I’ve tested Things and Reminders, and for me, nothing works as well as OmniFocus. I’ve been with it (and GTD) so long and I know it so well that I think I’ve gotten used to it’s idiosyncrasies. Reminders keeps getting better, but without defer dates, hot keys for adding links to items to the inbox, dedicated review perspectives… well, you get the point.
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I would add that Reminders is missing the ability to send an email as a task to it. I do this consistently whether using Things or OF.
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Heh, I felt like he did a good job selling OF at the end. I agree with the DevonThink/Things-style move action (I mentioned wanting it a few posts up) and I always want more options in perspective builders, including arbitrary ranges of due dates.
Legacy software suggests it’s important to him to feel something is on trend or shiny to be worth using and I don’t really value that, although I do experience the small thrill of using software that does something just right.
This will obviously depend on one’s needs but I find Things’s “When” date to be easier than OF’s defer. In Things, I select when and the task disappears until that date, and then shows up under Today. And what I really like is that it stays under Today until done. This works for me on projects that I need to start on date x and keep working on until complete or the due date. An example would be preparing a big presentation. I may start on it 12 weeks out and finish two or three days before giving it. For big presentations and writing projects I like to work in them consistently but incrementally as I find I produce a better product. To accomplish the same thing in OF I had to use a tag like “Next” to keep the task visible.
That’s what I use defer dates for. If I have something I want to start on a month early, but has a hard date for when it needs to be finished, I’ll give it both a defer date and a due date. That way it shows up every day, and turns yellow when it’s close to time for it to be finished, and red the day of.
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Agreed!
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I’m liking the beta BUT note that I am new to OmniFocus. I’m a project manager by profession so I understand it. I’ve used OF3 for a few months and like OF4 better, especially the Forecast view. I like the icons.
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I like the overall direction of OF4 especially for iPhone. But in practice it’s so cluttered , and pretty buggy so far. I prefer the UI approach of iOS 15 Reminders, where all the relevant icons appear on the keyboard contextually rather than being on the screen when they’re not needed.
I haven’t watched the video but the graphics suggest the premise is ableist and ageist.
You’re not wrong about the graphics. The video isn’t, though.
I too am quite concerned about the direction that Omnifocus is going. Is it the cornerstone of a lot of my work, and the design and stability (at least thus far) is really bad. While they will of course sort out the stability before actual release, the direction on the design is amazingly poor. I actually wonder if there is someone working there with design experience as opposed to just programming experience. It is serious enough for me that I will actually research a new product for the future if things continue on this path.
That is definitely the direction I am leaning now as well. The number of times I have accidentally marked off the wrong task because the touch points to mark something complete is so small is frustrating enough for me. It’s like they wanted to keep all of the bells and whistles of OF but put it in an interface that looks more like Things. The result is an interface that is just a complete mess to me.
I’m trying to do my part though. I’m using the software, as much of a mess as it is, and submitting my feedback to Omni to try and correct some of this stuff before it ultimately ships. And I encourage any other long time OF users to do the same. If they keep going in the current direction though I will be looking around to figure out my next step once OF3 eventually no longer works.
After a couple days of exclusively using OF 4 I went back to OF 3 briefly. OF 4 looks clean and elegant and OF 3 looks weirdly cobbled together now. Still having some issues scrolling but I like it more & more overall. By now I know what all the icons are 
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I feel the same. I like the new app. However, it was not ready for daily use as I had problems with daily tasks with multiple items in the task list (they ended up duplicated when I checked them off, a perfectly acceptable bug for a beta).
I can’t wait for the finished version, I really like the new interface.
Maybe difficult to tell, but have there been any major changes from a UI/UX perspective since they went full iOS 15 (I dropped off the beta at that point)?
Just by brief looks, I can’t see any major differences.
They’ve changed several icons and also the tint colour (e.g. red in forecast view) is no longer applied to every button in the view. There are lots of little tweaks which are hard to spot as well.
If you want to see the release notes, you can always check here once a week to see what’s changed. The release notes are also accessible from the setting screen as well.
Thanks for the insights. Guess I was/am somewhat hoping they would change some UI/UX things after focusing on iOS 15 and make the overall experience a bit more visually minimal and easier … oh well, I’ll keep my fingers crossed 
Just thought I’d link this post from Ken Case in the OmniGroup forums:
As he said, Omni don’t consider OmniFocus 4 to be a “beta” yet. So it’s an Alpha, lots of time for things to change, but of course, they only will if you tell Omni what your pain points are! I’ve been emailing in my feedback regularly.
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