View Single Post
Quote:
Originally Posted by wealthychef View Post
Doesn't this show that the Omnifocus "solution" is not really a solution but simply evidence of a flawed model of synchronizing? Another way of viewing this situation is that the choice to keep data all the way back to the oldest sync time is causing this situation. If that were relaxed or changed, the user would not need to be bothered. Omnigroup programmers take note -- a lack of programming foresight on your part should not constitute an emergency on mine. :-)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Xeri View Post
Wait, WHAT? Did you just say that OmniFocus is being changed so that it will automatically drop the unsynced client and force me to lose any local changes on it without even asking me?!? How is that possibly an improvement?!? NO NO NO NO NO NO NO!!!!! DO NOT DESTROY DATA!!! I'd rather have the secret setting to defer the nag screen than have my data automatically destroyed for me. I have five instances of OmniFocus going between iPhone, iPad, and two computers. I simply cannot always remember to start something up every few weeks just to make sure stale changes get synced out.. this does not imply that I don't care about those changes, though. User data should never be put in such haphazard jeopardy!
Rereading this thread prior to adding to it, I'm struck by some of the conflicting desires. Wealthychef is unhappy that the design of the sync mechanism preserves the history until all devices are on the same page (the alternative being that changes from infrequently synced could be lost, possibly without warning). Xeri is unhappy that the sync mechanism is being updated to put infrequently synced devices out to pasture (without losing their data, though some effort is required to recover it). Everyone wants fast, reliable syncs.

I've spent a bit of time ignoring one of my devices while intensively using the others recently, and my experience is that if you do this, as some seem determined to do, it essentially guarantees that you will not only slow down the devices you use frequently, but also when you do finally go to use the neglected device, it will cause a big database compaction to occur (all the devices finally being on the same page), and you'll have to twiddle your thumbs while the newly compacted database is written back to the server, possibly over a very slow cellular connection.

Maybe I just don't understand a workflow where it's more important to have a rather stale copy of your data ready and waiting to be used immediately (but rarely) than having speedy results on the usual case.