What is the limit? One or two features missed on a yearlong roadmap in exchange for two additional features? That’s how life works when planning 12 months out.
As is stated in the first paragraph of the 2017 roadmap…
what I expect we will be delivering over the coming year. The future is never certain, of course! But I think it’s important to talk about where we are now and where we think we’re headed.
Two points:
Apple released two new features mid-year: Siri integration and drag and drop. Omni responded by prioritizing those over multi-contexts. That’s what caused the release to be pushed back one quarter. This stuff is all in the blog posts.
So they delivered 1/3 of top list.
And new format was changed last year, not this year. and this is usually called a “technical debt” not a new feature.
I think we’re just arguing to argue at this point.
I don’t see mail drop support in Things. That would be big news to me as I have always found that to be a shortcoming for their app. I installed the Mac demo and it definitely was not mentioned in the app, their blog, or their support page. You can drag and drop emails into Things on the iPad, but that isn’t maildrop. Can you post the link where this was mentioned/added as I’d like to look into it further for more info.
With regard to Omnifocus, if another app works better for you then jump ship for your own benefit. I will say that I’ve used plenty of other apps before settling on Ominfocus. They continue to update their app and provide new features after you’d purchased the product. Their timeline may get delayed a few months, but that’s the nature of the business. No one is perfect and personally, I’d rather they continue to deliver 100% dependability than shiny new features. I’ve been stuck with several apps in the past where developers were bought out or abandoned their program. In fact, I used to be a heavy Things user, but their product delays stretched into years.
Oftentimes, it is the under-the-hood work that doesn’t get due credit to help lay the foundation for the future.This is what happened with the MacOS X Leopard -> Snow Leopard, Lion -> Mountain Lion, and Sierra -> High Sierra. It’s not sexy and the general public doesn’t care but it is much appreciated by the developers to provide the necessary foundation for future features. All three features (faster syncing, multiple tags, and flexible repeats) needed this feature. We will not see the new format bear fruit until next year but I appreciate it.
URL schemes, inbox in the Projects perspective, new attachment storage, faster syncing, a new database structure that will allow multiple tags to become possible, and global search {search here, search remaining, search everything). These are just a few of the things that got released in 2017 alone according to the version history.
Facts are URL schemes, new format, faster syncing were introduced last year in 2016, not 2017, sure some of them gets further enhancement this year. inbox in the Projects perspective, global search was only things were introduced this year sure, but let’s be honest, they didn’t become a problem until v2 is released.
Misunderstanding from my side: no they do not have it supported at this time.
As said by others, this discussion goes nowhere so I will step back.
Enjoy OF2/3
To be clear, that was a list of top requests for changes to the database format—not a list of top requests overall! With iOS 11, it became possible to implement some of the top requests that were previously impossible—such as dragging email messages to OmniFocus to create tasks on an iPad, or using Siri to interact with your lists.
So we implemented two new very highly requested (and previously impossible) interface features over the summer, and yes, this introduced some delay to two frequently requested database improvements. Overall, looking at all the features our customers have requested over the years, the app is in a better place today as a result—but if you’re someone who was specifically looking forward to one of those database improvements, I can see why you’d be impatient for those delayed database features to arrive.
We’re glad for the improvements we’ve made with our iOS 11 updates, but we’re impatient for those database features too. The good news is that they’re much closer now than they were nine months ago when we published January’s roadmap. I look forward to next quarter’s TestFlight!
Ken, if multiple contexts/tags are coming to OF for Mac now in Q1 versus Q4, why does that depend on TestFlight? Again, I’m concerned that the Mac development is continuously getting the back seat to iOS.
The Mac app’s turn is coming, but I expect the iOS TestFlight to start before the Mac public test. We have many more customers on iOS than we do on Mac, and yet the iOS app is still playing catch up with the Mac app when it comes to features like batch editing.
My Inbox is full (500 Tasks). I will not process them until multiple contexts rolls out.
Hej Ken,
If the Mac app will be delayed how will the users that have purchased OF on all platforms be able to sync between devices? (as it looks that at some point the iOS devices will have support for multiple tags while the Macs do not)
Thanks for the clarification,
radu
We hope to ship the final 3.0 releases simultaneously, but syncing v2 with v3 is a problem we have to worry about anyway (for the early test period when some devices might not have 3, and for later syncing when people may upgraded some of their devices before they get around to upgrading others).
When OmniFocus 2.xx syncs with an OmniFocus 3.0 database, it will only see the first tag assigned to a task (which it will interpret as the task’s context). It won’t understand any of the new capabilities for repeats and notifications, but will do its best to handle what it does understand and to preserve what it doesn’t.
@kcase In the mainframe (z/OS) world we have the notion of “Toleration Fixes” (actually called “Toleration PTFs”) - so a downlevel system doesn’t clobber the uplevel ones. Customers apply them before going uplevel and attempting to share resources or data.
Probably teaching grandmother to suck eggs but would such a notion - toleration fixes on V2 clients to enable them to share with V3 ones - help?
Oh, yes, definitely. Toleration fixes are the only reason v2 will be able to sync with v3 at all—otherwise it would throw up its hands when it encountered its first synced tag from v3. But while v2 will be updated to be able to understand and sync the new tags, it won’t have the new interface which is designed for working with multiple tags—which is why the first tag will be presented in v2 as if it were the task’s (only) context.
That makes perfect sense - so long as nobody has releases below where you introduced the toleration. But hopefully there is no such release.
Otherwise you have to say “update all your kit to at least the following levels before going to ANY client that does Multiple Contexts, else you stand to lose data”.
Which you probably HAVE said.
@kcase Hi Ken
With the new tags feature will we be able to have them be sorted by multiple criteria? For example:
High, medium, low priority
then…
Location (home, Mac, errands)
then…
Energy.
Hello,
I have been lurking on this topic for sometime now, and I wanted to ask if there was any update on the expected rollout date of this in Q1 of 2018? I think after 2.5 months since the announcement of its delay we should be able to get a more approximate release date (e.g. late January, early February, mid March) at the very least. From my experience in software development, you generally know if you are still on track to releasing something by the 3 ~ 4-month mark from it’s expected deployment (i.e. it’s essentially functional / working or completely off the rails broken).
I feel, since this was planned many times before, that we should get some more details if we should hold our breathe for a Q1 2018 release or move on.
I am generally worried about the overall UI changes Omni is PROBABLY planning with v3 (since v1 ~ v2 was rather considerable) as I am accustomed too v2’s UI (I really don’t see the need for a change) and the multiple contexts feature is deal-breaker for me to continue using OmniFocus any further. I have multiple contexts with other task management applications (for Windows at least, i.e. MLO) and it has worked out marvelously, so it has become critical to my workflow and personal management process (now spanning both Windows and Mac).
