great new additions to functionality: better social browsing and search to name a few. In short, the overall design of Instapaper has matured significantly, and the new features are welcomed ones. What a great update.

From what I’ve read online and on Twitter, it seems the activation issues are pretty much isolated to AT&T. Ugh. And sadly, that is my experience here at shawnblanc.net headquarters as well. Anna’s and my new phones showed up over 3 hours ago and still no luck with activating them. (The FedEx driver said he had over a hundred in his truck.)

This is the first time that I have not been able to activate my iPhone right away. I suppose this time I had it coming.

Mark Milian, at CNN.com:

Wozniak acknowledged that he could have easily made one phone call to Apple and gotten the phone he’s waiting in line for, but he didn’t. He has yet to play with an iPhone 4S or its Siri voice-controlled assistant. He has said previously that he does not ask colleagues about products in development because he does not want to ruin the surprise for himself.

“I want to get mine along with the millions of other fans,” Wozniak said.

The Pilot G2 0.38mm has been my favorite pen for at least a couple of years. Until about 2 weeks ago. The Uni-ball Signo has now taken it’s place. If you like the ultra-fine-tipped G2, I think you may like the Uni-ball Signo as well.

Martin Hering:

I am pleased to announce that now with version 1.4 Instacast is fully integrated with iCloud. This means, you can now finally synchronize your podcasts and playback information with multiple devices or have a backup in case your iPhone destroys itself suddenly. All you have to do is have an iCloud account and turn on “iCloud Sync” in the Instacast settings.

A great example of 3rd-party devs being able to easily take advantage of iCloud’s APIs to make their apps better.

Bob Mankoff, cartoonist for The New Yorker, shares about his first Mac:

Amazingly, you could draw on it with this thing called a mouse, in Mac Paint.

In practice, it wasn’t so amazing—it was like drawing with a bar of soap, and the cartoons didn’t look very good on a dot-matrix printer. When I showed them to Lee Lorenz, my predecessor as cartoon editor, he wondered what the point was. I had no good answer then, but I liked the Mac so much I wanted to come up with one.

Mobile Safari got a pretty significant update yesterday in iOS 5.