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With Omnifocus/iPhone do I need iCal sync anymore? Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
I stopped syncing with iCal because of frequent duplications and other errors which I put down to the sync process. I manually deleted all task data from iCal (not, of course, calendar information) and now avoid the iCal sync button. Since then I have had much greater data integrity within OF desktop. I can see no particular reason to continue syncing with iCal except, perhaps, for the iCal alarm function as mentioned by jdh.
 
I think Alarms is an essential piece that is missing. It could work like this..

OF could add a checkbox field called Alarm. If you had a time-dependent task, you would check the Alarm box, add a due date/time and it would get added to an OF Calendar. With iCal subscribed to the calendar these items would appear in iCal as 5 minute events with an alarm.

Then you can keep all these tasks in OF, rather than adding them directly into iCal as one-off events. Thoughts?
 
If you install this free system plugin, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. :-)
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by MacBerry View Post
Really? So Apple took you down a path that would result in you buying an Apple product? Surely not :eek: How very Microsoft (ŪЙ) of them ;)

Seriously though, I didn't realise the Treo stopped syncing in Leopard. The 650 is Palm OS right? I thought you could still sync Palm OS with Leopard?
Yeah, when Apple released the iPhone, they removed one of the coolest features in OS X - it's Bluetooth integration for many, many phones. I know it sounds cynical of me, but they removed the feature because they didn't support this on the iPhone and didn't want this cool feature to be available for other phones, and not the iPhone. :( This is in addition to the loss of syncing as mentioned by the OP. I have an iPhone, so it doesn't affect me that much, but it really put a dull spot on Apple's shiny image for me.
 
Hi all,

I am a happy OmniFocus user, but the iCal Alarms feature is a real missing feature. I actually came across this thread while looking for a solution.

Think of it this way. I want to set Alarms for the 'Hard Landscape' / AKA Calendar events directly from within OmniFocus just as it should if one follows the GTD methodology. I don't think this is something far-fetched and I think it is within the expectations - specially when the app is so complete and so in-line with the methodology.

Grawl and other tricks won't do. Why? Because many people would be using iCal events within iPhone (my case) and/or other automated which rely on iCal.

It would be great if the Omni guys plan this as a feature to add.

Thanks for the great work guys!

Last edited by vano; 2008-11-20 at 03:44 PM..
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by vano View Post
Think of it this way. I want to set Alarms for the 'Hard Landscape' / AKA Calendar events directly from within OmniFocus just as it should if one follows the GTD methodology. I don't think this is something far-fetched and I think it is within the expectations - specially when the app is so complete and so in-line with the methodology.
I don't put any of my "hard landscape" items in OmniFocus: I just put them directly on my calendar (where I can also view my other appointments for that day).

Is there a reason it would be helpful to be able to do this inside OmniFocus instead of entering them directly on your calendar (which has a much better interface for scheduling "hard landscape" appointments)?
 
Yes - it is a distracting pita to have to switch to iCal (whose interface has got significantly worse in Leopard for quick entry of events and alarms) when it would be much simpler to do this in one app, i.e. OmniFocus.

A built-in calendar view that you could also synch to iCal (so that the info can then be synched to e.g. the iPhone) would be an ideal solution.
 
Brian beat me to it. You can set a due date/time in OF, and Growl will fire a notification box. You can elect to have it disappear normally (after 5 seconds), or stay up there until you click it away -- just like an iCal alarm.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by jdh View Post
Yes, syncing with iCal is otherwise only necessary if you want to actually see the tasks in iCal itself.

I sync a few selected contexts with iCal -- mostly household type stuff. This is partly because I don't necessarily fire up OF on the weekend just to check these routine tasks off, and I've also recently started sharing that task list with my wife via BusySync.

The iPhone's Calendar application has no to-do support anyway, so you're not going to gain anything iPhone-related by syncing your OF info into iCal. At best, you'd have your tasks available on the web via MobileMe, but this sounds rather irrelevant if they're already on your iPhone (and in a much more useful format and organization).
For the most part, I agree with what you're saying. However, what if I want due dates for projects, tasks, what have you, that I'd like to appear in iCal?

If I've got OF for iPhone, there's really no way to sync those sorts of things with iCal, is there?
 
iPhone applications are not allowed to touch each other's data; Apple has actively worked to prevent applications from doing so. OmniFocus for iPhone can only access files inside the small sandbox that the iPhone OS allows it to use.
 
 


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