Frustrations with OF2

OmniFocus OmniFocus for Mac
#102

I’ll come back in on post 100 or so.

First, as I have duly noted elsewhere, I was venting. That others post here too should be construed only as additional vents. I was not wanting to start an ax grinding session.

OF1 was a recent vintage, manual transmission Mustang that any owner could openly tweak under the hood. You had to know how to work a clutch to get it to run. Those who wanted could make it hum royally, and many sanctioned options to “make it your own” were available. OF2 is a shiny, automatic-transmission Prius with its hood firmly welded shut. It runs well around town and gets exceptionally good mileage. It also has only one setting for the dash brightness, two settings for the position of the seat, and two settings for the position of the rear-view mirror. In the few cases where more options might be offered, it is a via unsanctioned under-the-table hacks. OF1 looks a bit sloppy around the edges, requires beyond the normal level of mastery to learn to drive, and can be tweaked to park itself snuggly from a running slide or tuned to fly. OF2 looks great, can be driven by anyone almost immediately, and has its settings firmly fixed on values that 80-90% of the world uses.

Suppose we accept that OG has 51 employees (as quoted above) and … say … 9 products total (count each iOSX and desktop product separately). That amounts to … say … about 5 employees per product. I use three other high-throughput software packages with generally the same or fewer employees working per package … two of them have one employee per two packages (desktop and iPad). Those other packages have distributed major and minor revision updates as much as three times as rapidly as OmniGroup. They’ve acknowledged more often and far more openly than OmniGroup about bug fixes, and they’ve advanced the UI of their packages without removing previous features. Finally, they have kept the users updated far more vibrantly about the direction of developments.

I would suggest, this thread is about the 10% of users who, perhaps like me, have been (rather abruptly as I noted elsewhere) surprised to find I now own a standard model Prius rather than an updated Mustang. I would suggest this thread is about the 10% of users who, perhaps like me, have experienced software companies that are not just selling a much-needed, well-liked, and very-respectable software product, they are also passionate about communicating openly, frankly, reliably, and consistently the vision they have about where they are going with the development of that product.

Since this is a vent for the 10%, let’s all agree to leave it here. The 90% is happy. I am also about 80-90% happy with OF2. When I can’t get what I want from OF2, I’ll take my Mazda 3 on the interstate to go zoom-zoom and make up for the loss. :-)

We all have other things we should be doing (as I have learned well in my 3 weeks away). I started this, and I would respectfully like to end it as well.

Thanks!

–
JJW

5 Likes
#103

I would be happy to support ending this thread but I don’t see that Omni is correcting things mentioned here:

  • Dumbing down the Mac version on iOS niveau
  • Remember David Allen: “You can’t do projects”, right? And what stands out in the OF2 UI: Folders, Projects, Contexts … as they did in OF1 but this was to fix in a few minutes
    going into preferences
  • Hours: an old wish - w/o it the location based perspectives are not usable: you drive your way at midnight and OF reminds you to buy XY in the store on the right street side. What is this for a data model that it takes them more than an update to add this?
  • As 2.0.4 seems to bee the X-mas release from Omni: nothing under the tree for me … and I’m starting to get duplicates switching between 1 and 2.

So, for me, 2014 hasn’t a OF happy end yet.

Peace,
Franz-Josef

2 Likes
#104

I think that David Allen’s GTD was great for 2001 but things have changed immensely since that time. Even David acknowledges that and he will be releasing a revision to his 2001 book “Getting Things Done.”

I work in projects a lot in addition to contexts. I have several perspectives that are focused on only one project or folder. I’m not sure what you’re getting at with bullet point #2.

#105

Hi Wilson,

I just didn’t find a way to make the font size of the actions bigger and reduce it for projects and folders. Did I miss a hidden setting?

Cheers,
Franz-Josef

#106

sorry, there does not appear to be a setting that allows you to customise the font size and styling. There is only the General preferences to enlarge or reduce the text size of the main outline only.

There was a post in these forums somewhere about adding a text document that allows you to customise some of the fonts. But it is hidden and not yet fully fleshed out until (crossing my fingers) the ability to create your own custom themes becomes available.

#108 
      Before posting here I have tried the WebDAV route and had

several issues synching. Loosing quite a few times the work done during a
weekly review or not been able to synch my iphone for a while.

Lost confidence on the synching features of OmniFocus.

Due to the nature of my work, I am one of those that I am not able to
use your cloud sync services. That is why upgrading to OF 2 has been a
major drawback for me and I regret the time, effort and money invested
in using OF.

Good luck with your product.

#109

@tarantula: have you found a software package that still does bonjour and can accommodate your setup? I am curious to see if there is something else out there that can sync multiple devices without a cloud setup. I don’t recall bonjour being supported in current software programs now.

#110

Finally trying to consider upgrading and came here. One thing OD may be missing is all those of us who went ahead and bought OF2, but have never installed it or took it off because of lost features. For me the loss of Bonjour sync and the inability to get a decent compact view of my tasks are just 2 of the many headaches and why I reverted to OF1.

#111

I think Bonjour as a technology is dead and is probably being replaced by Handoff. I haven’t had much experience with handoff but it sounds like something that will play with local syncing.

Unfortunately, Handoff requires a Mac that was released in the last 2-3 years. My 2010 17" MacBook Pro will fall out of that range. But there seems to be rumblings that adding a USB Bluetooth LE adapter might be working with varying results.

#112

Bonjour as a technology is certainly not dead. Keep in mind that it’s not an Apple thing per se, it’s simply Apple’s zeroconf implementation.

#113

OmniFocus 2 and Things 2 deprecated Bonjour. That’s as good as dead as far as Things and OmniFocus is concerne.

Apple has been known to kill off existing technology and shakily transition to new technology.

Apple kills off Final Cut Pro 7 and has a rocky road to Final Cut Pro X
Apple ships Macs without floppy drives
Apple ships Macs without optical drives
Firewire 400/800 is no longer being included in most Macs in 2015

#114

Unhappily I have also decided to go back to OF1. I have tried OF2 on my iphone, iPad and now iMac. I can just about tolerate it on my iPhone, but hate it on my iPad and therefore continue to use OF1. Since I have upgraded to Yosemite on my iMac and discovered that OF1 mail clippings are broken, I decided to give OF2 a go. I don’t like the visual style and prefer OF1. However, I find that the real deal breaker is the poor implementation of capturing tasks from email through the clip-o-tron. This was an important workflow for me and is now so slow I consider that it remains broken. I understand the sandboxing issues, but if the current Applescript clip-o-tron is too slow to use, it’s broken.

I have therefore gone back to OF1 and will try to find another solution to the lack of mail capture support. Frankly I’d be prepared to use a different email client if this solved the sandboxing issue.

The best solution would be to go back to Mavericks - I find Yosemite very buggy. Unfortunately new hardware on the horizon means this isn’t a permanent solution either. I will need to get used to Yosemite and therefore find a more permanent solution to this particular workflow issue. At the moment I have way too much investment in projects set up in OF1 to consider changing to different software - but frankly I don’t want to do that - I really like OF1.

#115

Have you tried forwarding to Omnifocus Maildrop? Maybe even find a way to set up a shortcut for it? Just a thought.

#117

For the people still struggling with the Inbox in Projects problem: You can easily switch to it using the keyboard with Apple-1 , just like in Mail.

Nick

#118

Here you go. Yes, it still works in Yosemite.

#119

The only thing that doesn’t is the mail send-to-inbox action.

#120

Being OF user for 5 years now, chiming in just to let Omnigroup let know about their users (here just me :) opinion.

I’m still at OF1 on my Mac and consider it vastly superior to OF2. While I understand this is just my opinion, I prefer OF1 to OF2 because:

  1. OF1 is a power user tool, while OF2 is tool designed with beginners in mind (*)
  2. OF1 is much faster (pure performance aspect: loading, switching etc.)
  3. OF1 allows you (smaller number of clicks/keypresses) to work faster
  4. OF1 presents you more (relevant) information at hand
  5. OF1 is much more ergonomic (this is big)
  6. OF1 has more features (and here, even small ones really count)

Easiness, speed, efficiency are CORE things for any GTD person, so decreasing omnifocus in these qualities underpins it’s core purpose. (*) GTD users are not beginners.

Funny thing: I recommended OF1 to many people. For OF2 I did zero recommendations and few negative ones, discouraging people from migration. I think I’m not the only one here: this is a real lose of ‘social influence’ which is going under the hood now.

Just wanted to express my opinion and (simultaneously) politely ask: please at least keep OF1 available and updated as long as possible.

P.S. Did really try to use OF2. Money is no object, I would happily pay even $100 every few years for better OF1 - it just didnt happen with OF2 :-(

3 Likes
#121

Well said!!

With the exception of the Forecast view and a couple of interface tweaks, OF1 surpasses OF2 in almost every area!!!

I don’t think OmniGroup is giving the “social influence” the credit it deserves!!! While I continue to use OF1, I no longer recommend it. I keep following the point releases hoping that OF2 will FINALLY become a true successor to OF1, but it’s not there by a long shot!!!

1 Like
#122

Wondering if someone from Omnifocus could comment on some of the recurring requests. Is there some reason you can’t put customization of colors and fonts back into Omnifocus?

Is there any reason the “Switch” button can’t be put back?

Is there some reason you can’t put back the column view and the view bar?

Is there some reason you can’t make the compact view a user-selectable preference?

Are there technical reasons for the loss of features? Because it seems that somehow the priority became making the app look like the latest trend - as opposed to allowing look and feel customization to help people get stuff done.

#123

You are absolutely right. I’m disappointed too about the slow development of Omnifocus. I see innovation in GTD anywhere else while OF hasn’t changed anything of importance for months.