Initial impressions of OF4 quality

OmniFocus
#1

First, a little background. I’m new to OmniFocus, coming from heavy, long-term usage of both Todoist and Things. Todoist has always been the more feature-rich tool, but with an awkward UI and persistent bugs. Things3 is relatively lean, but is probably the most refined and bug-free mac+iOS app I’ve used.

My hope for OF4 was to get some more advanced features within a native mac+iOS experience. So far it has delivered. I tried it for 2 weeks and liked it enough to buy it, and so far things are working pretty well. The only real cause for hesitation is the sheer number of bugs I’m running into. I’ve been reporting roughly a bug per day (sometimes two) since I’ve been using the app. But there are certainly some mitigating factors that I’m trying to keep in mind:

  • This is a big, major update, so presumably there is a hefty backlog of bugs and a steady stream since GA. i.e. things should stablize. (Counterpoint: didn’t they work on it for years, though?)
  • Most of the bugs are of the weird UI glitch variety that can be fixed by switching views, or restarting if necessary. Annoying but easy to move past. This is different from Todoist, where bugs were like whole projects literally just disappearing permanently.
  • Support has responded to my bugs promptly, so at least that first-line experience is good.

The real test will be over the coming months, as my usage grows and Omni presumably has had time to burn down some of the backlog. If I see more new features coming out while reported bugs languish, I’ll be pretty disappointed. But I’ve not dealt with an Omni product before so I’m optimistic OF4 will stabilize, as I really do like the feature set!

8 Likes
#2

Welcome! OF4 will improve.

#3

Hi!
OF3 is really great and stable (OF2 was too) and I’m sure OF4 will be too quite soon.
As a happy OF3 user I’m going to wait a little (e.g. 4.1). If I was new I will definitely jump into OF4 and start using it.
What I love about Omni is that they wisely plan in the long term. No fancy changes, no experiments, not too many changes at once.
Example - although OF4 brings quite revolutionary changes in UX they didn’t touch data layer at all. I see that data consistency is a priority for Omni. If they need to enhance data layer they will wait till OF4 functionality stabilize.

OF has great synchronisation across devices. This is the first task manager that truly “frees me from devices and technology” - I get whatever I have at hand and use OF conveniently. Also private WebDAV and encryption are unique features.

#4

Thanks, and I’m glad to hear that! I very much appreciate buying into software at a given version for what it is now (as opposed to an aspirational list of “What’s coming!”), with updates focusing on stability and perhaps minor enhancements. Looking forward to seeing how OF4 matures.