[Dan]

I've been using OmniFocus since last year (alpha) and got used to syncing it with the To-Do items in iCal.

Now I have an iPhone and OmniFocus for iPhone, which does a great job of keeping itself sync'd with the full program on my Mac using my .Mac (sorry, MobileMe) account.

My question is: What (if any) reasons are there for continuing to sync OmniFocus with iCal?
Thanks!

[MacBerry]

I'd be interested to hear what benefit it had before - given that (presumably) iCal and OF were on the same machine, what were you using the resultant todo's in iCal for? Maybe you were syncing with some other mobile device?

The only use I can see if you now have an iPhone would be if you need someone else or another app/device to see the todo's generated in OF. I use it to delegate todo's to my assistant (who also happens to be my wife!!!), and to receive todo's from her (yes I know - giving my wife permission and the method to add todo's directly to my inbox makes me insane!!). She doesn't use OF, and even if she did, wouldn't want her copy to be completely in sync with mine, so we sync certain contexts to iCal calendars.

Mark

[Dan]

I used to sync with a Treo 650, which is why I used iCal. When I upgraded to Leopard, iCal and Address Book would no longer sync with the Treo, in essence forcing me to get an iPhone (I was going to anyway).

[MacBerry]

Originally Posted by Dan

I used to sync with a Treo 650, which is why I used iCal. When I upgraded to Leopard, iCal and Address Book would no longer sync with the Treo, in essence forcing me to get an iPhone (I was going to anyway).

Really? So Apple took you down a path that would result in you buying an Apple product? Surely not :eek: How very Microsoft (®©™) 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?

[Dan]

Leopard iCal would sync calendar entries only. Contacts and to-dos stopped syncing. Apple & Palm are supposedly "working out the issues."

I could've bought Missing Sync which no doubt would have done the trick, but I was ready for a change anyway.

So unless I want to start sharing to-dos with someone else, I should stop syncing OmniFocus with iCal altogether.

[jdh]

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).

[mkoistinen]

Originally Posted by MacBerry

Really? So Apple took you down a path that would result in you buying an Apple product? Surely not :eek: How very Microsoft (®©™) 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.

[vano]

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!

[Mixalis]

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.