[Robbie1702]

Originally Posted by Toadling

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?

As a consumer I can say my demand isn't being fully met. And judging by the amount of people wishing to switch to either Things or The Hit List, I believe I'm not the only one thinking this way. Omnifocus is good, but by no means is it perfect. It's the lesser evil of them all, but that was exactly my point. The competition is catching up. It's nice that Omni cares about receiving feedback, but for the features that are clearly in high demand, they still take a long time to implement them and leave customers dissatisfied. If you want to keep your customers, you have to keep them happy.

Originally Posted by Toadling

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.

Below the banner you have the ribbon where Omnifocus is always positioned first. I'm not criticising anyone here, I'm just making a point about how important Omnifocus is to Omnigroup. Also, if you go to 'The Omni Group Forums' you'll mostly see the largest amount of people viewing the OmniFocus forums... This just indicates that there are either 1) lots of people who have this software or 2) about the same amount as all the others, but there are so many GTD implementation questions (or software shortcomings?) that people are highly involved in understanding the product. Either way, it underlines the need for OmniGroup to focus on 2.0 for Mac. Juergen of Things was talking about a development shift away from their Mac app in the long run, referencing to a Wikipedia article on cannibalization. This might happen, but in my view the Mac software is still the highest ranking of the three. Until the respective GTD softwares for the iPad can offer a par feature set with the Mac it’s not going to take a prime position.

Originally Posted by Toadling

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.

You might be right there. I received an email from Things and they told me "That's a function that would have many implications how Things work, but we always discussion customer features and feedback." So maybe adding tagging would be easier for OF that for Things to introduce a nested structure. To truly proliferate itself as the 'Final Cut Pro' of GTD apps, OF ought to add the basic features mentioned before. If you think about it, there aren't really things you can do in Final Cut Pro that you cannot do in iMovie. The more powerful software ought to include all the basic functions and excel when it comes to 'heavy' usage.

Originally Posted by Toadling

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.

When I talk about design by definition I don’t purely mean aesthetics. Although the eye candy was a selling point for Things, their UI design is just neat and leaving out any unnecessary elements. Think of it as design in the Apple-esque, John Ive fashion =)

Originally Posted by Toadling

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…

I really like this analogy! Most GTDers (who you might like to call ‘Pros’ as opposed to light users) will have many tasks, due to the nature of GTD, that prescribes you to get every single action out of your head into writing. This is why I chose Omifocus, as the Things trial just couldn’t handle my volumes. It is “far more powerful and feature-rich” (as FCP), but where I’m baffled is: it CAN’t handle just about any task you throw at it, because it doesn’t include some BASIC features.

Maybe I’m no GTD purist, because I see the benefits of multiple contexts, putting single actions on hold, having broad-brushstroke prioritization. Maybe OF doesn’t want to deviate from GTD too much. But users do. And Things recognized that pure GTD isn’t necessarily the holy grail to offering a good product. For OF to incorporate tagging for more complete flexibility for the user would be just a mere bow to solving most their customers’ problems, without having to compromise their GTD authenticity.

Originally Posted by Toadling

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.

I would agree that this has been so historically, but just like with share price developments of companies you can’t purely base your future predictions on chart analysis (i.e. the past). They have upped their game and hired some very talented staff. I would not take my eye off the largest egg in the nest.

Originally Posted by Toadling

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. :-)

=) +1!

Robbie

(P.S.: Michael Evans liked the original article and posted it on his new blog at http://www.macfilos.com/2010/04/omni...er-space-.html)