OmniFocus 1.0 represents a long-awaited addition to the GTD offerings on the Mac. It's a GTD-compatible task manager that has been in beta (or vaportrail, as they call it) for a while now and has gained an active community of users. Today's release puts Omni ahead of several other developers, which may help make up the minds of the more impatient GTDers who have been watching the options grow more varied and the spread of features get more convoluted.
Omni nailed a few things in this application, including a very powerful means of managing how tasks are viewed (focuses), recurring tasks and OS X integration that includes Spotlight indexing of tasks. The interface is unfamiliar to new users, but relatively intuitive. And, unlike some of the other up-and-comers, Omni made GTD standards a high priority. Whether that is a selling point depends entirely on the individual user's taste.
OmniFocus has updated almost every day since I got my invitation to the beta some months back. If you like applications that have a quick and responsive development team, you'll enjoy the development pace. It's retailing at $79.95 now that the pre-order discount is finished. Visit the website for more information.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
1-08-2008 @ 1:22PM
ron said...
$79.95 for the ugliest app ever!
it should be more like $29.95 conceding the fact that it's far from being a masterpiece.
Reply
1-08-2008 @ 1:40PM
Jesse Perry said...
I bought it at the pre-release price, but WELL worth the $80 IMHO. The interface is so customizable without being overbearing. Love, love love it. & being able to sync only specific contexts to iCal only makes it better. Plus many other features.
Reply
1-08-2008 @ 2:09PM
Geoff said...
Wow, they kept the striped title bar past the beta stage? Ick. I'll readily admit to being OCD, but those stripes alone would keep me from switching to OmniFocus away from something like iGTD or Actiontastic.
Reply
1-08-2008 @ 2:24PM
Kwahnoom said...
They did not. They just haven't updated the screenshot yet...
1-08-2008 @ 2:42PM
Dennis said...
@3 What stripes are you talking about? The "construction tape" stripes? Those were removed weeks ago. Did you even try the app before commenting?
Reply
1-08-2008 @ 4:15PM
Geoff said...
No, I tried it weeks ago ... then today I looked at the screenshots on their otherwise updated 1.0 page. They need to update their page if they don't want others to think the same thing.
1-08-2008 @ 4:28PM
Dennis said...
Fair enough. I don't know why they didn't update the screen shots on their site. That seems like a silly oversight.
1-08-2008 @ 2:44PM
Temporal said...
$80 for a glorified todo app? Pffft.
I tried the beta and calling this app "intuitive" is a disservice. It's quite convoluted and overwhelming actually and would take a fair amount of time to get used to.
I tried this for about a week and now I have been using Things since the beta was released. I have to say I much prefer Things. It is far easier to get into and while it isn't as complex (or potentially capable) as OmniFocus I much prefer the interface and it's simplicity. It also doesn't cost $80 freaking dollars for a todo app. I mean, really, what about this app is worth that?
Reply
1-08-2008 @ 2:47PM
Alan said...
They made nearly half a million on the presale, which is impressive, so it must have its fans, but it's too rigidly structured and the interface is too opaque in my opinion. I wonder how many people will stick with it over the longer term?
It definitely has its good points, but I'm hoping they'll significantly revamp the user interface for 2.0. That said, I'm not holding my breath for 2.0... OmniOutliner has been sitting at version 3.5 for more than three years now with no updates. I hope they shift their efforts back to that. I'm a huge fan of OmniOutliner.
Reply
1-08-2008 @ 3:38PM
zxspectrum said...
@Alan
they might have made 500k just because at that time there was no real competation and pepole like me were pretty desperate...also, bringing Kinkless on board made a huge difference!
THINGS is so much better (in all aspects).
Reply
1-08-2008 @ 4:48PM
pcx said...
Very overpriced. Ill continue to wait for the 1.0 release of Things which seems like it will be better and cheaper
"They made nearly half a million on the presale, which is impressive"
It's very impressive but i think it just proves that omni have a good following like we all know. People seem to go a bit crazy when someone like omni release something new.
Reply
1-08-2008 @ 5:39PM
mentalsticks said...
$79.95? That's more than iWork, iLife or Pixelmator.
that's bloody ridiculous.
Reply
1-08-2008 @ 6:06PM
steve.agocs said...
Am I the only person who is sick and tired of seeing "GTD" EVERYWHERE? I've read so much about this "system" and it seems like you'd spend your whole damn day classifying things rather than just doing them. Fooey.
Reply
1-08-2008 @ 10:01PM
Ben said...
I'm glad I ran into a program called "Things" yesterday (I discovered it while browsing iusethis.com). I think it looks much more Mac like and is easier and more enjoyable to use than OmniFocus. I made the complete switch to Things today and am happy that I did... it is also in beta, but it's price will be lower the OmniFocus when it ships.
Bye!
Reply