As a longtime PC and Microsoft Outlook user, I have meticulously maintained CATEGORIES for Outlook Calendars and Contacts. Because the same list of CATEGORIES are used for both Contacts and Contacts, I can search for or list anything in Outlook calendars and contacts by a particular CATEGORY (without having to set up separate folders to represent each category).
Before my iPhone 4, I used a BlackBerry. The BlackBerry seamlessly synced with Outlook, including the Outlook categories. With CATEGORIES included in the synchronization, I was able to use my BlackBerry to view only those contacts or appointments that fell into a given CATEGORY. This was a big deal to me then, and it still is, given the way I categorize daily events and people in my life. I don't really think I am the only one who partitions their life as such.
It seems that with using iTunes, I would need to create separate folders in Outlook in place of Categories, and then copy my contacts to each of those folders in order to comply with the iPhone structure. And I would need to manually duplicate the process for the Outlook calendars to accomplish the same task as I do with Outlook, and formally with BlackBerry. This obviously is not an option for me, as I maintain many, many categories - some of which are cross-referenced.
As much as I have come to appreciate my iPhone for its more non-business applications, I have really missed not having this filtering capability that can be used across functions (i.e. contacts and calendar).
This would, of course, necessitate that the iPhone contacts file and calendar file be linked with the same new CATEGORY file (or table), just as the iPhone email, texting function and contact files are linked.
This doesn't seem to be to be a stretch, and based on some of the forum comments I have seen, would be a much appreciated improvement.
If I have set up a CATEGORY called "Victor," and want to search for any CALENDAR events, emails or Contacts for which I have assigned the category "Victor," I should be able to do an iPhone search on the category "Victor" to see all related entries.