Pankaj

Thanks for your comments. I wanted to clarify one thing that may have been unclear. In my testing, both Things and OmniFocus didn’t have repeat scheduling that worked to my satisfaction. But the features I didn’t like (or thought were missing) were different. What I wrote about here was only intended to refer to OmniFocus. I like how OmniFocus schedules the repeating tasks; I like how Things displays them. Maybe they can both learn a bit from each other!

I’ve used both extensively and switched from OF to Things. I switched for many reasons. I find Things better looking, more intuitive, and more logical. I like the single view of Things rather than OF’s separate views, and I like how Things deals with single tasks, but it really came down to the feel of the program. For me Things nails the perfect balance between simplicity and features. The more complicated project/task list is the more I’d lean towards OF with it’s filtering, but that’s a generality I’m sure some would disagree, and could change as Things progresses to 1.0 status.

A couple of notes on your review:

“Like Things, which I reviewed previously, the repeat scheduling is a little wonky. A project set to repeat is created again as soon as it is completed, regardless of how often it is set to repeat.”

I find Things repeating feature pretty solid. Regardless, that’s not how Things works. Things allows you to have repeating actions show up when you choose. Until that time it stays in the ‘scheduled’ section and out of view.

“A single actions list is just a bucket in which to throw actions that match some description (much like an “area” in Things).”

You can use Areas in many ways, but I find it misleading to compare it to OF single action lists. OF uses single action lists for single actions (unless this has changed recently). In Things single actions can simple be added and appear at the top of your ‘next’ list. Areas isn’t needed to deal with them.

One major difference between OF and Things is that Things uses the system wide todo system. So when I create a task in Things it automatically appears in iCal. If I check off a task as complete in iCal it automatically is marked as complete in Things. You can create a task in iCal and it automatically appears in Things. There’s no sync button to push (again, if OF has changed recently I apologize).

Lastly, you’re comparing a beta application that you can presently use for free to an application that’s out of beta and selling for 79 bucks a pop. That’s a little unfair. Some of the problems you listed for Things will be fixed before the first non-beta release, and the feature set will be more complete. You did mention in your Things review that it was beta software. However, I don’t see it mentioned here, and that’s a little misleading.

It should also be noted that the 1.0 release of Things will sell for 49 bucks, or almost half of the price of Omnifocus. That probably doesn’t faze most people, but if cost is an issue that has to be considered also.

Thanks for the read.

Victor:
I look at Daylite as a pretty general program. It’s customizable – up to a point – so it works ok as a single-application solution. I prefer using discrete programs that each specialize in one thing, but they have to work well together. So far not many programs do, but programs are only just beginning to take advantage of Leopard’s unified task system, so we’ll see how it pans out. I’ll be interested to see what CMS solutions turn up. Have you heard anything?

Brian:
I didn’t elaborate in the review, but I did notice that some of the settings made the scheduled actions disappear. But changing “Remaining” to “Available” makes lots of other stuff disappear too. That’s not quite what I wanted.

Citizen Z:
I agree wholeheartedly, but many people have both Daylite and OmniFocus associated in their minds with GTD. So they come here (sometimes in droves) looking for information on both. I thought this would be a good place to address at least the areas where they overlap.

Thanks for reading.

I’m a fan of OmniFocus, but I only use it as a task/project manager.

Thanks – VJM