[whpalmer4]

Why not edit them on the iPad like the rest of us do?

Even if Omni decided today that they really ought to build an iPhone client for OO, the hard truth is that they just don't have the resources to build one any time soon, given their current commitments. It might be a different story in terms of urgency if they had no mobile OO client, but they do.

How much are you willing to spend for an iPhone client for OO? Answers along the lines of "99 cents" or "it should be free, I already bought the iPad app" likely reinforce the status quo.

[JockM]

Originally Posted by whpalmer4

Why not edit them on the iPad like the rest of us do?

...

How much are you willing to spend for an iPhone client for OO? Answers along the lines of "99 cents" or "it should be free, I already bought the iPad app" likely reinforce the status quo

Because: I don't carry my iPad with me everywhere, all the time, like I do with my phone?

We don't know what Omni's commitments or resources are, and unless they come out and say what they are, there isn't a lot of point in speculating on them or not.

However I will point out that it isn't like it needs to be written from scratch. Much of their old UI code would continue to work, with (very likely) little to no changes to the vast majority of the back end code.

New front end (UI) code would need to be written, and I don't want to minimize that task. But it isn't like a brand new app needs to be written.

As for price, I do admit I frankly expect it to be a universal app supporting both platforms. [Please ignore the rest of this Paragraph. I misunderstood where you were going with the status quo bit]
You say that it asking for it to be a universal app is "reinforcing the status quo", but you make no case for why that is a bad thing.


Especially when you consider just how much OmniOutliner costs. Its a $20 app, this puts it in the upper bracket of iOS app prices. As such I expect more from an app at that price, and I don't think I am wrong to. I expect it is going to support Dropbox, I expect it is going to be a universal app. And I don't think those are unreasonable things.

Right now, to me, OO is doing too little to justify the high cost.

That being said, I will make this commitment though: If OmniOutliner supported Dropbox, and had a separate iPhone app, I would buy both gleefully so long as the iPhone all cost something in the $5-$10 range. I don't know if other people will, but I will.

Now mind you, for what I am willing to pay for just iPhone support; I get iPhone and iPad support via CarbonFin Outliner. It isn't as advanced or powerful app, it definitely isn't as good looking. But do you know what? I can get stuff done.

I would much rather be using OO, and am willing to pay a high premium for it. But if they aren't willing to meet me halfway and let me, then all the excuses in the world won't matter...

[scotty321]

Okay, forget syncing for now... what about OmniOutliner for iPhone?? We have hundreds, if not thousands, of OmniOutliner documents sitting in our Dropbox, and we can't even OPEN THEM on our iPhone! We ALWAYS have our iPhone sitting in our pocket, but we RARELY have our iPad with us when we need to access our OmniOutliner documents on the fly. Can you PLEASE give us SOMETHING for the iPhone? If only an OmniOutliner READER, that would be enough.

[E_Day]

Originally Posted by JockM

Because: I don't carry my iPad with me everywhere, all the time, like I do with my phone?

That about sums it up. I've got a laptop for real work, and an iPhone for fieldwork. No heavy lifting on the document when I'm doing actual heavy lifting. But synching and checking-marking completions... or just being able to review the [REDACTED] document would be useful.

Originally Posted by JockM

Right now, to me, OO is doing too little to justify the high cost.

Agreed. As in: it doesn't work on a device that I use.

Originally Posted by JockM

That being said, I will make this commitment though: If OmniOutliner supported Dropbox, and had a separate iPhone app, I would buy both gleefully so long as the iPhone all cost something in the $5-$10 range. I don't know if other people will, but I will.

I'd buy a $5 iPhone viewer and I'd shell out $10 if it let me check boxes. Adding or deleting simple text lines would be gravy.

Originally Posted by JockM

I would much rather be using OO, and am willing to pay a high premium for it. But if they aren't willing to meet me halfway and let me, then all the excuses in the world won't matter...

See, now you're just being argumentative. We've already got apologists explaining why "we can't" is a perfectly reasonable explanation from Omni.

I love OO, but after they dropped the ball on supporting the iDevice that came out first, and is in far more hands than the pad, it's pretty clear they've lost their Jobsian fire. Next up, expect to hear: "We can't make OO4 compatible with OO3 documents", then two paragraphs of weaksauce to justify why your work library won't be making the migration.

It's been a great run on the laptop and an astonishing disappointment in iOS. It'll be interesting to see what the future holds.

[JohnJ80]

For heaven's sake, it's a PHONE.

If you want to be able to do an OO reader for your phone, export it as html, put it in dropbox or some other webdav and you can view it with your phone in safari. You should be able to set it up as a folder script since the Applescript dictionary supports export as file type so that when you dropped an OO file in a folder, it would automatically export it into another folder as HTML. You could also do this by using Hazel.

J.

[JockM]

Originally Posted by JohnJ80

For heaven's sake, it's a PHONE.

No it isn't. It is a smartphone. It is a little computer that I carry around with me at all times. Because of it I don't need to carry a laptop nearly as much as I used to.

Pages runs on it, as does Numbers. I can write apps in iLuaBox, and compose music in GarageBand. I can make illustrations, and edit pictures, and a whole lot more.

And most importantly it is the the reason why I don't carry a little pad of paper with me. I take notes with it all the time. Oddly enough those notes are mostly in the form of outlines.

So no it isn't unreasonable to say that I want to be able to read and edit the same outlines that on my iPhone as I can on my iPad and my Laptop.

It might be just a phone to you, but I get work done on it...

[JohnJ80]

I've been accused of doing way more than I should on a smartphone. That said, I find the text editing (beyond short emails) and spreadsheet capabilities to be the sort of thing that one does in desperation. Having done it extensively (in desperation, of course).

One of the the things that drives me nuts about smartphone apps is when they are dumbed down for use on the handset and it's not done well (most of the time). It's really difficult to design an iPhone app that has good functionality on mobile platforms as well as the desktop. It's a case of focus, concentrating on core issues and getting it right. Not an easy thing.

I would like an OO version that runs on the iPhone but it's not something I'm going to hyperventilate about in the short term - I want to see it done well (an Omni strong suit). I'd much rather they got decent syncing at the cell level working on OO between platforms, more akin to what OF does between mac and iPad. Dropbox syncing is really a crap idea down deep because you can't resolve file edits done on both platforms which ultimately will cause you significant data loss at some point. Everyone carps about "Dropbox support" but I've really not seen it done well at all and I've been burned about it more times than I really like to think about. So my view is that this is usually an uninformed opinion not based on experience or much thought about it. I really don't want to see another Dropbox stopgap pseudo-sync implementation done again.

I'd like to see OO on the phone, but I'd want to see the feature set very carefully selected - it would need the ability to email as rich text in an email and it would need to seamlessly integrate with the iPad and DT versions but the feature set would need to be carefully selected for simplicity since a lot of it wouldn't make sense on the iPhone where text editing is better than before, but still pretty much sucks.

[john.w.romano]

I love OO, but I need to see them on my iPhone so I'm beginning to explore other products than Omnigroup, but I would rather continue to use OO.

1) Yes, multiple columns

2) No formatting

3) No attachment support

4) It needs to be editable. What's the point otherwise?

5) It needs to sync across my devices. Right now I have all my OO3s in Dropbox because they need to sync across devices.

[john.w.romano]

I'd pay the same as I paid for OmniFocus iPhone.

[john.w.romano]

Originally Posted by Ken Case

I apologize for any lingering confusion over our iPhone plans!

I've already said this on our blog, but it bears repeating here: Designing a great touch-based interface for text outlines is not an easy problem.

I find the Clear app ( http://www.realmacsoftware.com/clear/ ) to be inspiring. It's a touch interface that fully takes advantage of multitouch and eliminates so many buttons and cruft.