[marc]

I didn't much like the delivery either, guys, but there's some (i.e. a 'little'!) validity to coalxman's comments; being able to visualise, or otherwise 'take-in all the factors' is an important part of getting anything 'complex' done, and Omni apps do tend to embody this philosophy.

In fact OmniPlan isn't too bad in this regard, given that the outline view seems to be pretty closely modelled on OmniOutliner; with the Style Attribute mechanism you can customise the Task and Gantt lists quite a lot (e.g. colouring overdue tasks, alternate background colours/images for Completed, Task Groups etc.), along with Group Shading in the chart etc.

The suggestion to aide recognising individuals isn't a bad one, and indeed there's some support for that in OP (better than most I've seen, but still with a bit of work to do); select each resource, and change it's font colour, and the assignment labels on the Gantt chart will be colour-coded appropriately. Admittedly background colour and image settings seem to be followed intermittently in the Gantt chart, but the foundations for what you're after are there.

Likewise, a countdown can be a more direct way to communicate deadlines than a more abstract 'future date', but this is something that can be incorporated fairly easily -- I'd agree that it's well worth boiling things down to their 'essential' elements, often 'management apps' can be overly analytical in their focus, and forget small human issues, like that.

...but I trust that the OmniGuys tend to be pretty good in that way. :)

All-in-all I'd say that OmniPlan seems to be a fairly solid first offering... but perhaps a little steeply priced for it's current maturity.