A Quick Look at OmniFocus Versus Things

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There are dozens of productivity applications for your Mac, and a few for your iPhone. But there’s one application that’s available on both your Mac and your iPhone… OmniFocus.

Well, it’s definitely one application that’s available for both iPhone and Mac OS X, but it’s not the only one. As my voyage with Things continues, I figure I’d do a quick comparison of the OmniFocus features The Apple Blog listed with those from Things (which is still in beta). This is in no way a conclusive list, but I figure it’s a good comparison of the features most people care about.

Desktop Versions

	Inbox	Quick Entry Shortcut	Email Entries	Backups
OmniFocus	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Things	Yes	Yes	No*	Yes

* Does anyone really use this? Especially when there’s an iPhone pocket version?

Overall I’d say this is a pretty close match-up. The ability to email entries was a nice plus when all I had was the desktop version of OmniFocus. I could basically email myself a task that would later be automatically added to OmniFocus on my laptop. Unfortunately I never really used this since I pretty much always forgot the syntax. So, I’d end up emailing myself a note to manually add some task to OmniFocus. Something like “Don’t forget to write an article comparing OmniFocus to Things!” etc.

iPhone Versions

	Adding New Tasks	Location Aware	Syncing (with the desktop version)
OmniFocus	Yes	Yes	Yes
Things	Yes	No	Yes

The location aware functionality that OmniFocus for iPhone has sounds really interesting, but I’m curious as to whether or not it’s useful in practice. This is the one reason I’m really considering buying OmniFocus for iPhone, but I have a hard time believing I’d really use it. I’ve purchased OmniFocus, and Things for iPhone (the desktop version of Things isn’t on sale yet) but haven’t really had a compelling reason to try out the iPhone version of OmniFocus. Wouldn’t it be faster to just click the “grocery store” context rather than having to wait for Core Location to locate you and then tell you, “Hey! You’re at a grocery store! You could buy some eggs and milk!” This might be more useful if applications were allowed to run in the background. Then you could be notified, if say, you were driving by a grocery store and there was something on your list, but the fact that you have to have the app running makes me believe that it would be more of a novelty than anything.

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You’re currently reading “A Quick Look at OmniFocus Versus Things,” an entry on MirthLab

Published:: Tuesday, August 26th, 2008 at 3:56 pm

Author:: Mark Quezada

Category:: Mac

Tags:: desktop, iphone, Mac, omnifocus, productivity

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smallbizmac

August 28th, 2008
11:27 PDT

Location awareness is really a neat idea, but it is fairly useless in practice, unless you want to spend days entering in anything that you might be near. Using the grocery store example, what if you use several? Perhaps one is on the way home from work and one is closer to home. You have to have all potential grocery stores locations pinned. It is much easier to be able to recognize when you are at a grocery store than have OF tell you that you are.

Mark Quezada

September 1st, 2008
23:50 PDT

@smallbizmac: Yeah, that’s what I was afraid of. We’ll see how this plays out in the coming months. I’m still on the fence as to whether or not I should buy OmniFocus for iPhone, but I’m definitely leaning towards “no.”

September 22nd, 2008
3:56 PDT

Two things:
I can’t agree with the comments that Location Awareness is useless. Omnifocus does have business search, so it can (for example) find Grocery Stores near you that you don’t know about. You don’t have to enter every store (which indeed would be useless if it were true).

Secondly, I believe that Things for iPhone is totally unusable as a GTD app for one simple reason. It doesn’t support tags. Without tags (which Things Desktop uses), you can’t implement context. And without context, you can’t implement GTD.

I did buy Omnifocus for Mac and iPhone and I’m not 100% happy with it. It is complex and sometimes you are chasing it up (where did that task go? I knew it was there before)…

However, until Things for iPhone gets Tags, there IS only 1 GTD app for Mac and iPhone.

Let’s hope that changes…

September 22nd, 2008
9:31 PDT

@js: Just because OmniFocus for iPhone will find business around you doesn’t mean that location awareness is useful in practice. As you can see in the post, my point is that it takes time for the app to pinpoint your location, and if you’re really “Getting Things Done” wouldn’t it be quicker and more efficient just to hit the “grocery store” context when you’re there? I can’t see this being useful unless I was just wandering around with OmniFocus open on my iPhone. Currently, background processes aren’t allowed on the iPhone so it’s not like it can alert you if you’re close to something you need to pick up or get done if your phone is just sitting in your pocket. OmniFocus must be open and running for it to be location aware. Really, how is that useful?

Also, regarding Things for iPhone and tagging: Yes, this is a current limitation of the iPhone version but it was addressed in Cultured Code’s blog post about the release. The gist of it is that Tagging and Areas are on their way. Once implemented it would make Things for iPhone on par, feature-wise, with the desktop version.

Regardless, I find your comment that without tagging Things isn’t a true GTD app a bit obtuse. Yes, Tags and Areas will help make Things for iPhone even more useful, but without them, the app is still very useful. If all you’re looking for is something that perfectly fits into the GTD doctrine, then maybe Things isn’t for you. OmniFocus prides itself in being an app designed from the ground-up to be rooted and grounded in the GTD system. This is not the goal of Things. The whole reason that the GTD system was designed was not to be the end but rather a means to an end. So, what are you spending your time doing? “Getting Things Done” or just plain getting things done?

Stanley

October 18th, 2008
7:42 PDT

My goodness Mark, that was an outstanding reply. I love the way you ended as well. Pure class.

Sorry for digressing but I just had to say it. By the way, I just spent the $10 for things for iphone. Thanks again.

Anand

November 8th, 2008
14:56 PST

One feature Things needs to have for me is true online sync’ing between the desktop and iPhone versions. The fact that I have to sync over WiFi manually is quite annoying. Otherwise, very tough to pick between the two.

November 10th, 2008
12:23 PST

@Anand: I agree. After using Things Touch for some time now, I’ve been bitten a few times by this issue. I’ll do a bunch of adding or editing of tasks before I leave the house and totally forget to sync my phone. Pretty annoying. I hope that there’s a better solution to this in the future.

A Quick Look at OmniFocus Versus Things

Desktop Versions

iPhone Versions

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