Continuing the discussion from How do we feel about the checkboxes on the right?:
Sadly at this rate I’m probably going to stick with OmniFocus 1, despite my recently purchased license entitling me to a free upgrade to OmniFocus 2. There are a few issues that are major in terms of usability and workflow that just prevents me from using OmniFocus 2 as my daily driver (data density, one row vs two rows, checkboxes on the left/to provide visual hierarchy, editing tasks with keyboard (GIF of usage enclosed), …).
It’s quite telling when you have (some) customers preferring your old app as opposed to the new one, as it’s usually implied that new software is better than old one (otherwise, what’s the point?).
Yes, perhaps it’s just us in the passionate minority who really care about this sort of issue, but then again it’s the passionate minority who stick with OmniGroup (or any other software provider like DEVONtechnologies, …) in the long-run when things go bad, or the latest fad comes out (Clear, Things, …), and it’s us who evangelise about the software and build workflows around it, and write blog posts and tweet constantly and incessantly about it. It is us who constantly bother non-users about how bad their current implementation/app is, and how they should switch to OmniFocus, and then afterwards have praise lavished on us. It is us who eagerly waited (and asked) about the reintroduction of the OmniFocus 2 beta after its withdrawal in December of 2013, and then afterwards, eagerly used it to our delight (and sometimes, disappointment, due to UX problems).
Yes, it’s fine to ignore us – perhaps our contribution to the overall revenue pool is negligible, but in terms of long-run though it’s not an ideal situation.
The issues that we bring out is not just random or pointless, or for the sake of giving OmniGroup more work or trying to attack the company.
These are genuine issues that we, in the passionate minority, are concerned about. In terms of usability. Ease of use. Functionality. Data density.
Things that ‘normal’ people don’t really think or talk about, or notice or take into consideration.
Yes, it’s possible to ask, in terms of the overall experience, whether OmniFocus 2 is better than OmniFocus 1. But as mr_rique has said in the thread, that’s setting the bar too low.
We obviously have better things to do than to sit around on our computers and discuss on an online forum about minor things (like they do in the UNIX community, apparently, with things like Git vs Subversion and vim vs emacs, for example). After all, we’re using a world-class productivity suite here, made by a world-class dev team, OmniGroup, that has been developing for Apple’s OSes since NeXT. We have better things to do.
To sum things up: Yes, we’re a minority, but yes, we’re passionate about productivity. What we point out is perhaps indiscernible to the common user (although some people do point this out, whether or not they have used OmniFocus 1 prior to testing out OmniFocus 2), perhaps, but that doesn’t mean our points of contention (regarding data density, checkbox location for hierarchy/usability, etc) is any less valid because we are in the minority.
And to put the alternative case, perhaps even more valid because of our status as the passionate minority.
Thanks for reading.
