While I was as disappointed as anyone else to see a navigational solution for action groups that worked well for me disappear in Omnifocus 3, I still prefer OF to other task managers. In fact, with OF3 I got the feature I liked most in Things: perspectives where I could reorder the actions by dragging. I also wish that OF had the convenient checklists that tasks can have in Things, but apart from that I don’t know in what ways navigation would be better or views less cluttered in Things. OF is still the only task manager I know with true, unlimited hierarchies. And to me, Things is unusable on a small screen. I have attached a screenshot showing what a task with a note, a tag and a due date looks like in Things compared to OF. Talk about clutter…
This is such a wonderful example of how a UI can be deceptive.
While Things is often lauded for its design, I don’t think this is designed well at all. On iOS a Things task shows a mere 13 characters in your example. More than 50% of the horizontal screen real estate is taken up by icons. For some tasks, it will simply be impossible to decipher what the task is. I think OmniFocus handles this the right way by showing the full text of the to do item.
On the topic at hand, I am primarily a macOS user and I use the iOS version of OmniFocus mostly for capture and checking off tasks on the go. There are certainly some updates I would like to see, but they are less critical for me. I do understand that it’s a different story if your setup is iOS only.
Looking back though, I think Omni did do a lot of work on OmniFocus last year. 3.0 was a major overhaul with tags requiring a rethinking of the entire setup. That’s now available across all platforms which is no small feat, if you ask me. And Omni also launched a basic web version of OmniFocus.
I have no doubt the team will refine things even more in the new year. If you value OmniFocus and if you look at the team’s track record, I am confident the iOS version will get additional updates.
On my phone Things is way better to look at and use - I have the same level of tagging in Things as in OF. But OF interface is too cluttered and hard to scan.
I recently had a synchronization issue. Omni gave me an overview of the processs. What you don’t see, for good reason, is a level of sophistication I never imagined. Keep the updates coming - my feature set is fine. Small itterations on UI, but industrial level infrastructure is all I want.
Folding / Collapsible action groups on iPhone is my major reason for not using Omnifocus 3 on iOS. It is a major letdown for me, something which really obstructs my workflow.
Projects names are not full title either. Yes, through Projects perspectives, they are, but in all other perspectives - a custom perspective with projects view - we got something along these lines “Develop a new app… for team … x in Ja…” instead “Develop a new app for team x in January”. It shows not the full title of the project like it was in Omnifocus 2. Now we got those three “…” that obstructs many crucial informations regarding long title projects. Another letdown for me.
Omnifocus 3 for MacOS is fabulous. On iOS? Not so, at least for me.
Pardon my frankness, but your original post is very naive. You seem to conflate the concept of “meaningful updates” with that of “new features”.
I am not sure if you are well versed in software development (although, judging by your comments, I am inclined to believe this is not the case), but bug fixes are meaningful updates. It could be argued that they are even more important than new features (do you want an app that does everything buggily or do you prefer an app that is perhaps missing one feature you would like to have, but where everything else works without a hitch?)
when will development for the iOS app start up again.
I don’t think it has ever stopped. Just because you are not getting the feature you’d love doesn’t mean the app is not being worked on. Perhaps the latest updates didn’t change anything for you, but I would bet they made other customers happy. Not everything revolves around your specific workflow.
Having said this, I do empathize with your feelings: I was personally expecting something more from OF3 (especially for Mac, which is the platform I use the most), perhaps mostly from a UI perspective, so seeing effort being moved to a brand new project right away left a bit of a bitter taste in my mouth too. I do see why Omni would want to do that though, I am just not sure this was the perfect timing to embark on such a project.
Yesterday I used OF on my iPad with action groups. Guess what? For each new task I had to scroll way up (!) all of the tasks to find its action group.
You know what I did? I shut down OF on my iPad and grabbed my Mac while is was in bed. No comfort for me. I cannot understand how this couldnt be addressed in so many years. In the OF podcasts they said that they wanna make the iPad OF just like the Mac OF. Seems like they couldnt do it.
Also: Why so many posts have been hidden? What is going on in this forum? Isnt critics allowed anymore? Very sad!
Guys: We all love OF, but we still criticize. That is no paradox. Thanks!
One of the hardest part of being a software company is to know when to say no to feature requests. If you struggle to keep up with making sure your current offering is top notch, you don’t start yet another huge project.
It seems that OmniFocus folks have severely overextended and underestimated how much work they’d have to do.
I would hate to end up in a situation where instead of having a great mac app, we’d have a mediocre mac app, poor iOS version and a half-assed web service, just for the sake of ticking all the checkboxes.
Of course, someone, somewhere reading this is thinking “fanboy” even if they don’t say it aloud - but that doesn’t affect the point. Stop being so entitled.
In case you were wondering, this is exactly what I thought. Stop treating large companies as if they were poor, vulnerable people. OmniGroup is selling a premium piece software. We pay for the premium software. It’s not an apple store app for $0.99. The upside for them is that they get paid much more, the downside is that the users have certain expectation vis a vis the quality of the software.
The feature was there in previous version - the complaint is that it’s now gone and so something that was there has been taken away and there’s no defined commitment to return it.
My objection was to the tone of some of the requests. I think it’s perfectly possible to be insistent, passionate even, about one’s need for a feature without disparaging the developers, as some earlier posts have done.
That may be true and it’s a fair point to make - and it’s (IMO) a good example of how to be critical without being offensive.
I think Omni (as any supplier) should be held accountable for issues with their products and services. I don’t think that gives licence to be offensive. Others disagree.
Sorry for the confusion, but this is incorrect. The iOS app has never had this feature. It’s something we’re open to adding in the future.
In general, our development process tries to ensure that the items that get the highest priority are the ones which the largest numbers of customers have expressed an interest in. This request isn’t at the top of that list yet.
