OF2 vs 1. Some changes don't make sense, and I really lost usability

OmniFocus OmniFocus for Mac
#1

Simple things…

I make changes, sync, and note that no backup of database was made. In fact I have made many changes, and the current database is dated 23-May when I “Show backups”. There appears to be no way to Force a backup.
There appears to be no way to restore a backup.

As for missing functions, I miss that when entering a DUE DATE, it used to bring up a mini calendar. Now you have to go to an external calendar, find the date, and enter it manually.

I am finding many of these issues of inefficiency, and being a user of Omnifocus since it’s inception, and all the other Omni products as well, the changes are major enough, and impacting my productivity enough that I can now put the effort in to learning to work with “Things”.

That is the problem sometimes. You make major changes, and it requires reading through parts of the manual, and finding the topic isn’t covered. (Ex. Backups, and Backup restoration). This is pretty fundamental as it comes under “Safeguarding my data” , and nothing is more important than that!

I find the circles a distraction. (Was it too hard to find “Complete”??

I see a lot of praise in the “How do you like 2.0 verses 1”. Not a single negative comment. Humm… 100% of the people are happy. Well, working in any organization you rarely get 100% buy in, there is always a decenter. I guess everyone, except myself, a follower of GTD method for 15+ years must be wrong.

I am not one of the pleased ones. It now is really down to “which one do I dislike the least”.
Too bad I couldn’t just pay my $40 and stay on V1. Believe me, I can adapt. As a IT Architect, I induce change continuously. I adapt to new technologies and adopt them daily. But this really is a major change. Data integrety is in question. Lack of backup’s makes it worse. Rather sad. Was it the revenue? I would have paid $40 to enhance it but not change it dramatically. Apple is doing that, and they are losing people. ex. I have had an Iphone 3, 4, 5. I will go with a Galaxy and have no interest in Iphone 6 due to IOS 8. MacOS X has changed applications to a point where I might as well for the $2000 buy a quad core PC, 32 GB RAM, put a hypervisor on it, run Linux and Windows 7.

Q/A died with Steve. He was so critical, glad I didn’t work for him. But that is what they lost. Don’t know it anyone died here, but sometimes if it isn’t broken, don’t overhaul it…

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#2

Thanks for the rant :-/

OF 2 backs up a couple times a day. There’s already a post on this.

I personally MUCH prefer OF 2 to OF 1. And I bet 90% of people who were looking at a tool like OF prefer it. Yes, OF 2 has less “data density” than OF 1 did. And there are some other things. But LO, there are decent keyboard shortcuts now, and it’s easier to organize things now, and it’s way easier to create and use perspectives now.

As for your “QA died with Steve” comment, that’s ridiculous. And completely irrelevant to anything else. Save it.

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#3

I checked OmniFocus Help and I see:

[quote]OmniFocus automatically backs up your database once every two hours, in the folder:

~/Library/Containers/com.omnigroup.OmniFocus2/Data/Library/Application Support/OmniFocus/Backups
[/quote]

You won’t get a backup if OmniFocus isn’t running. Otherwise, it makes a backup every two hours and it will keep the last 100 backups, deleting the oldest backups first.

There are instructions on how to revert to an older backup in the OmniFocus help screen.

I found your position as an IT Architect interesting. Most IT folks I’ve talked with take their time adopting new technologies. They wait oftentimes for one or two service packs or updates before even thinking about upgrading. I’ve seen IT folks stay with Windows 7 or even Mountain Lion before changing to Windows 8 or Mavericks.

I wouldn’t want to be a guineau pig and find my users throwing crap at me for updating without vetting things out on a test lab before rolling out new changes. I’d get fired for that.

#4

You can’t have read the thread properly if you claim that out of 173 posts, none were negative. Perhaps you should take the time before ranting.

Too bad you didn’t download the trial and check it out before you paid the money. If you were an It architect working for me, and took your approach to our corporate systems, you’d be answering some very hard questions.

So you want Q/A but you don’t want to work for the only person who (in your view) ever made it happen. Odd. Very odd.

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#5

“defilm,”

I can’t make a lot of good sense in what you said.
Maybe you should take a deep breath & start over?

"Implement without testing” makes me wonder if you weren’t being reckless.
As an IT architect, shouldn’t you have visited whether you data would be backed up in the fashion you expected?

OF2 does seem to back up & if you mean to revert to OF1: you could have stored your OF1 data on a flash drive, right?
Apparently there are instructions to go back.

Therefore, you were an agent in your own unhappiness.

You said: “Circles are distracting.”
Are you saying this, or quoting someone else’s comment?

What you think of Apple is irrelevant to OF2 & it went more than a little off the rails, if your intent is to review the product.

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#6

There’s a lot of good stuff in the new version. But a few of the changes have negatively impacted my productivity. The outline view was my primary means of data input, update and review. I could tab through the fields progressing from one task to the next. Or even better sometimes, I could just down-arrow and move through my tasks staying in the “due date” or “completed” date to easily update an entire project or even a group of projects.

Speaking of which, of all the fields now missing from the outline view that I want back the biggest gap is left by the “completed date”. I can’t always press that circle when the task was completed. In the old days I could step through the tasks saying “now”, “last tue”, “May 7”. It was quick an easy. If I’m writing a status report, I can’t look at an entire projects worth of tasks and see the completion dates all at once.

So I seem to spend way too much time jumping between the outline and the inspector. Pick a task, update some info, go back to pick another task, rinse and repeat. Yes, there are keyboard shortcuts to move between the two, but they’re two-handed shortcuts Oh, and when you return to the inspector you don’t return to the same field you left from the last task.

If is was a way to advance through tasks while remaining in the inspector, I haven’t found it.

I hope that this is perceived as constructive criticism. I don’t want to be jumped on by the extremists from either camp.

#8

i’ve seen many people complaining about the circle. Something about moving the mouse to the right side. Can’t you just press spacebar and the task will be checked?

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#9

I haven’t read the entire thread here, but I must agree with the Original Poster. OmniFocus 2 really stinks; it’s ugly and a lot harder to use, much less intuitive.

Please, are these things going to be fixed? I mean, having to look at an external calendar to change a date?! How dumb is that?

Will Wyatt

#10

You’re much more likely to get things fixed if you:

  • Specify the changes you want
  • Report them directly to Omni support
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