Hello, everyone!
As many of you know, OmniFocus currently has the ability to sync with local iCal calendars. Over time, Apple has moved away from synchronizing local calendars in favor of simply storing those calendars in the cloud—and as people migrate their calendars to the cloud, they find they're no longer able to sync those calendars with OmniFocus (or any other app which uses Apple's Sync Services).
We know that a lot of you are using calendar syncing. But we've observed that calendar syncing is usually not an end in itself; it's usually a stepping stone which you're using to solve another problem. With that stepping stone starting to disappear, we could try to build another stepping stone which looks more or less the same—but perhaps it's time to take a step back and ask a more fundamental question:
What are people actually trying to accomplish with calendar syncing, and can we find a better way to accomplish that end?
Calendar syncing in OmniFocus has always been intended a stepping stone, never a destination. iCal doesn't actually do a very good job of handling a large number of structured tasks—if it did, we wouldn't really need OmniFocus! But we thought it was important to be able to take your errands with you on the go, syncing your errands list with a mobile device which supported tasks (such as a Palm or Nokia phone), and the easiest way to do that was to sync with something those devices already knew how to sync with, namely iCal.
But all that was before the iPhone and iPod touch and iPad existed. Now that they do exist, our mobile editions of OmniFocus (for iPhone and iPad) are a much better way to take your tasks with you, synchronizing them through the cloud and giving you much better access to your lists on the go.
So that huge benefit to calendar syncing is gone, but I know a number of you are still using calendar syncing, so... What else are you using it for? Syncing with mobile devices which can't run OmniFocus? Sharing tasks with other people? Is there something we can add to OmniFocus which would solve your needs more directly, rather than trying to shore up this sinking stepping stone?
Please let me know, either here in this thread or by sending me direct email at kc@omnigroup.com.
As many of you know, OmniFocus currently has the ability to sync with local iCal calendars. Over time, Apple has moved away from synchronizing local calendars in favor of simply storing those calendars in the cloud—and as people migrate their calendars to the cloud, they find they're no longer able to sync those calendars with OmniFocus (or any other app which uses Apple's Sync Services).
We know that a lot of you are using calendar syncing. But we've observed that calendar syncing is usually not an end in itself; it's usually a stepping stone which you're using to solve another problem. With that stepping stone starting to disappear, we could try to build another stepping stone which looks more or less the same—but perhaps it's time to take a step back and ask a more fundamental question:
What are people actually trying to accomplish with calendar syncing, and can we find a better way to accomplish that end?
Calendar syncing in OmniFocus has always been intended a stepping stone, never a destination. iCal doesn't actually do a very good job of handling a large number of structured tasks—if it did, we wouldn't really need OmniFocus! But we thought it was important to be able to take your errands with you on the go, syncing your errands list with a mobile device which supported tasks (such as a Palm or Nokia phone), and the easiest way to do that was to sync with something those devices already knew how to sync with, namely iCal.
But all that was before the iPhone and iPod touch and iPad existed. Now that they do exist, our mobile editions of OmniFocus (for iPhone and iPad) are a much better way to take your tasks with you, synchronizing them through the cloud and giving you much better access to your lists on the go.
So that huge benefit to calendar syncing is gone, but I know a number of you are still using calendar syncing, so... What else are you using it for? Syncing with mobile devices which can't run OmniFocus? Sharing tasks with other people? Is there something we can add to OmniFocus which would solve your needs more directly, rather than trying to shore up this sinking stepping stone?
Please let me know, either here in this thread or by sending me direct email at kc@omnigroup.com.
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