Local notifications
 

Looks like iPhone OS 4.0 will give access to both the calendar and to local notifications (like push notifications only local to the iPhone). I would presume that since there no longer is any barrier to either creating todos in ical or to providing notifications locally, that OMnifocus will do so for 4.0. Yes?

J.

Sure looks promising. This could be exactly what Omni (and you too, JohnJ80 :-) have been waiting for all these months.

-Dennis

[QUOTE=Toadling;75659]Sure looks promising. This could be exactly what Omni (and you too, JohnJ80 :-) have been waiting for all these months.

-Dennis[/QUOTE]

Sure does.

Presuming you can set events in calendars or have local notifications - looks like either/or solve the whole issue, doesn't it?

J.

[QUOTE=JohnJ80;75660]Sure does.

Presuming you can set events in calendars or have local notifications - looks like either/or solve the whole issue, doesn't it?

J.[/QUOTE]

I am wondering the same thing and thats the first thing that came to mind when I saw local notifications! Omni any ideas and what about location (GPS) based task notifications is that a possibility with multitasking I know that might not be practical because of possible battery drainage but maybe an on and off feature? THanks Omni :D

Whoa, I didn't think about the GPS Nearby feature.

You're out doing Errands. You enable OF Nearby. Put it in the backgroud. It keeps a GPS lock on ya. You pass Home Depot, and instead of popping up a notice that says "Turn Right Now", it says "Buy Light bulbs @Home Depot".

Oh, and of course, OF iPhone pops up an ad for Super Light Bulbs @Home Depot with a built in game app and a movie showing you how to install lights bulbs with Norm Abrams and Tommy Silva.

[QUOTE=blewis;75665]Oh, and of course, OF iPhone pops up an ad for Super Light Bulbs @Home Depot with a built in game app and a movie showing you how to install lights bulbs with Norm Abrams and Tommy Silva.[/QUOTE]

LOL! Now that's taking advantage of the technology!

-Dennis

We're pretty excited about the local notifications. Should make a lot of folks happy. :-)

One thing I'm not yet clear on - iCal on the Mac manages two separate databases: the calendar event database, and the to-do database. OmniFocus syncs with the latter on the Mac, but the iPhone hasn't had an equivalent database.

(It's possible that they're adding to-do support, but if that was specifically dealt with in yesterday's announcements, I missed it in my reading. Anyone have a link?)

I haven't seen any evidence of Task support in the Calendar app on the iPhone, so I wouldn't hold my breath. Tasks in many way have always been an afterthought even in iCal, so I'm not really all that surprised. With the robust set of task management apps like OmniFocus it's probably not all that necessary either.

As for background location services, battery drain wouldn't necessarily be an issue, as the background process is supposed to use a low-power cellular-only mode when not running. From what I understand, it monitors the available cell towers and only does a detailed location update when that information changes. as I [URL="http://forums.omnigroup.com/showpost.php?p=75874&postcount=4"]posted in another thread[/URL]. However, I wonder if this would be precise enough to create reliable alerts for OmniFocus location stuff. At what point would the balance be between false positives and never being close enough to get a precise location at all.

As soon as I heard local notifications, I immediately thought of Omnifocus! Can't wait!