Quote:
Originally Posted by tbo
Yes and no. It's intriguing to have everything in one place - that's more or less the MS approach ("the one size fits all").
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Horizontal integration and vertical integration are commonly conflated. The MS approach is horizontal integration: an app with a million features that tries to do everything but does nothing very well.
The Apple approach is vertical integration: the 'seamless integration' between hardware, OS, and software apps which is vertical integration within a coherent system.
What I'm suggesting is vertical integration from task management to project management all the way up to being able to manage multiple projects; or if you wish from top to bottom: multiple projects, single projects, tasks all the way up and down the nested hierarchy. These are nested levels of complexity within a multi-level system. The ability to go up or down the hierarchy, or technically the nested holarchy, is vertical integration within the same time management system. This is vertical integration.
Separating levels of complexity within a hierarchical system into separate apps is the antithesis of vertical integration and makes life difficult for users. That's the MS way: a chip made by one company, hardware made by another, an OS made by yet another, etc.
In this case, OmniPlan for managing projects and a separate app, OmniFocus, for managing project tasks at a lower level of complexity (within the same vertical/hierarchical time management system). Just as it's better to have a computer whose levels of complexity are made by the same company, it seems to me it's better to have a time management system whose levels of complexity are managed in the same app.
Vertical hierarchical integration is what Omni group is so good at; they have mastered this first with OmniOutliner, then OmniFocus and OmniPlan. I suspect this is because of their expertise in object-oriented programming with encapsulation and inheritance because OO programming lends itself to such hierarchical nesting (objects).
This isn't about adding word processing or web publishing or other horizontal integrations which is the MS way, but about vertical integration ala the Apple way within the same domain, time management, so that a user can go up and down a nested time management hierarchy which is what Omni is so good at anyway. They can do it better than anyone else.