Move to a different solution if interface concerns aren't addressed?

[savantier]

Continuing the discussion from Move to a different solution if interface concerns aren’t addressed?:

@lizard

It is very unlikely we will release any more updates to OmniFocus 1. Unfortunately, it is becoming prohibitively difficult to maintain and release.

Clearly understandable.

If I was running the ship at OmniGroup I wouldn’t either. It’d be a tremendously unproductive affair, and as Ken had posted (in the old OmniGroup forum), OmniGroup has had quite a good record of supporting and updating apps for many years.

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Continuing the discussion from Move to a different solution if interface concerns aren’t addressed?:

@lizard

We want everyone to use the tool that’s best for them. Obviously, we hope that tool is OmniFocus, but if another app fits you better, we don’t want to try to trick you into staying here.

I’m disappointed to hear you feel ignored. If you could hang out by our coffee machine for a few days, you would know we have not ignored this conversation. But as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, the app is already very useful for many people.

There isn’t enough time to do this right (and still meet our June ship date), so we’ll ship with the status circles on the right. Then, when we have breathing room to design well, we intend to go back and think about how to allow one person to have their status circles on the left, someone else to have their single row layout, and the people who are already happy to keep the layout we’ve already crafted.

There definitely is no trickery here. OmniGroup’s definitely not in the wrong in anyway here. We’re having rational (perhaps slightly too passionate) discussions about the current state of OmniFocus 2 at the present moment, with the possibility of moving to different solutions. As I said before I’m not entertaining the idea of doing so, as 1) I’m entrenched in the ecosystem 2) There’s no other (good) solution).

Despite what might sound like a rant (I’ve seen a few of my posts had their titles change with slightly emotive wording to more neutral wording) across the several topics that have spawned from the data density one, there’s a tremendous amount of goodwill towards OmniGroup (at least this is what I perceive having seen some of the discussions on both this Discourse forum and Twitter).

I understand that as developers there’s the issue of balancing between functionality and visual simplicity, with the risk of being too stark in its interface*, or being too dumbed down (possibly in order to capture as many users as possible and get that IPO).

*Note: Interface update coming soon in Tinderbox 6.

There’s a general move towards a more minimalist design language, sparked by iOS 7 (to a lesser extent, the ‘Modern UI’ (previously known as Metro) in Windows 8/Windows Phone 7), which is both good and bad. I personally love minimalism, but having embraced highly functional tools in the past few years, having reduced functionality due to design changes is something undesirable. (Spotify is one example of reduced functionality… 50% of the items that would previously display on the screen is now off of the screen.)

I have no doubt that OmniFocus is useful for people – after all I mentioned that one of the best parts about OmniFocus (1) and the other OmniGroup apps is that it’s extensible.

OmniGroup has historically been very focused on the former, namely high functionality for the productivity workflow niche. I am definitely sure reduction and dumbing down is not a definite aim for OmniGroup and the many UX, usability, workflow and data density concerns will be addressed in the long-run.

It definitely is understandable that, with the shipping date for June coming up (I suspect it’s in anticipation of OS X 11/10.11, with the hope that it’ll get featured in the Mac App Store when the new OS is announced), that these features are unable to be added in at that time.

As Ken has said, OmniFocus 2 has a long life ahead (with major/minor adjustments through updates), which these considerations can be taken into account of.

Thanks for the response and the clarification, and for telling us that these are issues that are taken into consideration. It’s fantastic to know that our concerns about UX and usability is taken into account of when designing OmniFocus 2.

Until then, I’m probably going to stick with OmniFocus (1) as my daily driver, and probably will continue to do so even after OmniFocus 2 is released, and readily await the day that these changes are addressed or considered.