I am so happy to hear about the progress Omni has made on this. The location based features will be fantastic. I can’t wait to start using this!

… or terrorist fist jab?

The OnmiFocus action that everyone is interpreting differently.

Location aware? So in theory, when I am standing in line at the Safeway it will remind me to pick up toilet paper? Awesome.

Damn. You just sold me an iPhone, Merlin.

There is no emoticon for what I’m feeling!

The Omnifocus desktop app looks cool (albeit a tad over engineered). This gives me hope for migrating GTD from my Treo to an iPhone 3G next month.

But why on earth does anyone need location aware tasks lists? Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you have to!

Tetsujin took the words right out of my mouth.

OmniFocus on the iPhone is exactly what the PalmOS should have done for the Treo… about 5 years ago. It’s unbelievable to me how badly the folks at Palm bungled their ownership of the smartphone world. (Can you tell I’m a grizzled Treo 600 owner?) (Hey! It’s the Treo that’s grizzled, not me.)

I jumped on the Palm smartphone bandwagon back when it was clear we would not be seeing an entrant from Apple for quite a while, if at all. Things looked to be going in all the right directions for Handspring (remember them?) and I had great expectations about the future of the PalmOS. It was great to be able to use all of the old Palm apps on my phone right out of the box. Well, sort of. Most of them worked. Okay, some apps were actually updated to be compatible with the five-way navigator so they could be properly used with one hand. Don’t even get me started about syncing to conduits on the Mac.

But I still had to rely on the base PalmOS features for calendar, address book and to-do list synchronization. I waited eagerly for new and improved features to come in the next release of the software. Wait, it’s not upgradeable? Okay, I’ll fork over the cash for the next model that has improvements in those core features.

That was years ago. I’m still waiting.

Apple has done almost everything right so far. As long as they continue to refine and perfect the core features, the iPhone will continue to be a strong player in the market. Third-party developers like Omni should be given free reign to build whatever they want to extend beyond those core features. My fear is that Apple will retain such a tight grip on the platform that third-party developers will eventually lose interest and abandon the iPhone for the latest shiny new open platform. That may sound like blasphemy now, but that very thing was just as hard to believe about Palm only five short years ago.

OmniFocus is what’s tipping the scales in my decision about abandoning my Treo, PalmOS and Sprint and entering the iPhone world. Apple’s iPhone software is nice, but not nice enough to make me switch. Before I saw this announcement, I was only lukewarm about the iPhone 2.0 features — now I’m actively drooling. (Okay, so lunchtime might actually be responsible for the drool.) Apple, take note: your developer community makes the difference between market player and market dominator for you.

OmniFocus looks fabulous. I’m still steaming over Apple not including to-do syncing with the Touch. I’ve spent too much time switching from one tool to another. I still don’t have that universal digital capture tool. So here’s my question, will OmniFocus for the Touch allow me to capture ideas if I’m not currently connected via Wi-Fi? Basically, I need to know if I can have my to-do’s and actually do them (or add to them) at any time. If so, sign me up. If not, I’ll need to find a way. Cheers!

One thing you can do with OmniFocus is add a Mail rule which will create OF actions from an e-mail you’ve sent to yourself. This means that if you can send e-mail from your phone you’ve got universal capture. I have Snappermail on my Treo, but have found that the SMS application also allows me to send e-mail, which is a very nice, lightweight, universal capture solution.

For implementing GTD you might try out this web-based application:

Gtdagenda.com

You can use it to manage your goals, projects and tasks, set next actions and contexts, use checklists, schedules and a calendar. A mobile version is available too.

As with the last update, now you can add or invite Contacts, and share your Projects and Contexts with them.

Hi there,

I’m new to 43folders (where have u been all my life LOL??)

I’m testing out Omnifocus for myself at the mo (having tried and discarded Kinkless, Things, Thinking Rock, LifeBalance and Midnight Inbox). OmniFocus seems very promising but there are 2 features which I am surprised not to find (at least adequately developed) in it or any other of the apps I’ve tested: multiple contexts and multiple projects. I mean, it seems to me that very few things that we do in life (“actions”) are restricted to just ONE “context” or ONE “project”. Something basic like buying milk for example: relevant over several contexts: it could be bought in a store or online or i could ask the wife to pick some up on her way home from work, and so i might like to be reminded of buying milk when i find myself in any of these contexts. Clearing out the spare room: relevant over several projects: for example general spring cleaning or painting or rewiring the apartment.

Are these (to me seemingly quite important) missing features possible already in Omnifocus but I can’t see them? Or are they perhaps in the pipeline? Fingers crossed.