Two small but annoying issues I have with my iPhone is that whilst you can put in Birthdays into one of the fields in a users Contacts. There seems no way to display those birthdays as reminders/alarms in the iPhone Calender.

Unless I am missing something obvious?

Also there seems like there is no way to filter a contacts list by group. i.e Work, Friends, Family etc

As I have over 1000 contacts this is pretty frustrating

Does anyone else have the same issues or know of hacked apps to address these quirks?

Still only 2 is not too bad. Considering everything else I like about the phone

My contacts are in groups - you just need to set them up that way in Address Book.

As for birthdays, maybe an Applescript on the Mac side to extract birthdays and make events out of them?

Well there you go. I actually learned something new about Address Book Today. Still trying to do things the WINCE way.

Just did a quick and dirty edit of my address books. Works a treat. Thanks so much

Now to try and solve the calender issue

Maybe this?

I found "Dates to iCal" does the job on iphone g3 perfectly. Costs $7 au but works well.
http://www.nhoj.co.uk/datestoical/

I take a similar approach to Birthdays as I do with Contacts.

I have a birthdays calendar in iCal; I get info on this event and can set numerous alarms there, x many days before, x many minutes before. And "On actual day"

I get a little popup alarm on my mac, and I also get a popup alarm on my iphone.

BTW you can also create alarms on the iPhone by editing a date; but its easier and faster to do them in iCal.

I'm still waiting for subscribed calendars in iCal to appear on the iPhone!
This will allow my Birthday's calendar, and the Aust Public Holidays to appear.

Is frustrating that subscription calendars can't be displayed as an option yet!

Are you kidding me?

All of my calendars are subscriptions (Google Calendar) and they work just fine (displayed) on the iPhone as a regular calendar in iCal. Check your iTunes.