I don’t want a web app. I thought I did when I started reading this thread, but as I went to email OmniGroup (which I just did), I realized I really want a universal Windows version of OmniFocus.
I think (as enrvuk mentioned) that Apple’s heyday is over, and that Microsoft has shockingly picked up on the innovation front. With Windows 10 catching up to, and in some ways surpassing, MacOS, I think a native Universal Windows 10 app would be a powerful competitor to the existing, pretty pitiful, supply of GTD apps available for Windows (as others have mentioned).
I wouldn’t take tech bloggers opinions too seriously without doing some critical analysis first. Maybe the idea that Apple lost innovation came about with the surface book vs the new MacBook Pro reviews. Of course, we get wowed by the touchscreen but I wasn’t impressed by the CPU performance of the surface book when docked and undocked, Innovation isn’t a series of big bangs but more a collection of small refinements that add up over time. The tech bloggers are looking for the big wow factor and forgetting that innovation is based on refinement of previous innovation.
I’m guessing that many casual observers will listen to tech bloggers say that the MacBook Pro wasn’t innovative enough. Maybe, maybe not. Apple had to use the older intel boards because their development cycles were different from Intel. INtel didn’t release the new kaby lake processors way after Apple was more than halfway through their development cycle for the new MacBook Pro. Apple couldn’t just replace sky lake with the kaby lake chips. they would’ve had to retest everything and delay the new MacBook Pro. So tech bloggers had fake outrage that Apple wouldn’t use the new kaby lake boards. they accused Apple of not being innovative enough without understanding the events happening behind the scenes. This was anger misdirected at Apple and spread by tech bloggers happily stirring up the pot.
the MacBook Pro is an impressive machine that is forward thinking. Meanwhile the surface book gets higher marks for still having USB A ports? But that tries to straddle a bridge between the present and the future. Meanwhile the MacBook Pro is pulling us into the future kicking and screaming by going all in on USB C. In a year or two, no one will be caring about USB A. Yet tech bloggers scream bloody murder because Apple decided to take USB A out. Remember the uproar happened when Apple removed the floppy drive and the optical drive? It was a “standard” that shouldn’t have been taken out. Nowadays, a new generation of college students don’t know what SCSI, parallel ports, and serial ports are. FireWire is another technology that was useful for its time but is now surpassed by thunderbolt and USB C.
windows 10 is a fine competitor to MacOS. There are a few things that are great about windows 10. There are a few things about MacOS that are certainly great as well. They will leapfrog each other and approach a problem differently.
To say Apple isn’t innovative enough is easy trolling.
What I’m going to say is stop reading tech blogs that drive click baits with fake outrage that Apple is no longer innovative.
Interesting points about the MacBook Pro, and I’m glad to hear optimism about Apple. I don’t read tech blogs: I agree that they just need to post drama to get readers and sell ads.
But, my Macs are getting buggy and no longer “Just Work”, and I bought a brand new 2013 Mac Pro last year that’s being outperformed on some tasks by the $1000 HP Omen laptop my wife (also an avid Mac user) had to buy for some 3D work (for speed from the graphics cards - the software runs on Mac too).
Also, Microsoft’s Universal Windows Platform is quite attractive as a developer. As a developer (for web, iOS, and MacOS), I don’t feel secure staying cloistered in the Apple ecosystem any more. If the trend continues, I think my next set of computer purchases may well be M$ devices, which would mean 1) I have to consider developing for UWP, and 2) I need an OmniFocus replacement, hence my presence on this thread. :)
I emailed OmniGroup, and they’re sticking with Apple. I hope you (and OmniGroup) are right and that Apple keeps plugging along and comes out with graceful, functional computers that outdo M$, but I’m not optimistic. I’ll take a closer look at the MacBook Pro though - probably should have gone for that instead of the Mac Po.
I think it’s best to report bugs through contact form in webfocus (bottom-right corner).
I use Trello for product development, but currently it’s a closed board. I wasn’t planning on opening it, I don’t know how valuable it would be. Maintaining it would require some additional effort on my part I would rather spend on development.
webfocus’ code is not open so it’s not possible to make open-source contributions. I wasn’t really thinking about any bug bounty program or other reward systems and I can’t really say I used any software that had such incentives? I’m thankful for bug reports because I can improve application thanks to them. I guess it could be rewarded by extending subscription if it’s very serious, but I guess it would be more per-case thing? I don’t know, currently it’s still open beta, so I’m not even thinking subscriptions yet ;)
Gosh, if you could only join the Omnigroup development team, I can imagine the amount of support and resources that would open up to you. sigh. Maybe this might be a pet project that suddenly attracts the Omnigroup eyes (wishful thinking)…
Would be buyer here. I used and loved OF way back when… almost a decade later I dropped in hoping to find that you had a way to enable at least readonly access on a work PC: whether by web client or by Windows client… Sadly looks like that isn’t in the cards. Dear OF marketing people. When you one day do make it so that I can see my stuff from an evil Windows PC, please email me, I will buy your very expensive software. Until then…
+1 for a web based version. I had to walk away from all of the money and time and effort I had invested in OmniFocus for the same reason as a lot of the folks here. I took a job where I forced to use Windows. Maintaining two GTD applications became to unwieldy and annoying where my work and personal life intersected at times and also due to the fact that I work from my home office (all Apple) about 50% of the time. I ultimately landed on a ToDoist subscription specifically because I had not only the Mac version, but a web based version, an iPhone version, and an iPad version. I sorely miss the location based tasks and contexts. One other deciding factor to move to ToDoist was their very flexible repeating task due dates. I do a lot of government (Federal and State) reporting where due dates tend to be something like the first workday of the quarter, or on the second Friday of the month and Todoist shines there. Were Omni learn from the ToDoist model, I would gladly migrate back or purchase a subscription if that became the model.
This is the biggest pain point I have faced with Omnifocus. On top of that Omnifocus doesn’t even provide an API. Is there any progress on this at all?
A developer can read the XML data from the OmniFocus sync server. That’s open access to developers. Webfocus and a few other Android app developers have taken advantage of this.
Adam has just officially launched webfocus.io and it is solid, no problems in sync with the official apps (and I’m in Omnifocus beta), and at 3$ per month (36 in the year) beats a lot of apps there.
