[whpalmer4]

It does say in the last paragraph of the OmniFocus description in the iTunes App Store:

OmniFocus can synchronize with OmniFocus 1.1 for Mac via MobileMe or a WebDAV-enabled web server.

However, I can see that it might be possible to skim over that without it sinking in... So, if you were the one responsible for creating that page, what would you write?

[jet14]

Originally Posted by whpalmer4

It does say in the last paragraph of the OmniFocus description in the iTunes App Store:

OmniFocus can synchronize with OmniFocus 1.1 for Mac via MobileMe or a WebDAV-enabled web server.

However, I can see that it might be possible to skim over that without it sinking in... So, if you were the one responsible for creating that page, what would you write?

My vote would be "synchronization of the iPhone version with your Mac currently requires a developmental version of the Mac software which can be acquired at:" and list the SP page URL.

Just my $0.02...

J

[Andrew]

We have tweaked the text a little to reflect that OmniFocus 1.1 for the desktop is still in beta. Not sure just when that change will go live, but probably pretty quickly.

For what it's worth, the reason our description was so terse before was because of limits on the allowed length of app descriptions. We've just discovered that those limits were raised at some point since then.

[kennett]

Dear Ken:

Great product with my recent (6 mos.) to Apple/Mac. and RexWireless ToDo Matrix / IdeaMatrix:

Desperately needed items:

1. to have the ability to sort by date created and/or date modified. This would be a huge time saver.

2. create alarms / ticklers

3. iPhone version of OmniOutliner similar in scope to RexWireless IdeaMatrix

Thanks once these are up I will be recommending to everyone.

Peter

[holland]

any date yet as to when an update for iPhone OmniFocus will be released? i wish there could be as much focus on the iPhone version as there is on the desktop version. Would i be wrong to assume the iPhone team is rather small and as a product, it's not getting a huge amount of attention? feels that way

[whpalmer4]

I think you would in fact be wrong. Remember, Omni can't ship a new version of the iPhone application whenever it feels like it. Unlike with the desktop version, the iPhone software has to be released through Apple, and Apple strongly discourages frequent releases (and their release process apparently takes an arbitrary amount of time, making it hard to know when a new release will pop out the other end). The iPhone app and the desktop app share a bunch of common code, so just because you don't see a daily release of new iPhone software doesn't mean that it isn't being continually improved; you just don't get to play with every new build. The major reason for this release to exist is the iPhone software...

[Andrew]

While it's not as apparent, the iPhone product is indeed also getting attention. The OmniFocus for iPhone and OmniFocus for Mac teams are in fact the same team. As whpalmer4 notes, the two products share a lot of code; many non-UI changes that you see happening on the desktop are also affecting the iPhone product. However, we don't have a good mechanism by which we can distribute the interim public builds for the iPhone, as we do for the desktop product. There is also the issue that frequent releases through the iPhone app store are discouraged, not to mention unwieldy.

[holland]

I appreciate what you are saying, but i've never bought into the argument that it's apple slowing things down here - i get loads of updates on many of my other apps and many are just small bug fixes. Apple don't seem anywhere near as unwilling as you propose.

All this said, thanks for a great product. I do appreciate the efforts :)

[ext555]

I'm not so sure about apple not slowing things down , Cultured Code [the maker of " things " ] anounced on their twitter feed last weekend that an update to things touch had been submitted to apple .... it's nearly a week later and it's yet to appear on the apps store.

[Brian]

To clarify what Andrew said earlier - we can push out intermediate builds of the desktop application whenever we want. We can push out a new build after fixing just one bug, if we need to.

We don't have as much freedom with respect to the iPhone app because Apple needs to verify each release. It's not so much that the review process introduces delay; it's that each release creates work for a third party that controls the only way of selling the product. We need to balance the wants and needs of the customer (fixes as quickly as possible) with the needs of that third party - not having a number of submissions to review that they find excessive.

I am not making the claim that the current release schedule strikes the optimal balance. Additionally, please don't read any of our responses as blame-shifting; we just want to describe the thinking behind what you're observing in a little more detail.

As we continue work on both versions of OmniFocus, we'll keep improving this portion of the process as well.