[Toadling]

Originally Posted by erasure

But I do think there is some truth to the statement "If OmniFocus were a Microsoft product, Things would be the Apple equivalent. It’s simple, it’s easy to use, and it’s pretty to look at."

I think a better analogy would be: Things is to OmniFocus as GarageBand is to Logic Pro or iMovie is to Final Cut Pro.

On one hand, you've got a consumer-oriented app that's simple and "pretty" but lacks functionality. And on the other hand, you have a more sophisticated, pro-level app that is more robust and feature-rich but at the cost of greater complexity.

Both apps are well-designed, but they're targeted at different audiences. Some find a simpler app suffices, while others need something with more power.

Originally Posted by erasure

And there are lots of little things that are less intuitive in OF, like cmd-N opening a new window rather than a new task (why?)...

I don't agree at all. Using the Return key to create new items feels far more intuitive and perfectly natural. Leave the Command-N finger contortion for a less-frequently-used command like opening new windows.

Using OmniFocus feels almost like editing lines in a text document, like using your favorite word processor or text editor. It has all of the advantages of a database system under the hood but without the cumbersome, traditional database interface (i.e. having to create new records with Command-N, having to double-clicking fields for editing, inability to move the editing cursor directly between records, inability to delete lines with a simple backspace, etc). This is a huge selling point for OmniFocus.

Originally Posted by erasure

...or having to grab the little dot in front of an item in order to move it around. I think I would rather double-click to edit an item, and leave single click for grabbing and moving. And the only reason I know about grabbing the dot is because it was listed as a change in one of the beta releases. Not intuitive.

Double-clicking an item to edit brings us right back to that awkward database or file system style interface that's so slow and inefficient. You need to think of your OmniFocus window as a simple text file.

And you don't need to grab the dot to drag rows -- just click anywhere on the row and drag. The dot (a.k.a "row handle") is a covenient way to grab the row, but it's not the only way. BTW, you can also use Control-Command-up/down arrow to move selected rows.

-Dennis