Sluggish performance: launch

[alastair]

Hi,

First of all: love the application. It is a great addition to my iPhone. However, I've noticed my copy is quite sluggish to launch. Upon launch, it takes anything up to 5 seconds to load the database. The database is small - started on the iPhone, with no syncing to the desktop. Maybe 25 actions spread across 10 contexts and 5 projects in total.

Is it just me? I could understand if it was a large database, but it isn't. When you want to just get an action into OmniFocus, it certainly isn't conducive to doing so.

Also, switching between context and project under the create new task doesn't seem quick enough, with up to a 1-2 second delay.

One final thing - can I add a contact to an action? e.g. a contact as part of a task would be a great time saver. Photo and Voice is fine, but contact seems like an omission to me, especially when an action is a phone call...

The application *is* great, but I'm slightly concerned about the performance.

Many thanks
Alastair

[Ken Case]

Our first priority has been to make sure that the system is reliable and doesn't lose any data, but performance is also very important to us.

To put the current performance in perspective, a few weeks ago it was taking several minutes to launch with my 1,000 actions. Now it takes less than ten seconds, but we'd like to see that get down to 2-3 seconds. We'll keep working on it!

We're also thinking about ways to let you add new inbox items while the database loads in the background, so that you wouldn't have to wait for that load to finish before capturing something new.

We'll also look into improving our support for contacts.

[ptone]

If there was some way to have a db cache file that has minimal info about the data, that loads on launch fast, with a background thread that flushes out the in-memory data with the rest of the info, prioritized by the users first clicks...

[gcrump]

We're also thinking about ways to let you add new inbox items while the database loads in the background, so that you wouldn't have to wait for that load to finish before capturing something new.
.

That would take care of my biggest concern. Thanks.

[Doctor Mac]

We're also thinking about ways to let you add new inbox items while the database loads in the background, so that you wouldn't have to wait for that load to finish before capturing something new.

Yes, PLEASE. The two biggest problems I've encountered are the program quitting when I try to add things before it's ready, and the delay in being able to add to my inbox when I don't need to see all my projects, contexts, etc. If this can't be sped up sufficiently what about a companion app that only accepted new items? Like a Quick Entry for the iPhone?

-Rob

[Ken Case]

We thought of doing a Quick Entry companion app also, but each iPhone app is placed in a sandbox so that it can only access its own files—which is a good general policy, but unfortunately means that if we create two apps they won't be able to see each other's data.

[alastair]

Ken,

Many thanks for your thoughtful responses. It is good to hear that things are reliable, and performance has been a consideration. I am appeased for the moment!

Keep up the good work
Alastair

[Doctor Mac]

We thought of doing a Quick Entry companion app also, but each iPhone app is placed in a sandbox so that it can only access its own files—which is a good general policy, but unfortunately means that if we create two apps they won't be able to see each other's data.

Did not realize this. OK, so no companion app. In that case I will just beg and cajole for optimizing the loading sequence. The initial load isn't great, but not horrible. The problem I have is that when I load it it is frequently spinning the refresh circle in the middle (syncing with my idisk I suppose) and if I try to enter something into the inbox before this is all finished (which can take awhile) it will often quit out of the application or crash the whole phone.

An alternative would be to create a small app that exists only to send data to my idisk or webDAV so that the main OF app can then fetch it next time I open it up.

-Rob