Things brings the sync

If you love Things, you just got a whole lot more to love. The folks at Cultured Code have finally added iCal sync, and they've done a spectacular job with it (outdoing, in my opinion, OmniFocus' sync). In the preferences, you can sync just your "Today" tasks, or just your "Next Actions," or you can get crazy with it and assign calendars to different tags, projects or areas of responsibility. This allows for utterly amazing flexibility and an array of possibilities.

The major benefits of having Things synced with iCal all revolve around the tight integration that iCal and Leopard's To Dos have with the rest of OS X. Being able to refine what is actually synced means you have complete control over what you see on an iCal printout or even what you put on a public or shared calendar. To Dos can be delegated, emailed, linked, prioritized and more, and Things is picking up every external change I throw at it.

You can have a calendar that functions as an inbox and use whatever input method you like to get tasks there. The "@" symbol can be used to add tags as well. Moving a task from the inbox calendar to another calendar synchronized with Things will do exactly what you think it will ... move the task to the project or area of responsibility assigned to that calendar.

This also solves my other major problem with Things, no easy way to turn Mail.app messages into tasks. Now, with a right click to make a new To Do you can create a new task in Things that contains a link to the original message. Unfortunately, Mail.app's handling of To Dos is a little buggy in some cases, but that problem is easily taken care of by using MailTags to create the tasks.

The final reason I'm so excited about this new release is that Leopard To Dos are part of an API that all kinds of third-party programs can access, and can therefore integrate with Things now. Anxiety, Out of Mind, Today, MailTags and other little applications we've mentioned can all work in two directions with your task manager.

I'm a little obsessed with Charilaos Skiadas' GTDAlt bundle for TextMate right now (along with piles of Ruby code to extend it), but the new sync feature in Things made it extremely easy to pull my tasks in and take it for another spin. Having sworn off the "pretty" task managers and pledged my allegiance once again to all things plain text, I don't have the heart to change my system again quite yet ... but it's becoming obvious that when Things comes to fruition, it will be a force to be reckoned with. If this was holding you back (like it was me), it might be time to take a look. Things is going to be $49 after release, but you can still get in on it for $39 right now.

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Source: http://culturedcode.com/things/blog/2008/05/things-092-bring…

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If you love Things, you just got a whole lot more to love. The folks at Cultured Code have finally added iCal sync, and they've done a...

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Dennis

So a couple questions:

1) What do you use iCal syncing for? I mean, if you don't have a Palm or some device that syncs with iCal, and you don't use any third-party To Do interface like Anxiety, is there any real advantage to using iCal sync? Why not just manage your to do items in Things?

2) If/when an iPhone version of Things becomes available, isn't iCal sync obsolete if you have an iPhone? Wouldn't you just sync your Things database directly to your iPhone instead?

3) iCal sync is neat, I guess, and it looks like it's well done, but why is the developer adding "icing on the cake" features when basic stuff is still missing or incomplete? There's still no way to search across the entire database in Things, is there? I just find that infuriating. And dragging stuff is still crippled (still getting warning dialogs that say it'll be fixed soon). Undo/redo feels a bit flakey and sometimes is slow. I can't add notes to projects, only to actions. No support for multiple windows. No support for viewing multiple notes simultaneously. No support for styled text in notes. Limited support for copying actions from one project to another. No support for sorting actions or projects (other than manually).

It just worries me that whiz-bang features like iCal sync are taking priority over the basics, especially so late in the development. Wasn't Things supposed to be release in spring of this year? That only gives them about another 4 weeks!

May 27 2008 at 4:01 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Saxon

Nobody's mentioned this yet, I've found that if I create a Todos calendar that syncs with .Mac and set my copy of Things on multiple computers to sync with that calendar, it's a poor man's way to keep the two Things databases synced up. It's not perfect; the projects have to exist on both computers and so do the tags for it to put things in right places. But it's worked great for me so far!

May 26 2008 at 12:31 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

junkie

this is awesome - i am floored by the syncing - its instantaneous! amazing!

so is there a decent way to get these into iPhone? I see a folder under my IMAP email account but have not played much yet...

May 25 2008 at 6:47 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to junkie's comment

Brett Terpstra

I know :), it's the best implementation I've seen yet. The iPhone doesn't currently handle To Dos natively, but there's a web app I'm playing with that can read your To Dos from an IMAP folder and provide mobile functionality. I'll let you know if I get it working...

May 25 2008 at 6:55 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

mark

Hey, Brett,

I'm a Things user who's also excited about the recent update. However, certain parts of your review are vague. For example, you wrote:

"Now, with a right click to make a new To Do you can create a new task in Things that contains a link to the original message."

How? With a right-click on what? This is unclear.

You also wrote:

"Mail.app's handling of To Dos is a little buggy in some cases, but that problem is easily taken care of by using MailTags to create the tasks."

Again...how? I have and use MailTags, and I don't see any functionality in MailTags that allows one to "create tasks." But perhaps I've overlooked it. How are you creating tasks in MailTags??

May 25 2008 at 1:49 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

4 replies to mark's comment

I absolutely love this app:):):)

It's great in everything! and culturedcode is just a super cool company.

10!

May 25 2008 at 10:29 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply