[QUOTE=BevvyB;67179]Things forces you to work a certain way. Omnifocus lets you specifically tailor your way of working.

To cut a long story short, Omnifocus has a steep learning curve as it does a lot of stuff and it takes a while to figure out how you want to use it for your own workflow. However, once you've done that, you won't want to leave Omnifocus and other applications will appear lacking.

Also, sync between OF and the iPhone app is brilliant, and both the mac and iPhone applications are continuously in development, UNLIKE pretty much every other to do list / GTD style app out there.

You may find OF frustrating to begin with. But I swear you won't regret it.[/QUOTE]

Really nice reply. Very helpful. I will give it a shot as soon as I have finished the David Allan book.

Greetings from Sweden.

Thank you!

Very helpful reply. I really like that you speak for both sides. Very often prestige gets in the way for fact and reasonable thinking.
I was quite fast to buy Things when I got my new 3GS. It really looks beautifully "Mac". OF feels more "PC" at the first impression and thats i little lack but I will come over it...

I will try out OF with your words in mind and be open for a whole new structure. It is obvious that OF is more solid. I either hope OF pimp up their design a little or that Things pimp up its functionality quite a bit...

OmniFocus seems to have easier to win this race...

Thank you once again!

I agree that Things did seem to be a little more intuitive & "Mac-like" than OmniFocus. If you're familiar with OmniOutliner, OF will feel very familiar (it actually was born from the marriage of OmniOutliner & Kinkless GTD scripts). I really love OF as a product so far, and I would hate for the UI to scare new users away -- hopefully OF will take that into account in future versions & see if there are ways to simplify it without taking away the wonderful functionality, as thus feel easier to new users. That said, the power of perspectives make it soooo easy to customize the UI the way *you* want it, and be able to pull up any "view" of that UI at any time, with a single click or keystroke. I don't know if Things has a similar feature, but in my opinion, it's one of the most powerful features in OF.

Side note: If you haven't started using the "Clippings" feature to create new tasks from your e-mails, you should try it out -- its REALLY useful!

[QUOTE=eurothespian;67429]I agree that Things did seem to be a little more intuitive & "Mac-like" than OmniFocus.[/QUOTE]

I'm often puzzled by the "more Mac-like" claims. As a avid Mac-user since 1986, I don't agree with you in this case, but it's clearly a subjective judgment.

Out of curiosity, what is it about Things that you think makes it seem more Mac-like?

-Dennis

I've used both, and I came back to Omnifocus. I outlined my thoughts in a blog post at the time [url]http://www.safeism.com/blog/index.php/2009/04/omnifocus-vs-things/[/url]

In short I didn't like the tagging feature of Things, and I found the lack of flexibility to hamper my ability to manage a whole-life to do list. It is simple and attractive but just not powerful enough for me.

Life Balance, the unknown competitor
 

I've played with both Omnifocus and Things, because I tend to be a tech junkie. I keep coming back to Life Balance however. It's been around since the days of the Apple Newton, and runs on Palm, iPhone, Mac, Windows. Even though it is older than GTD itself, it follows the GTD principles quite well. It also has a few features that OF doesn't have such as being able to continue to break tasks down into smaller chunks, and to set open and close times for locations (contexts).

[QUOTE=denrael;67465]It also has a few features that OF doesn't have such as being able to continue to break tasks down into smaller chunks[/QUOTE]
Could you describe in a bit more detail what you mean by this? You can turn an action into an action group to "break tasks down into smaller chunks" in OF, and you can turn one of the actions in that action group into an action group, and one of the actions in that action group into an action group, etc. Either you didn't realize that, or I'm not understanding what you mean, or maybe both :-)

[QUOTE=labete;67463]I've used both, and I came back to Omnifocus. I outlined my thoughts in a blog post at the time [url]http://www.safeism.com/blog/index.php/2009/04/omnifocus-vs-things/[/url]

In short I didn't like the tagging feature of Things, and I found the lack of flexibility to hamper my ability to manage a whole-life to do list. It is simple and attractive but just not powerful enough for me.[/QUOTE]

hey thanks for sharing that blog post - I'm wondering if you could share a bit more about the "Areas of Responsibility" bit you like about Things.

I've an avid user of OF and don't intend to switch anytime soon and this kind of functionality is really missing for me.

What do you do about projects that are on the critical path in your life and co-exist in multiple areas of life in OF?

I've tried folders and perspectives but it's become a bit of a headache to maintain!

that said, I'm not familiar enough with Things to know if Things lets you assign a project to multiple areas!

Things for iPhone [I]still[/I] doesn't have recurring tasks or OTA synching nearly a year after Cultured Code promised that they would be adding them. There have been a lot of point updates to the app in that time and each one brings disappointment for its users.

This is the major difference between the two apps: one set of developers deliver, the other doesn't.

Also, the tagging UI in Things on the iPhone is absolutely abysmal. It makes what should be a good feature to have utterly worthless.

Things on the iPhone has been a terrible waste of money for me. I keep dabbling with it in the hope that it will one day improve, but I always end up frustrated with its severe limitations.

P.S. I don't use the desktop app - the lack of improvement in the iPhone app for several months put me off paying for it.

[QUOTE=JKT;67796]Things for iPhone [I]still[/I] doesn't have recurring tasks or OTA synching nearly a year after Cultured Code promised that they would be adding them. There have been a lot of point updates to the app in that time and each one brings disappointment for its users.

This is the major difference between the two apps: one set of developers deliver, the other doesn't.

Also, the tagging UI in Things on the iPhone is absolutely abysmal. It makes what should be a good feature to have utterly worthless.

Things on the iPhone has been a terrible waste of money for me. I keep dabbling with it in the hope that it will one day improve, but I always end up frustrated with its severe limitations.

P.S. I don't use the desktop app - the lack of improvement in the iPhone app for several months put me off paying for it.[/QUOTE]

Thanks for the info, JKT -- all of that makes me feel very good about my investment in the desktop & iPhone versions of OF! =)