Apple Briefs

I previously reviewed Things, the first in my four-part series on GTD applications for Mac OS X. I now turn my attention to OmniFocus from The Omni Group. While it isn’t perfect, OmniFocus clearly has a solid foundation of design and testing behind it.

A Little Background

In the beginning, there was OmniOutliner, which does pretty much what you would expect from the name. Despite being born without a single GTD bone in its body, OmniOutliner became a GTD application thanks to Ethan Schoonover. Kinkless GTD is a set of Applescripts that work with OmniOutliner Pro to implement task-management based on David Allen’s GTD methodology. Ethan and the folks at The Omni Group worked together to create OmniFocus, a purpose-built GTD application. Apparently the collaboration was a success because OmniFocus turned out great and Ethan is now at The Omni Group.

Organizing Tasks

OmniFocus is all about task management, so an important question to begin with is: how are tasks organized? Tasks, called actions in OmniFocus, can be related to a project (or single actions list), a context, or one of each. A project is a group of actions that are the steps necessary to achieve some end result or goal. The actions in a single-action list, on the other hand, might be related in some way, but they are not part of some greater undertaking. The OmniFocus manual defines a context as “the place or mode you need to be in to do a given task” (and I can’t think of a better way to describe it).

Projects

There are two kinds of projects: sequential and parallel. In a sequential project, one action must be completed before the next one is begun. In a parallel project, actions can be completed in any order. It sounds like a small difference, but it affects which tasks are available. Whether an action is available is just one of the many ways that OmniFocus allows you to slice and dice your action list (more on that later). Projects can also be given start, due, completed, and review dates.

A single actions list is like a project, but is less structured. A single actions list is just a bucket in which to throw actions that match some description (much like an “area” in Things). But whether your actions are in a project or a single actions list, the same options are available. It’s a little counterintuitive, but you can assign a due date and completed date to a single action list just like a project.

Most of the project features work well. Setting start, due, and completed dates is intuitive and useful. 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. Until the repeat time comes around, the project are colored orange. The color will change to red once the actions are due. Try as I might, I couldn’t get the project to disappear from the sidebar or main window.

Contexts

Contexts were a little tough for me to grasp at first. I might be different than others, though, because I like my data and tools to be very well structured. In one of the early promotional videos, OmniFocus was touted as an application that is flexible – it can be as simple or complex as you need. That’s true, but I think contexts are most useful when they are given plenty of thought ahead of time.

My nightmare scenario is wanting to change the contexts I use as I go along. I might start simply, by using “home” and “work” contexts. If I later want to get more complicated, I might add an “errand” context. But what happens if I need to run an errand for work? The problem isn’t insurmountable because contexts can be hierarchical. OmniFocus also includes a few default contexts to get you thinking in the right direction.

Things, which I reviewed earlier, uses tags in much the same as OmniFocus uses contexts. I like tags because they don’t require as much planning. If I begin marking tasks with “home” and “work” tags, it is very easy to start adding “errand” tags where appropriate later. Some OmniFocus features wouldn’t work nearly as well with multiple contexts for an action, though. For example, actions can be synchronized with iCal based on which context they belong to. That kind of synchronization requires a one-to-one relationship between actions and contexts.

Actions: Not As Simple As They First Appear

When you first start entering actions, they seem pretty simple. Each action has places to enter a name and context and two greyed-out icons (the flag and note icons). Actions in the Inbox also have a place to enter a project name. New projects and contexts can be created while entering an action by pressing Command-Enter in either the project or context field after typing the desired name.

Actions become a lot more powerful through the use of notes. Notes are well-hidden, being accessed through the small note button on each action or by pressing Command-apostrophe. But OmniFocus drops a pretty major hint about the existence of notes by including a pair of introductory tasks with long notes when you run OmniFocus for the first time. Notes can hold rich text, including images, hyperlinks (which are active) and links to files.

Straddling the fence between a project and an action is a group. A project cannot have sub-projects, but groups nicely fill the void. A group appears in the action list just as an action – with a checkbox next to it. A group otherwise shares most of the features of projects, including: sequential and parallel modes; start due, and completed dates; and repeat scheduling.

Data Entry

There are several ways to get your data into OmniFocus. Of course, you can enter actions manually through the main window, but it’s not always convenient (or possible!) to switch away from what you’re doing and open OmniFocus. You can clip text from another application into the OmniFocus Inbox via the OmniFocus Clippings service. A clipping is created by highlighting text and pressing the shortcut (it defaults to Command-Shift-Option-Period) or choosing OmniFocus: Send to Inbox from the Services menu.

Actions can also be created via email. The basic idea is to send yourself specially crafted messages with the action information in the subject and body of your message. It seems like a lot of hassle to set up. But in theory it should run seamlessly without much intervention once OmniFocus and Mail are configured properly. Of course, I’ll soon be able to create actions from anywhere without email with my iPhone. So maybe I just lack sufficient motivation.

Sorting Through It All

Once your action list starts to grow, you will start to appreciate the tools OmniFocus provides to view and filter your tasks. OmniFocus has two modes – Planning and Context – that correspond to the two primary dimensions you use to classify your actions – projects and contexts. Clicking the View button on the tool bar brings up a row of sorting, grouping, and filter options.

A set of view options can be saved as a Perspective and recalled later. For example, you can achieve functionality similar to the Logbook in Things by creating a perspective for completed actions. Perspectives might seem like a minor feature, but they help push the complication of using OmniFocus into the background a little. Just set it and forget it!

The one word that seems to best describe the interface is uncluttered. The OmniFocus main window is quite clean and doesn’t overwhelm you with information. The flip side of that is that the OmniFocus main window can’t overwhelm you with information.

The Verdict

I can recommend OmniFocus without hesitation, but its not for everyone. Through the long beta process, OmniFocus seems to have added more and more features. It’s quite a sophisticated piece of software now. The result is that OmniFocus is not quite as accessible to casual users as Things. But it has plenty of features Things lacks. I’ll be checking out some other Mac GTD applications soon. But OmniFocus is the best pure GTD application I have seen so far.

Final Notes

I wanted to write a few words about Daylite because I get many visitors to this site looking for comparisons of OmniFocus and Daylite. Simply put, they are both great programs, but their strengths don’t really overlap. The power of Daylite is in the connections. Daylite isn’t a great contact manager, calendar, or task manager. Daylite is wonderful, though, in its ability to establish connections between everything that you track in Daylite. When did I last meet with a particular advisor? I can just look at the advisor’s contact in Daylite. The activity tab will tell me the date of my last appointment. The task list on Daylite is fairly basic, comprising a single customizable list view. A task can have notes, but extra clicks are required to view the note from the list view. Notes are, after all, just another kind of connection that Daylite keeps track of.

Unlike Daylite, OmniFocus only does one thing. That thing – task management – it does very well, though. OmniFocus has an extra dimension – context – from which to work. OmniFocus also has much more extensive sorting, grouping, and filtering options. When you have hundreds of tasks – some short-term, others long-term, some that are part of a discrete project, others that loosely related to a particular topic – you will enjoy having the power of software like OmniFocus to help plan your time.

There may be a place in a law firm (or other business) for both OmniFocus and Daylite because of their very different strengths. My wife uses Daylite for all of her primary business information tracking. Much of what she does, especially in areas of marketing, IT, and long-term planning, don’t really benefit from connections. That’s where OmniFocus finds a home.

I am sure you were hoping I would post about the new Princess Bride game coming soon to Mac. I’m afraid not. What I do think you should know about is the review of OmniFocus over at TidBITS. There are also a few screencasts about OmniFocus related to the review. I have been working on an OmniFocus review for a while now. I am almost done, but it appears that my insane-busyness-with-other-things has allowed someone to beat me to the punch. My review is still coming soon, though. So check out the TidBITS review and then come on back here to get a slightly different take on The Omni Group’s GTD application.

The return of VBA

Microsoft announced this week that VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) will be making a return to Mac Office sometime in the future. Mac Office 2004 had VBA functionality, but when Microsoft rewrote Office as Cocoa applications for Mac Office 2008, VBA didn’t make the feature list. And, apparently, it will never make the feature list for Mac Office 2008. VBA support is slated for the never version of Mac Office, likely due in the next two or three years.

OpenOffice 3.0: So far, so good

I have been using OpenOffice 3.0 beta for a few days now, and I like what I see. I have been using it for what I do most – simple editing and formatting. The interface works quite well, although it’s still easy to see the non-Mac roots. The main interface looks sufficiently Mac-like, but many of the other elements, such as preferences panes and dialogs, just don’t feel right. Even so, I am pleased so far with the workflow and usability of the interface. I haven’t tried anything complicated yet, but I have to learn to walk before I can run.

A couple of weeks ago MacWorld made a comparison between Microsoft Office and Apple iWorks, aptly titled The Office Suite Smackdown. Ben Stevens at The Mac Lawyer made a post last week highlighting the conclusion of the MacWorld review of Word and Pages. I thought this was a good time to weigh in with my software choices. I use Word, Pages, and one other application depending on the situation.

Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word will be the king for quite some time because people just can’t let go of the Word document format. I have tried using other programs to open Word documents, and they get 95% of it right. But that’s just not good enough. So I use Microsoft Word whenever I think I might have to share original documents with someone else (mostly for work). Word also does a handful of things really well – like labels, envelopes, and mail-merges – where it doesn’t matter too much which program is used. If I could avoid owning Microsoft Word entirely, I would gladly do so. But, as long as I have to pay for Word, I might as well use it for the few things it is really good at.

Apple Pages

One thing Microsoft Word is not very good at is page layout. Microsoft Publisher seems to be the low-end tool of choice on Windows. Mac users aren’t missing anything, though, because Apple Pages (part of iWork) is a truly great program. I have Adobe InDesign CS3, and I rarely need to use it. A good designer can create really professional-looking brochures, newsletters, and other layouts using Pages. There are two modes in Pages: Word Processing and Page Layout. I never use Word Processing mode. For simple drafting, all I need is an efficient interface and good style functionality. Word and Nisus are just better than Pages for that. But neither of them can stand up to Pages in page layout.

Nisus Writer Pro

Nisus Writer Express got me through law school. I used Word v.X for the first semester, but two freak occurrences made me give it up. First, not long before my exams I noticed that the outline for a significant portion of my class notes had merged to a single level. Hierarchy in an outline carries a lot of meaning, and mine had disappeared. I am sure I accidentally pressed some disastrous key combination that caused a cascade effect. But that kind of thing shouldn’t really be possible in any sensible program. Second, I was in the middle of my Contracts exam (my first law school exam) and I got an Out of Memory error when I went to save. I had plenty of RAM. The hard disk drive wasn’t close to being full. But there this error was staring me in the face. Luckily I was able to save the situation by copying, closing Word, re-opening Word, and pasting. Still, it had me scared enough to look for alternatives.

That alternative was Nisus Writer Express. It doesn’t do everything Word does. But the features it has are intuitive and easy to use. Nisus Writer Pro adds a few missing features (like table of contents), but it still doesn’t have everything I want in a word processor. Word 2004 is much better than Word v.X, but by the time of its release I was squarely hooked on Nisus Writer Express. So I still use Word for the few things that I described above, but I try to use Nisus for most of my other document drafting.

I have posted about Bento in the past (here and here). I have been meaning to give Bento a more complete review treatment because I know that many of you have been looking for information about Bento. Right now I am in the middle of a series of GTD reviews (that got off to a great start and should be reaching stage two soon). In the meantime, head on over to MacNN to see a pretty good introductory review of Bento (part one and part two).