[endoftheQ]

Originally Posted by MutantSquid

I'm surprised to see this type of anger and hostility in here...for a minute, I thought I was back in the Cultured Code forums :)

You should meander over to the OmniFocus for iPhone board, that's where us bdsm addicts get our real fix... ! :eek:

[londonuser33]

Originally Posted by RiK

Ha ha, you have to chuckle really. A couple of months ago none of us even had an iPad and now suddenly everyone's acting as if it's the end of the world that an app isn't available immediately on launch.

Chill out chaps!

It'll be here soon enough. In the meantime your iPhone / Desktop version hasn't suddenly stopped working has it? I find it's far more relaxing to use the systems you've already got rather than stress about something you haven't.

Yes --- but my systems have changed. The iPad has replaced my Macbook when I'm on the move. Which is a lot. Means I'm restricted to OF iPhone which is cumbersome because of lack of screen real estate. I expect to use the iPad version constantly and it will have a marked effect on my productivity. That's why I'm keen to know when: it'll make a real difference to me.

I guess I'm too dependent on OF... perhaps I'll go cold turkey, dig out the Toshiba tablet and fire up Covey Plan Plus for Outlook 2003. That'd teach me. :)

[jonoslack]

If it were my program, I wouldn't post another word about it until the day it turned up on the app store.
Just like everyone else I'm logging in here every day to see what's what, but I can't say I'd really be happier if Ken said 'Next week' or 'Next month' . . . and if what he was going to say was 'Tomorrow' . . . I'd rather wait until tomorrow and find it was out!

I just hope that it's good, and until then I'll carry on using the iphone app on my ipad.

[vballas]

My question is another one.

I am wondering why OG took only 2 months to develop with an interface that looks and feels good, while OF is already 3,5 months when
1. Reusable iOS code exists out of the iPhone version
2. Experience on building for the iPad was obtained when building OG

There is one thing which is kind of frightening me.
Something went really wrong, could have been the prototype reaction, and the app had to be redesigned and partially rebuild.

Based on the above i see no other explanation.

Ken?mcould you enlighten us why OF is taking so long?

[Brian]

Vballas, before the iPad shipped on April 3, all our iPad development efforts were towards OmniGraffle and OmniGraphSketcher. Once those shipped, we started work in earnest on OmniFocus for iPad. It's been three months, one week, and two days since that date. Cut us some slack. :-)

Yes, some of the code could be re-used, but the interface code couldn't, and that's the most important part of the app. You guys don't want a warmed-over iPhone app, and that's not what we're going to deliver.

Ken's working on another blog post - since I'm not him, I can't say exactly how long it will take him. :-)

If folks want to be automatically notified when we have more info, they can sign up for our Omni News email list. That way, our mail servers can do the work for you instead of having to look for it manually...

[whpalmer4]

Originally Posted by vballas

My question is another one.

I am wondering why OG took only 2 months to develop with an interface that looks and feels good, while OF is already 3,5 months when
1. Reusable iOS code exists out of the iPhone version
2. Experience on building for the iPad was obtained when building OG

There is one thing which is kind of frightening me.
Something went really wrong, could have been the prototype reaction, and the app had to be redesigned and partially rebuild.

Based on the above i see no other explanation.

How about OG got out the door in a hurry because a) it had to, and b) just about everyone there was pitching in, working an unsustainable pace? It did have some performance problems in the initial version, and fixing them undoubtedly kept part of the iPad brain trust busy for a while.

You can't see a whole lot in the short little video posted, but it doesn't look like an iPad-sized copy of the iPhone app to me, and a large part of the UI code had to be written for the iPad, I suspect.

[whpalmer4]

Originally Posted by Brian

Vballas, before the iPad shipped on April 3, all our iPad development efforts were towards OmniGraffle and OmniGraphSketcher. Once those shipped, we started work in earnest on OmniFocus for iPad. It's been two months, one week, and two days since that date. Cut us some slack. :-)

Brian, I think someone has stolen a page from your calendar.

April, May, June, July...which one is missing from your copy? :-)

[Brian]

Originally Posted by whpalmer4

Brian, I think someone has stolen a page from your calendar.

April, May, June, July...which one is missing from your copy? :-)

I COUNT REAL GOOD NOW.

editing my post. :-)

[RiK]

Originally Posted by vballas

could you enlighten us why OF is taking so long?

It's really not though, it's only been a few weeks and that's nothing in terms of software development. There are quite a few comments on here where people seem to thing a coder just clicks their fingers and a working app, or a major modification to an app just appears instantaneously. It's really not like that you know! it's important to get things right from the outset as a) first impressions count and b) once an app is established it's difficult to make substantial changes to how it works without upsetting people.

OmniGroup have finite resources and they have to prioritise their development plans accordingly. For the iPad they chose to prioritise OmniGraffle during the build up to launch and now they're working on OmniFocus.

I'm as eager to get my hands on it as the next guy, but I'm also a software engineer and I know how long these things take to get right.

As a general rule of thumb, when you estimate the time required for a software project, think of a number, take the next highest unit of measure, and then double it.

i.e. if a coder says it'll be a couple of days, that actually means four weeks!

[Brian]

Something that's a bit counter-intuitive: displaying OmniFocus' data is a much bigger challenge than displaying graphics on a canvas. We already had everything we needed to display OmniGraffle/OmniGraphSketcher documents, but we needed to give them a new interface.

With OmniFocus, the display and the interactions had to be rethought from the ground up. It's not as easy as making your stuff look exactly like it does on a Mac.

The target for this project was set by the two existing versions - not only does it need to be a mobile version of the desktop app, it needs to be a souped-up version of the iPhone app, as well.

Example: there were a couple of cases where I found myself setting down my iPad and reaching for OmniFocus for iPhone in order to do something. Once that happened, I marched into my coworkers' offices and made them sad by giving them more work to do. If it was easier on the phone, that was something we had to fix.

When we ship, it's not going to be perfect, but holy crap, it feels like the best version of OmniFocus we've ever done. I'm sorry it's taking a little longer than we thought, but we really think it'll be worth it.