Syphone helps you track SMS conversations

Sure, iTunes’ll back up your iPhone’s data and let you restore it, but one thing it won’t do is let you manage much of that data on your Mac. Take SMS messages, for example. With the iPhone’s “threaded conversation” model, I find myself less likely to delete text messages. I accidentally lost a bunch of mine early on when iTunes failed to restore a backup. Wouldn’t it be nice to have some other access to that information?

Micromat’s new Syphone (currently in beta) is an app for your Mac that lets you view your synced SMS messages, archive SMS messages, import/export SMS messages, and more; in fact, it does pretty much everything but address the the annoying fact that “SMS message” is almost as redundant as “ATM machine.”

The program is a beta, so there are definitely some kinks to be worked out. Following some advice in Micromat’s forums, I had to go into Syphone’s preferences panel and uncheck Helper Application to get it to work. And since Syphone reads from iTunes’s store, you’ll need to sync the phone before launching the app. But I presume many of those quirks will be worked out in subsequent versions, and all in all the program’s pretty convenient, especially if you want to retain those incriminating memorable SMS messages.

[via Daring Fireball]

Category: Software

Posted by Dan Moren on Dec 6 2007, 10:22 AM ET

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