[Update] Ken Case comments below, addressing some of the concerns listed here. It looks like a future version of OmniFocus on the Mac will be able to directly update the OmniFocus reminders on the server, removing at least one of my complaints.

Ken Case from The Omni Group has been twittering for awhile about the impending inclusion of alarm reminders for OmniFocus. The task management app's iPhone users have been pestering The Omni Group to implement reminders as push notifications, but OmniFocus refuses to do so. They say that reminders that rely on connectivity are not good enough, and they have instead chosen to implement reminders by exporting due dates and times into iCal. Once the time comes for a reminder, it pops up like a normal iCal appointment reminder.

Well, OmniFocus 1.5.2 for iPhone was released, and now we get to see how this alternative reminder system works. If I had to choose a word to describe this implementation, that word would be "awful." Here's why:

• The Omni Group has taken great pains to point out that you do not need to be using the desktop version of OmniFocus to get use out of the iPhone version. But for users that only have the iPhone version and are not synchronizing it to either MobileMe (which has a yearly fee) or a WebDAV server (complicated for non-techies), they can't use this implementation of reminders. That's right; the way it works is that OmniFocus on the iPhone exports your reminders to your synchronization server, then points iCal on the iPhone to the server to import your reminders. That means that if you enter new due dates in OmniFocus for iPhone but don't happen to have connectivity, you won't get reminders. Wait, I thought it was implemented this way in the first place to guard against a lack of connectivity?

• Your OmniFocus reminders unnecessarily pollute your iPhone calendar with reminders. This is a visual problem when you need to glance at your calendars and see what actual appointments are coming up. On the iPhone you can either look at one specific calendar, or all calendars, so if like me you need to regularly stay on top of more than one calendar, you're forced to look at your OmniFocus reminders as well. Oh, and even when you complete them in OmniFocus and resync, they don't go away in your calendar. [Update] Stephen points out in the comments that this works as expected, and upon further testing I have to agree. Maybe I was being a bit too impatient.
  

• Since your OmniFocus reminders are actually just fake appointments, there is no way to audibly differentiate them from appointment reminders. They sound and look exactly the same. Remember the Milk, for example, uses push notifications on its iPhone app, and you can set the notification sound to a number of different options. That way you know that you're being reminded of a task rather than an appointment.

• Reminders are set based on Due time, rather than Available time, and in terms of flexibility you can set the reminder to be 5 to 60 minutes before the task is due. By the time a task is actually due, isn't it too late to be reminded about it?

• Finally, if you're a user of OmniFocus for the Mac, your reminders are not created on your iPhone until you think to launch OmniFocus on the iPhone and synchronize it. That means that if you work all day in OmniFocus on your Mac (like I do), then drive home and start doing other stuff and don't happen to open OmniFocus on your iPhone, you won't receive any reminders for tasks that you might have set for that night, or until you actually open and sync OmniFocus on your iPhone.

So, what would I rather see? Push notifications, like the many other OmniFocus for iPhone users out there that have been providing their feedback to The Omni Group.

As mentioned, Remember the Milk has implemented push notifications, and the ability to change the notification sound isn't the only trick it has up its sleeve. The Remember the Milk icon on my iPhone's screen shows how many due tasks I have that day, and the number changes almost instantly when I make changes on the web version. To see how many currently available and due tasks I have in OmniFocus, I again have to launch the app and wait for it to synchronize.

While I love OmniFocus and I think The Omni Group does amazing work, this implementation of reminders for the iPhone version of OmniFocus is just full of an amazing amount of fail. It's a hacky workaround that still doesn't ensure that a lack of connectivity won't adversely affect the user's ability to receive reminder notifications. Omni folks, this is just meant to be tough love -- I wouldn't be saying all of this if I didn't truly care about OmniFocus.

MenuMinder is a simple piece of software that does one thing, but does it reasonably well. It sits in your menubar and allows you to enter quick reminders to yourself. The reminders pop up whenever you like (though in an unfortunate brushed metal interface, right). You can also set them to be emailed or sent to your phone via SMS.

While you can obviously set events in iCal or even use Quicksilver for quick reminders, MenuMinder is extremely quick and straightforward. If, like me, you're often writing little reminder notes to yourself this might be just the ticket.

MenuMinder is $10 and a demo is available.

Quicksilver never fails to impress. I just ran across this excellent tip on macosxhints.com for setting little timed reminders to yourself. There are a plethora of little egg timer type applications for OS X, but why bother with one of those when you can do this in Quicksilver? Suppose you want to set a little text reminder like the one above to yourself to go off in 15 minutes. With this little tip you can set Quicksilver to pop up a reminder at any given time, or after any given delay. Big TUAW 'attaboy to mcgraths for discovering this. Read on for a full mini-tutorial.

[Via Digg]

We've blogged iCalFix before, back when it was just a fledgling 0.1 release that didn't even have a GUI interface (you had to edit a pref file lying around in ~/Library). For those who don't remember: it's a simple iCal plugin that automatically adds a reminder to every event you create.

In this latest 0.5 release, iCal has become a true-blue iCal plugin, with its own preference pane and everything (As you can see, Robert Blum, iCalFix's creator, is looking for an icon designer. Check his blog for contact details). Now it's possible to specify your own alarm time for new events, as well as which sound to use, right from within iCal's preferences.

iCalFix is donationware and available from Robert Blum's site.

[via Hawk Wings]

For all those times when adding a quick reminder to iCal is too cumbersome, or you might not be online so the Backpack widget can do its thing, the Reminder widget might be right up your alley. As you can see, the widget has a simple interface allowing you to add some type of a reminder name/message, along with a reminder time. As an added bonus, this widget actually adds events to its own iCal calendar.

The Reminder widget is, of course, free and available from DashboardWidgets.com.