I apologize for any lingering confusion over our iPhone plans!
We're
still strongly considering developing OmniOutliner for iPhone: we haven't made a decision not to support it. In fact, we're just as interested now as we ever were. But as Derek said
at the start of this thread, it's just something we're
strongly considering—it's not something we've committed to or have actually started working on.
I've already said this
on our blog, but it bears repeating here: Designing a great touch-based interface for text outlines is not an easy problem. Creating a touchable outline wasn't easy to solve for OmniFocus, but at least there we knew what basic attributes each task would have: so we could decide which pieces of information to hide at what times, how to size and present everything to put your attention on the right pieces of information, etc. With OmniOutliner, on the other hand, every document gets to define its own schema, with different sets of columns, different summaries, etc., and we don't know what it all means and which bits of information are most important—so we have to build an interface which is much more general and flexible.
For us to actually commit to building OmniOutliner for iPhone, we need to have a clear vision of what it should be—and that's exactly why we started this thread. We're asking all of you what it is that you want, because we know it can't be exactly the same as OmniOutliner is on Mac—or even iPad.
That last point might be the source of some of the confusion out there, so it's probably worth stating again: OmniOutliner for iPhone can't be exactly the same as OmniOutliner for iPad. It's great that the underlying operating system is exactly the same, but the form factors of the different devices require very different designs. That's why Apple's iWork apps don't work on iPhones, while Apple's iMovie app doesn't work on iPads. And, unfortunately, that means that building a great touch-based outlining interface for iPad doesn't mean that we'll have figured out how to build a great touch-based interface for iPhone.
Of course, the other thing we need before we can commit to an iPhone app is to finish the work we've already committed to doing, namely shipping OmniOutliner for iPad and OmniOutliner 4 for Mac.
So that's where OmniOutliner for iPhone stands right now: we're still
strongly considering developing it, and we hope that some of the work we're doing now will make it easier to develop should we choose to do so—but we haven't
committed to it.
I hope this helps to clarify our plans!