Leopard 'Notes' to sync with iPhone

New evidence suggests that a more significant software update for Apple's iPhone handset will arrive following the release of the company's Mac OS X Leopard operating system, adding features such as Note syncing, among others.

In its public previews of Leopard, Apple has demonstrated a new feature dubbed "Notes," which has been commonly showcased as part of Mail 3.0 but is actually a new system-wide feature that can be accessed from just about anywhere in the OS.

As RoughlyDrafted pointed out in one of its earlier Leopard overviews, Notes are really just specially formatted HTML emails that reside in a special IMAP mailbox and are formatted with a distinct font and background style that sets them apart from other emails.

Apple says that "notes can include graphics, colored text, and attachments" and adds that "since your notes folder acts like an email mailbox, you can retrieve notes from any Mac or PC.”

Although Apple makes no mention of Notes on the iPhone and excludes it from the iPhone's online demos, RoughlyDrafted went on to predict that the company would eventually allow Note syncing to the iPhone under Leopard. As a tipster informs AppleInsider, there is now direct evidence to suggest this is indeed the case.

Creating a new Note under the latest builds of Leopard and then attempt to covert that note from its standard HTML format into a rich text format yields a dialog box that reads: "Changing the style or formatting requires that this note be converted to rich text format. Rich text notes may not be editable on iPhone and other devices."

This is sure to increase the usefulness of the iPhone's own "Notes" application tremendously, as the current incarnation only allows users to output Notes as plaintext emails and does not offer any form of text import or syncing.