[chestercheeto]

First, I agree that you should eliminate as many pop ups and bells and whistles as possible because they do become meaningless if you have too many. However, some tasks are so critical that they can't be allowed to fall through the cracks, thus the need for reminders and alarms.

After reading the last two posts in response to my original post, I remain unconvinced, and still conclude that Omnifocus (Mac Desktop) still lacks true reminders and alarms.

Yes, Growl works, but can't be set in advance. Sometimes this will work, i.e. leave office now or X task due today. This would work for tasks that could be completed in a short amount of time on due date. However, for many tasks of more substantial length it is of little value to be reminded on the day that it is due. I guess you could create yet another reminder task, to remind you that the main task is due and then have Growl notify you in advance. Lot of extra work, brain damage, and as noted creates more worthless and annoying pop ups.

Yes, you can sync with Ical. That is if you want to double your work load. Once the sync is complete, you then have to switch to Ical to set the Alarms or Reminders in Ical. At worst this defeats the purpose of trying to streamline your task management in one place (Omnifocus). At best it creates needless extra work. When you factor the horrible Ical editing interface, it creates substantially more work. How or why Apple continues to neglect Ical, and build in basic functionality that Google Calenders has had forever is mind boggling. Bottom line, you should be able to set the Alarm or multiple reminders in Omnifocus at the time you create the task, or when reviewing your tasks in Omnifocus, i.e one stop shopping.