What a total waste of time. I do not understand moving the beta to ios 15 only. It alienates 90% of testers.
Personally, I ditched OF a number of years ago when they priced themselves out of my price range. From what I’ve seen in the beta, there is nothing to write home about. Apart from some UI changes it’s the same app. The App Store rating of 3.8 is unlikely to change with this release, unless there are some surprises yet to be pulled out of the bag.
They moved to requiring iOS 15 because it let them take advantage of improvements to Swift UI. Somewhere it was reported that about half their testers were using a 15 beta, which is a significant reduction but leaves the tester base five times larger than your estimate.
True. You’d need an iPhone 6S or later, and an iPad Air 2 or later, to run 15. The good news is the databases are going to be compatible between 3 and 4 so they could use 3 on one device and 4 on another, if they wanted to.
Possibly, but with a current 3.8 rating many were hoping v4 would be a massive improvement. Also just because devices can upgrade to ios 15 doesn’t mean they should and with Apple’s less than stellar upgrades critical devices will be slow to move to ios 15. Although I must say ios upgrades have worked well in comparison to macos.
It’s interesting that the beta seems to be prompting that response for at least a few people. OF works well for me, but experiments with the beta still led me to a substantial reorganization of tags and folder structure in the past week. I think it’s a mix of what you describe, a perhaps helpless feeling that OF sans OmniJS can’t become great enough to overcome some inherent difficulties in the complex workflows it encourages, and new insight into one’s work and state of life thanks to what UX changes have been made so far.
I find that task management is actually rather difficult and requires consistent habits to work. A list with no workflow or habits becomes useless. If you’re looking for some helpful insights Kourosh Dini’s, “Being Productive” is really good.
I’ve been using Things 3 for about a year now and will most likely move to Todoist. Although Things 3 looks nice it is inflexible and takes way too many clicks/taps to accomplish stuff. Todoist’s killer feature for me is Filters which are phenomenally powerful at viewing your work. Plus being able to enter a task quickly and add all the meta data and where the task needs to go by typing is so efficient.
I used OF for years until the price became untenable, then switched to Things and ping-ponged back and forth. The beta was my last attempt at OF and failed miserably.
I’ve often seen that it’s workflow and not the app that needs some fine tuning. Any app will not work without solid habits.
Capturing, Organizing, Reviewing, and Doing are all separate wheels on a car. We need all four wheels working together to get the car running smoothly. There is drag when one of the four wheels are under-inflated. The whole car won’t move if a flat tire occurs.
I’d focus on performing those four habits consistently. Then you can use your workflow in any app, OmniFocus or otherwise.
The app is the car. You’re the driver. Practice good driving habits and you can go anywhere in any car!
I’ve been a proponent of GTD since before there were apps for it, and I’ve been an OmniFocus user for a very long time. I think the current beta UI is a mistake and a regression from v3, but it seems like they are intent on shipping it. This is also coinciding with Apple’s Reminders app gaining some great improvements, and I have to wonder how many OmniFocus users will decide that Reminders is now “good enough”.
Personally, defer dates is what I’d miss most from OmniFocus, I’ll have to give the new Reminders a shot and see if it’s really ready or not.
While there is a part of me that likes the “idea” of using Reminders due to its deep integration with the OS, the lack of URL’s and the inability to bcc Reminders with an email as a task are show stoppers for me.
I am one of those users who like the fantastic UI of Things, but I do prefer the power and depth OmniFocus provides me with.
When the OmniGroup announced the OF 4 beta, I jumped onto the TestFlight train. After a waiting time of about a month, I received the invitation and I installed OF 4. I used it on my iPhone. I am using OmniFocus on my Mac (no beta there) and on my iPhone. I do not really use it with my iPad.
When I first opened the beta version, I really did not know what to think. It looked nice. It felt fresh. But when I started using the app, I was stunned. So many hidden UI elements. A streamlined and nice-looking UI? Definitely. A functional UI? No. I really had to LEARN how to use the app, how to find things. And I know OmniFocus. I know how it is working. I could not imagine how a new user ever could find his or her way in this new app. I succeeded, but -boy oh boy- there was a learning curve.
Then there was the announcement that new beta versions would require iOS 15. I totally get this decision. I decided to stick with iOS 14. Instead of sticking to the “old” OF 4 beta version, I deleted OF 4 and installed OF 3 again on my iPhone. And that was when it really hit me: I prefer OF 3 after several weeks with OF 4. Although I really would like to see a new UI and a shiny a new design which apparently the OmniGroup is trying to achieve with OF 4. I am confident that they will keep improving the UI, especially with the options they now have with a iOS 15 version only. As far as I am concerned they really need to accomplish that.
When I left the beta train, they still had a long way to go. OF 4 did not really feel as an improvement over OF 3… OF 3 has its “old” and not so fancy UI. But the old UI works and does not get in your way.
Again, there is much time for improvements and a beta is a beta. I get that. But they sure need this beta process and the user feedback to work on this new UI…
To extend your analogy the problem I think most of us feel exists with OF4 is that in a world where the app is the car you can have all of the wheels on and full of air, but if the car itself is sputtering you aren’t going to get very far. The UI is just so unintuitive that even after weeks of use it still requires thinking about which little icon you need to tap in order to update task metadata or to remember that you don’t tab the complete button for the project when you’re dealing with a single action list (unless you want to get rid of all of the other tasks that are deferred for later dates).
After a couple of weeks, I’m finding my muscle memory and can figure out the icons rather easily, Perhaps using a long press to open up a window to access commands would be preferable?
Every car dashboard has a different layout. It gets easier over time to figure out where the different buttons are. I’m familiar with my truck’s dashboard. Recently I had to pick my friend’s Lexus from the airport to bring back to his house. It took a while for me to figure out the controls because everything was on the dashboard screen instead of the familiar knobs and buttons that I have in my truck. After a while, I can figure out how to change the temperature, learn how to defrost the windshield, and so forth. I’m sure if I spent more time in his Lexus, I can gain the muscle memory to use his car easily.
The TestFlight is still ongoing with tweaks being made along the way based on user feedback.
Here’s a transcript from a recent Carl Pullein podcast that closely parallels my idea that we should focus more on the productivity system and not as much on the app.
After going through the available options and testing the waters with different task managers, nothing works for me like OmniFocus. I’ll get used to the new UI, although I still think it’s a regression from v3, I’m sticking with OmniFocus.
I have to admit that having quick open on iPad is making up for any deficiency for me as I use it. It’s so good. Now we just need a DevonThink-style shortcut (ctrl+cmd+m) to move a project inside any folder or project…
iPhone is the weird one. I like that 4 is trying to be more powerful, but I really like the mosaic home screen of 3 when I’m in a hurry at the store or when I’m working on a project with my hands.
I’ve found myself so frustrated with trying to organize things in Omnifocus that I’m not even opening it anymore. I desperately hope they get it right in V4.
OF is very powerful and flexible but for my use case, after using it for two separate extended periods adjacent to using Things, I found OF just too fiddly. I miss the Preview function in OF, but otherwise, I’m quite happy with Things 3. It is faster and “good enough” for getting my work done.