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If someone really wanted to cash on this vast, untapped "OmniFocus for Windows" market, there isn't much stopping them. Omni has been fairly open about describing the sync mechanism's workings, and the file format is pretty straightforward. There's still a lot of work to do — it took Omni quite a while to build the Mac app and iOS apps, and they had substantial volumes of code that could be reused instead of being written from scratch. For me, it is difficult to avoid coming to the conclusion that a team which could build an OmniFocus client for Windows (or as a web app) in a reasonable timeframe could probably make more money (and/or have more fun, I suspect) doing something else. Now, I suppose it is true that many such teams may be completely unaware of this potential business opportunity. They probably don't read this forum :-) Omni itself would seem to be the ideal candidate, but they appear to have little interest. They don't appear to be uninterested in pocketing our disposable income, so once again the conclusion is that they've considered it and decided the resources are better employed elsewhere.

Have you considered using just the iPad and iPhone at work, with your Mac at home? With the new Omni Sync Server dropbox feature, it's easier than ever to get stuff into OmniFocus from unsupported devices.
 
The costs and challenges of porting are easily underestimated – even spanning two rather closely related platforms (OS X and iOS) has left the resources of the Omnigroup discernibly stretched … (iPad ergo et cætera).

This kind of discussion always comes up, but in practice a Windows port seems to have defeated (for the moment) even the (technically rather proficient) enthusiasts of TaskWarrior, which has quite a simple command line interface ...
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by whpalmer4 View Post
If someone really wanted to cash on this vast, untapped "OmniFocus for Windows" market, there isn't much stopping them. Omni has been fairly open about describing the sync mechanism's workings, and the file format is pretty straightforward. There's still a lot of work to do — it took Omni quite a while to build the Mac app and iOS apps, and they had substantial volumes of code that could be reused instead of being written from scratch. For me, it is difficult to avoid coming to the conclusion that a team which could build an OmniFocus client for Windows (or as a web app) in a reasonable timeframe could probably make more money (and/or have more fun, I suspect) doing something else. Now, I suppose it is true that many such teams may be completely unaware of this potential business opportunity. They probably don't read this forum :-) Omni itself would seem to be the ideal candidate, but they appear to have little interest. They don't appear to be uninterested in pocketing our disposable income, so once again the conclusion is that they've considered it and decided the resources are better employed elsewhere.
Good points....


Quote:
Have you considered using just the iPad and iPhone at work, with your Mac at home? With the new Omni Sync Server dropbox feature, it's easier than ever to get stuff into OmniFocus from unsupported devices.
Hmmm.......nope, hadn't thought of that.... ;-)

Interesting idea....although, more work at home.....after work....hmmmmm..........
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by RobTrew View Post
The costs and challenges of porting are easily underestimated – even spanning two rather closely related platforms (OS X and iOS) has left the resources of the Omnigroup discernibly stretched … (iPad ergo et cætera).
True....but other companies do it......from what I've read, I'd guess the Omni team really isn't that interested in dealing with it....ie, not a high priority for them....which is certainly their right....just not helpful for me and others that need/want other solution....

Quote:
This kind of discussion always comes up, but in practice a Windows port seems to have defeated (for the moment) even the (technically rather proficient) enthusiasts of TaskWarrior, which has quite a simple command line interface ...
TaskWarrior, I know it well.....greatl little CLI program....have used it on various platforms...while there isn't a Windows port per se, you can run it on a Windows machine by installing Cygwin and then running it from there....worked fine that way....

Now if there was a iPad and iPhone version of TW, I'd be all set..... ;-)

So it goes.....
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by ArchiMark View Post
Interesting idea....although, more work at home.....after work....hmmmmm..........
Why is it more work at home? I'm assuming you want to use OmniFocus both for work-related and personal stuff. Do the work stuff while at work, and hopefully OmniFocus gains you sufficient efficiency to offset the time spent fiddling with it. The personal stuff you do on your own time. You get all your tasks in one place, you don't have to learn an additional system for tracking your work-related tasks, how is this not better than the alternative?

My last employer long ago discovered that providing engineers with duplicate work environments at home and paying the ISP bill would result in most of them spending lots of extra hours on work for no additional compensation cost, so you're probably getting off easy :-)

If you do proceed down this path, I recommend that you separate your work and personal projects into separate folders. Then create perspectives on the Mac which focus on one of the folders. There's an option in the perspectives window that allows you to specify whether the perspective shows in context or project mode; you want context mode. Make one that groups by project and sorts by project — this will give you a close approximation to the normal project view. Also make one that groups by context and sorts by due — this will give you a view of tasks separated out by context (so you can easily determine which tasks you can work on) and present them in due date order (so you can see what needs to be done first). These perspectives will largely make up for the lack of project mode perspectives on the iOS apps as far as doing the work is concerned, and by having them focus on either the work or personal folder, you'll only see the tasks relating to that focus in the resulting views. When you get to work, you open one of the work-focused perspectives, and your personal tasks will be out of sight. Go home, pull up a personal perspective, and all the work-related tasks disappear.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by whpalmer4 View Post
Why is it more work at home? I'm assuming you want to use OmniFocus both for work-related and personal stuff. Do the work stuff while at work, and hopefully OmniFocus gains you sufficient efficiency to offset the time spent fiddling with it. The personal stuff you do on your own time. You get all your tasks in one place, you don't have to learn an additional system for tracking your work-related tasks, how is this not better than the alternative?
Thank you for the input....makes sense....so, yes, sounds better....


Quote:
My last employer long ago discovered that providing engineers with duplicate work environments at home and paying the ISP bill would result in most of them spending lots of extra hours on work for no additional compensation cost, so you're probably getting off easy :-)
Yep.....I do have company laptop that I can take home and have remote access to network capability....but I try to avoid using it at home most of the time... ;-)

Quote:
If you do proceed down this path, I recommend that you separate your work and personal projects into separate folders. Then create perspectives on the Mac which focus on one of the folders. There's an option in the perspectives window that allows you to specify whether the perspective shows in context or project mode; you want context mode. Make one that groups by project and sorts by project — this will give you a close approximation to the normal project view. Also make one that groups by context and sorts by due — this will give you a view of tasks separated out by context (so you can easily determine which tasks you can work on) and present them in due date order (so you can see what needs to be done first). These perspectives will largely make up for the lack of project mode perspectives on the iOS apps as far as doing the work is concerned, and by having them focus on either the work or personal folder, you'll only see the tasks relating to that focus in the resulting views. When you get to work, you open one of the work-focused perspectives, and your personal tasks will be out of sight. Go home, pull up a personal perspective, and all the work-related tasks disappear.
Excellent advice, thanks again!.....will have to try this....
 
Not that I have a vote, but there are plenty of developers (thousands) who develop for Windows and not OSX so I am more than happy to keep OmniGroup 100% pure OS.

It already takes long enough between release of their software, so if I had to wait another 2 years for an OSX update because they were doing a "push to windows" I would not be happy.

BZ
 
 


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