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Good post, Robbie. Very insightful and a nice summary of the situation. However, there are a few aspects I don't completely agree with:

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Originally Posted by Robbie1702 View Post
If you dissect the competitive environment and analyse the situation, you can see where Omnigroup should place its focus. The main key is: listen to your customers.
Are they not doing that? Just because their decisions don't align with your expectations or assumptions doesn't necessarily mean Omni is failing to respond to customer demand. Don't you think it's more likely Omni has a better handle on their customer demand than we do?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Robbie1702 View Post
Omni's flagship product seems to be Omnifocus (correct me if I'm wrong, but it is positioned so on the beautifully newly designed website).
It certainly appears that OmniFocus has done very well, and it looks like a major player in Omni's stable of apps. But what gives you the impression it's positioned as the "flagship product" on their site? Is it the banner? But the banner seems to rotate randomly between all their paid apps.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Robbie1702 View Post
Along comes Things... The greatest shortcoming of Omnifocus they saw was the steep learning curve and the fairly unspectacular design, as well as a slowly evolved infrastructure based on Outliners and Kinked...
OmniFocus' outlining heritage is one of its greatest strengths! Its outlining engine allows OmniFocus to do stuff that Things doesn't even attempt: nested actions, collapsable groupings, folders, focusing (hoisting), sequential vs. parallel processing, etc.

Yes, there's always room for improvement, but just because something is old doesn't mean it's out of date. After all, the Unix core of Mac OS X is a lot older than any Microsoft OS. :-)

As for design, I consider it to be a lot more than just aesthetics; it's also how the app *works*. With that in mind, I think OmniFocus actually comes out ahead, especially for "pro" users.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Robbie1702 View Post
Most Mac users are design conscious and appreciate simplicity, so making an optically appealing, simple to-do-list software with tagging would be enough for Things to get an initial foothold in the market. Underlined by an Apple design award their strategic entry into the marketplace was a full success. The two products now go head to head for dominance in the marketplace.
OmniFocus won an Apple Design Award too.

As for going "head to head for dominance in the marketplace", I'm not sure Things and OmniFocus are really direct competitors. They target slightly different types of users.

Things, with it's simpler architecture, more limited feature set, and UI glitz, is aimed at casual users who want to get running quickly with minimal effort. In a word, it's "easy" (just like the song says in their video).

OmniFocus, on the other hand, is billed as "professional-grade task management". It's aimed at a more demanding class of user, people who deal with a very large number of projects and actions and want a lot of control over how their information can be manipulated. In a word, it's "powerful".

I think a good analogy is iMovie vs. Final Cut Pro. One is a simple, pretty, feature-lite app built with a primary focus on making it easy to get started and do basic video editing.

The other is far more powerful and feature-rich, and can handle just about any video production task you throw at it, including feature-length films. Of course, with that power comes greater complexity, more so than most casual users would want to deal with. But no video professional would choose iMovie over Final Cut when editing their next film.

The pro app also focuses less on aesthetics. Does that mean it's poorly designed? No, quite the contrary. It needs to be exceptionally well-designed to allow professional editiors to do their work efficiently.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Robbie1702 View Post
I believe that if the Omnifocus 2.0 for Mac with a rewritten underlying infrastructure (like Apple always does it with their OSes) and the accompanying features aren’t made highest priority soon, Things will be able to catch up with their missing feature sets and there will be little place for Omnifocus out there at 40,000ft.
It's always good to be wary of other apps in the marketplace, and believe me, I'm all for getting Omnifocus 2.0 for Mac done by tomorrow morning. But judging from history, Things is not about to overtake OmniFocus' position as the premier, pro-level task manager. I don't get the impression that Things is moving forward significantly faster than OmniFocus. In fact, having followed both apps closely since 2007, my impression has been that Omni's development is generally moving forward at a slightly faster rate. So I'm not really on board with the doom and gloom.

But seriously, do you Omni guys think you could get OmniFocus 2.0 for Mac to us by next week at the latest? That'd be really great. :-)

-Dennis