OmniFocus - 1.7.5

I can't believe the recent negative feedback which to me is a travesty and must be either uninformed or biased. I'm a health professional and juggle hundreds to thousands of priorities. I have tried countless to do methods over the years from paper to computers, trying to get a better handle on the priorities of modern life which which seem to become more and more complicated despite advances in technology . Omnifocus is by far away the most useful application for better controlling this that I have every tried and a 1+ years later, despite temporarily trying every new do list manager, I still live by it, particularly now with benefit of iphone synchronisation. My wish list is that some form of prioritisation beyond flagging could be implemented to help when juggling hundreds of important items. It is as simple or complicated as you need it to be and extraordinary useful for both to do list and projects.

After test-driving a new Mac-based task management tool for less than a month it's easy to see why "Whack OmniOutliner" recently made it to The Hit List. As beautiful as The Omni Group's other software applications are it's hard to imagine what caused them to mangle this endeavor so mercilessly. I don't know if they had hired and/or fired someone in between the design and development of the OmniOutliner and OmniGraffle pair and OmniFocus but they sure should fix it somehow; either get the original minds behind OOP and OGP back or banish the culprits responsible for OmniFocus. Before wasting time and money on OmniOutliner check out The Hit List by Potion Factory. Potion Factory is a development crew that definitely understands this domain in a manner that The Omni Group definitely does not!

www.potionfactory.com/thehitlist/

I began testing both THINGS and OMNIFOCUS last summer and didn't make my final choice until after the near-final version of Things was released a few days ago to those using the beta version. Things is a beautiful program & it is very easy to use. However, my final decision is to go with OmniFocus because of it's superb power. IMO the purpose of a program like this is the ability to organize and view data easily in a number of ways to facilitate planning and actually accomplishing goals. While Things provides a great deal of what I need, the bottom line is that I found it's approach a little too scattered. It was often difficult for me to see all my actions & projects in one view for a given period of time. Because I am an organizer, I would file some tasks in "Someday", others in "Scheduled" and the rest in "Next". When I would try to see where I had an opening for another task or project, I often could not get a clear sense of my planning with Things. It's heavy use of tags is just not to my liking. I prefer the use of contexts, which are like categories. OmniFocus follows the use of contexts. (Things has something similar called "Areas"; but they are just not the same thing in practice.) Things does not allow the use of start dates as well as due dates. Even though it is true that projects should be constructed of single actions that can be accomplished at a given time, the ability of OmniFocus to assign start dates allows tasks to be unavailable until their start date. This approach gets them out of the way until I am ready to review them or focus on them. Also, Things just doesn't use dates well. OmniFocus not only allows easy entry of dates, it also presents the due date more clearly for each task and, because it has an inspector panel, it's easy to see more about repeating items, when items are due for review, etc.l. The final straw that broke the camel's back for me was the difference between the iPhone clients. If iCal had been able to handle to do items better (especially repeating tasks) and present them on the iPhone, I might never have started this journey. Both Things and OmniFocus have iPhone clients; but there's no real comparison. Things, like it's desktop counterpart, is very scattered on the iPhone, while OmniFocus is just as organized on the iPhone as it is on the desktop. Things only allows syncing while on the same wireless network. OmniFocus allows syncing via a number of methods; and since I am a MobileMe subscriber, I use that method, which allows me to sync from anywhere. I'm sure Things will meet the needs of many people; and for those who place a big emphasis on price, it will probably win. For me, time is money; and OmniFocus helps me get the most done.

I bought (downloaded) Omnifocus yesterday; today I am wondering why I paid $80 when I cannot see my entries (entries made in project mode and assigned to contexts) and I cannot find out why or how to get contexts to work for me. Other than that I find it hard to learn and use. The product page is not very helpful and neither have I found anything useful in the forum. Help!

If you're not looking for a multi-user project management tool like Merlin with timelines and cost calculation but a single user to-do-manager with powerful sorting, due date and attachment capabilities, this seems like the tool of choice for you. Luckily, it's vailable in German as well now!

Just make sure that you watch the video and read through the help files BEFORE you start, otherwise OmniFocus looks more convoluted than it actually is. And make use of perspectives, the single most helpful tool for me!

In Euros, the price is just right, in dollars it's 20 to 30 bucks too much on the expensive side...