[whpalmer4]

So what happens after 3 days that doesn't after 2.5? Is the iPhone battery running low in this scenario or not?

[barbarab]

Nope, the battery is topped off, using AC. And it's the actual launching of the application that triggers the database purge. :(

[DiverDoc]

Arrrgh!! Its happened again today. This is really pissing me off. What use is an application that cannot safeguard your data and randomly decides to wipe all of your hard work? For any support ninjas lurking, the ticket number is [OG #372438], both Omnifocus and iPhone (original, not 3G) have latest software versions, the phone was in normal mode not airplane and I had upgraded Medical calc and FileMagnet a day or so ago.

Come on guys, you need to fix this pronto, or admit the product is unfit for purpose and give the money back.

[whpalmer4]

I understand that you're having a problem, and I would also be quite frustrated in your position, but it is far from obvious that OmniFocus is the cause of the problem. There's an awful lot of Apple software involved here; how do you know that it's Omni's software that is causing the problem?

[DiverDoc]

I'm not sure what you mean. Either it is a bug in the Omnifocus software, or Apple's updating of other applications is causing the problem. In either case, the developer needs to sort out the problem either with their product or the way Apple is updating applications - why should an update of a different application be allowed to affect the Omnifocus folder or database at all? As I cannot see the file directories on the iPhone I cannot see what is causing the problem.

The issue is that task management is a key part of many people's usage of smartphones. I have too many tasks and projects to keep re-entering them and don't want to pay for a WebDAV service to back up one application.

If anyone else is suffering this problem, the Toodledo app is promising free sync to the web version of Toodledoo, which should help protect data. I'm going to trial it whilst waiting for a resolution to this problem.

[Lizard]

Ken had all his data disappear a few days ago, and we were able to figure out why and fix that bug. That fix will be in the upcoming iPhone release. Unfortunately, we can't be certain it's the same bug you're encountering.

We do take data loss bugs very seriously, but the iPhone doesn't give us a lot of information about what's gone wrong if we can't hook it up to the Xcode debugger tools. We're continuing to work with Apple to encourage them to give us more diagnostic tools (like forwarding us the crash reports that iTunes prompts you to send to Apple), and looking for more ways to build diagnostics into OmniFocus.

[DiverDoc]

Thanks Lizard. I think that is part of the problem - when the data loss occurred there was no crash report or error code - the database just reset itself to the original version. Thus there was no prompt to submit a crash report. Good luck with trying to get more diagnostics/info from Apple. This issue has forced me to think a lot more seriously about data backup for the iPhone, as I find it simply incredible that updating one application can presumably cause a different application to lose data.