Finally! This has taken us much longer than anticipated. But now our preview version of Things is ready. We are sending out invites starting today and will have provided our 10.000+ subscribers with a preview of Things by Christmas.
Why has the alpha taken so long? As we put it recently in an interview on edit.xtreem.iappblog.com: “We worked incredibly hard to make it simple. I cannot remember how often we revised it significantly, even completely starting all over again.” Indeed, we didn’t pile feature upon feature, but instead worked hard on constantly revising the fundamental approach to make it simple without compromising scalability.
Ian Beck from tagamac.com created a wonderful screencast of Things. Watch his screencast and take a look at some of the initial responses of other alpha testers.
And if you are wondering what Things will cost when it is finished? We cannot be too specific right now, but suffice it to say that it will compare favorably to some recently announced prices from our competition ;-). Introductory pricing? You bet!
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Great news! I am looking forward to the preview in my inbox.
Great, looking for that preview in my inbox too ;-)
I hope is not as expensive as OmniFocus…
The screencast is well done. I’m working with many GTD apps (Thinking Rock, Inbox, web-based Vitalist, NozBe, Tracks.train, etc), but the Things looks like much better - simple, intuitive, user friendly. We are all waiting for preview!
This could be TaskManagement 2.0. Omnifocus looks and acts like an oldfashioned 10.1-App, but Things seems to be a freeform-tool for free minds.
Hope I don’t have to wait till xmas :)
It looks to me as it could be something between OmniFocus and Soho Notes. After trying OmniFocus alpha and currently working with Soho Notes I’d like to give it a shot. I like the idea of promoting tasks to today and the Areas concept (lots of stuff in my Areas!)
Can;t hardly wait till i receive the preview ..
It’s the only thing ATM wherefor i check my email A LOT :-)
The screencast did it for me , it triggered me to subscribe !
Having looked at many GTD-related apps, this is by far the most beautiful, appealing, inviting organizational partner I have seen. (And that’s just based on the web page and the screencast.) My only regret is that I don’t want to lose my current organizing momentum, and so will need to start with an inferior product and plan to move my life over to Things when it’s available. Dang!
Can’t wait to start using this. After using everything else and never quite having it work the way I wanted, I finally discover things. Screencast looks splendid.
Maybe next year I’ll actually get something done:)
What about educational pricing? Or will things be at such a competitive price that it won’t matter? :)
Watched the screencast. Whoa! Things looks perfect. I’ve used ThinkingRock and found it a bit cumbersome (overly structured). I can’t wait to try Things!
Just got the email that said OmniFocus preorders have generated $100,000 in just 5 days.
I sure hope Things isn’t about the money. I don’t think we needed to know how much OmniFocus sold. I’m happy for them, but now they won’t get my money.
Trying not to sound ungrateful, but if the preview version is ready, why not make it immediately available to everyone on the list? Why trickle it out over the course of a month completing by Christmas? How difficult can it be? I can understand that you might not want to be inundated with feedback from 10K+ downloaders, but I’m not convinced that would be a bad thing. In fact, it might be wise to do so given the several other competitors that either currently have products available in release form as well as the seemingly more popular one that is available in beta form. Personally speaking, I will wait to try Things before purchasing a GTD solution, but I wonder how many of those OmniFocus pre-sales they boast about, would be Things pre-sales had they had an opportunity to compare.
I’m very impressed. The screenshots and demo have abruptly stopped my $40 from going to Omni Group. Their product is nice - far better than the existing competition - but Things looks absolutely perfect. Managing tasks with tags is brilliant. Can’t wait to see the preview. Hurry, Christmas, hurry fast!
I’ve been alpha testing OmniFocus, which is a nice app don’t get me wrong, but I’m really looking forward to getting trying out Things, from the demo it seems to be a better fit for the way I work.
Sad, but I have to decide which one to use/buy for my workgroup, OF or Things. I subscribed here in August - unfortunately they do not send out anything. Should OF eat the cake just of better marketing?
I’m in the same boat, I’ve been demoing omnifocus and am going to have to make a decision soon about which to purchase. Things “looks” good, but without actually using it it’s impossible to tell.
Things is looking really good. I especially like the quick-entry window. Will you be adding support for remote tasks, e.g. adding to-do’s and tasks by E-Mail or phone?
Jürgen from Cultured Code says: Anyone who needs to make a decision soon is invited to send us an email…
Really looking forward to getting my hands on this one. Any chance of at least a public Alpha version being out before OmniFocus gets released?
I want to TRY Things. I have been looking at (and TRYING) OmniFocus and need to decide soon! When is the beta coming out?
Congrats! It looks promising :-) When you mentioned it, I thought a preview release would be farther off. Haven’t yet had the time to get into the whole GTD movement, but there’s always next year ;-)
I began a full-scale personal conversion into the GTD way of life four months ago. I can’t complete the process until I have the right software- and after trying Thinking Rock, Easy Task, and a dozen others “Things” promises to be The One. I have resisted all temptations offered by Omnifocus thus far, but my resolve is slipping….when will the beta be available?
Arrg… I fell for the “add a ‘Get X’ button that just scrolls to the bottom to the newsletter form” trick! How could you!
Seriously, this is misleading and not very nice. Only guys like MadeBySofa do such stunts.
I was close to pulling the trigger on OmniFocus too when I read about Things. The screencast looks great, but I’d really like to be able to test the app. I do think Things is losing possible sales by not making the preview available immediately, especially if it’s ready. If it’s not available in the next few days I’ll probably just go ahead with OmniFocus. Congrats though to the Things team on nearing a release!
I have been using the alpha of Things and OmniFocus. For my needs I prefer Things, especially the promised collaborative features will be very interesting when they arrive. Things has been rock solid for me, no crashes etc under Tiger or Leopard.
I am at trying OmniFocus and Things looks really pretty and usefull. I’m really impatient to test it too !
Uli, sorry if the button did not work as expected. We changed the label to “Sign up for Preview” to clarify its function.
This apps looks great I am waiting to use it
At first this app may be in english, it’s very common to do this… but it would be more interesting if it could have other languages such as Spanish, German, French… Or maybe the posibility of translating it by yourself.
Is this app going to be translated?
Sure Shiroko, Things will be translated into several languages. But localization only makes sense when the user interface is completely finished.
I was hoping to get the beta before the price of another app goes up as it goes out of beta.
Your app looks like its something I want to wait for before I buy this other app I was using.
The Beta period is ending soon. Hope to get a demo of Things soon it looks amazing.
Is my inbox going to be ringing anytime soon?
After using Things for a week, I can tell you that not only do I enjoy the experience, but I’ve increased my productivity and organization. I can’t wait until this software is released.
Next up… syncing between computers?
Cheers!
Kenny
I was also hoping to get my beta invite before having to pull the trigger on the beta price of that other GTD proggy (after all $40 is $40!). When will the last of the invites be going out?
Add me to the pile of people who are currently trying OmniFocus but are frustrated by its lack of Today, Next, and overall simplicity that seems to be built into Things. I paid my OF money, but I’d switch in a heartbeat if Things works better for my way of doing GTD.
Looking forward to the beta release.
Scott
Owner, Brain Toniq
Product looks great. Nice job. I understand the concern over throwing out a date, but can we have a hint regarding the beta release date? Q1 2008 ? Q2?
Much Thanks.
I really want to try Things. Nowadays I’m using TaskPaper which is wonderful for its simplicity and works very well with my dissertation workflow (i.e. things that I must not forget to include, change, do in this chapter, part, attachment, etc.). However, for a day to day schedule of taks (groceries, phone calls, projects, paperwork…) I’d prefer something more complex. With that said, I was happy to try OmniFocus, but it was too complex and not exactly my cup of tea… I may eventually buy it if Things is not my “thing”, however I’m hoping I’ll be able to try Things in the near future and settle on which one to use. Things looks much more interesting for me than OmniFocus.
Anyway, I’m crossing my fingers for something to arrive to my inbox soon. :)
Sorry about the name obscurity… don’t want too much personal info online ;-> .
Statistics show something like 4.5% of adults have various forms of ADD/ADHD, and just about anyone with ADD can use assistance with “getting things done,” so the quest goes on to find anything that might help to offset some of the deficits of ADD, a major one being daily challenges to get *anything* done… been mucking around with the “sneak peak” of OmniFocus but am still looking for something GTD-oriented, though more in a form that doesn’t “distract.” Been a major fan and early purchaser of Xyle scope and am hoping Things might be a GTD application with that “CC uniqueness” exhibited in Xyle scope… would very much love to take a look at Things and would be happy to provide feedback that might help influence its evolution into something not only great, but perhaps a bit more ADD “friendly…” ;->
Thanks for jumping in to the GTD pond, your presence is highly welcomed!
I have yet to receieve my alpha invitation.. signed up for it ages ago, received the email about the alpha being finished too, but have not seen any follow-up about how to attain it.
Same thing over here, i signed up long ago and still no alpha link appearing in my mail…
Hey, I’m really curious about some Things news. How’s it going? I like the look of Things much better than OmniFocus. Just some small blog posts about how things are progressing would be wonderful..!
/Andie
I’m in the market to find a day-to-day GTD system. I’ve tried both iGTD and OmniFocus but don’t feel right at home with any of them. Things looks great in the screencast. I can’t wait to get my hand on the alpha version. Also I’m wondering how Things can be used for knowledge collection, similarly as iGTD2 which I like the feature.
Also signed up quite awhile ago and am very anxious for a look. So far OmniFocus and iGTD do some things right, but neither feels quite right. Things looks like it will feel right. You guys might steal alot of money from Omni if you can get this in our hands before we have to decide whether to commit to OF.
Two weeks until decision day…
Looks very interesting :)
So I’ve had the chance to play with the Things alpha for a day now and I’m very impressed! I would highly recommend not purchasing OmniFocus at this point, because I believe Things will blow it away once it is feature complete. I find it much easier to use and about a million times nicer to look at! I’m still figuring out how to best use it, but so for it rocks.
The true elegance of the tag bar blows away every program that forces you to “switch views” over and over again. No need to adjust everything over and over again - guys, this is a milestone! You made it.
How about a “reminder” post to iCal? Or the ability to drag from one date to another in iCal. That would be awesome in my book.
Looking forward to this as it looks like it may be somewhere between OmniFocus and TaskPaper… I await my email with patience. My vote for iCal integration would be very nice and something like Anxiety…
Nice app. Any plans for an iPhone version?
OOPS! I just saw iPhone support listed under “future features”. My bad.
Things looks really promising! I’ve been semi-trying Omnifocus but I think it’s maybe a bit of overkill for me. Or maybe my time management skills are too haphazard to fall into the fully regimented GTD workflow. Things feels looser but with plenty of power by way of the tagging system. The only thing holding me back from putting it fully to use is the lack of iCal integration.
quicksilver support at some point in the future? where is the future features list?
I watched the tagamac screencast, twice, and was hooked.
I signed up for the alpha version that moment.
I stopped my duplicate entries into OmniFocus, which I was doing to try to decide whether to switch from Life Balance. LB, set up as a GTD app, does a lot but the interface requires too much time to schedule each task.
Now I’m back to keeping my most pressing to do’s on 3×5 cards while awaiting my “invitation” to download the alpha version of Things. [Difficult because I have over 150 clients, more than half of whom have about 130 steps I personally do for them and need to include on my to do list. Do the math. Keeping 10,000 to do’s on 3×5’s would take more time than the actual doing.]
And I don’t even know what operating system is required. [At home I’m still using OSX 3.9 on an igloo iMac which is too slow for Leopard.] Does Things run on Tiger?
And where are you folks learning all this stuff you write about? The CulturedCode website is sleek but short on details.
If Things really works as well as the screencast implies, I needed it two years ago.
I ‘m using the alpha version on my work mac - nice app!
I’m impressed by the alpha of Things. The tags systems is incredibly smart and effective, and the way of entering tasks is the most elegant ever seen.
However, there is something that I can’t get: as I read in the book, the idea of GTD is to split projects into smaller tasks, organize them, then focus only on the few tasks that you can complete immediately. Everything coming _after that_ should disappear, and leave your mind clean. No concurrent task are allowed.
As I see it, Things (as well as OmniFocus) is a smart way of organizing and filtering tasks. But it doesn’t give you a list of the few things I’m going to do next, in the first in-first out order needed to avoid cluttering your mind.
What I see in the Next view, is a list of tasks bound into their parent folder/project. I cannot see things in the exact order as I should accomplish them.
For example, assume my Inbox contains two projects, each one with two tasks:
- Project 1 (P1)
– P1: Task 1 (Due: today)
– P1: Task 2 (Due: in three days)
- Project 2 (P2)
– P2: Task 1 (Due: tomorrrow)
– P2: Task 2 (Due: in three days)
I would expect to see these Next tasks/actions:
P1: Task 1 (Due: today)
P2: Task 1 (Due: tomorrrow)
P1: Task 2 (Due: in three days)
P2: Task 2 (Due: in three days)
On the contrary, here is what I see:
- Project 1 (P1)
– P1: Task 1 (Due: today)
– P1: Task 2 (Due: in three days)
- Project 2 (P2)
– P2: Task 1 (Due: tomorrrow)
– P2: Task 2 (Due: in three days)
These are just the things as I enter them in the first time. I cannot see clearly what is coming next. This doesn’t seem to me to comply with the GTD method, and is not helping much with the first in-first out order I’m after.
What I would like from a GTD system is not a way of filtering tasks to organize them in a different way, but a way to focus on the _next_ task to do, without even being aware of the ‘big picture’ of each project. Focusing on single tasks, instead of the projects, is how you can clean up your mind from other, related tasks.
It seems to me that only iGTD1 is doing it in the right way, but even iGTD2 seems to be following a different path.
I would be happy to see a ‘Flat View’ implemented, with a balanced tree considering priority, effort, due date, and automatically putting the most urgent, easiest to do task on top.
Best regards,
Paolo
Please send me an Alpha!
I would also like to try the Alpha. I’ve been using Omnifocus for a while now, and Omnigroup is offering a substantial reduction until jan 8. Things on the other hand looks very promising, but without being able to try it, that’s all I can say. And I do want to make a decision before jan 8. Because of this timing the developers of Things would be wise to offer the Alpha on a wider scale - as Omnigroup did with Omnifocus. More people will want to decide before the end of the reductionperiod for Omnifocus, and just the possibility to try out Things could help them to wait a bit longer. You could even put up a presale price - boost support, in more than one way.
For anyone on the fence about Omnifocus, I would advise you to save your money and wait for Things. I tried OF for a long time and never felt comfortable with it. I love the Things alpha even though it is not feature complete. It has been stable enough for me to use and I haven’t launched OF in more than a week. Of course we all have to have faith that Things will be completed in a decent timeframe, but assuming that happens it will be a big winner.
Jeff
While the Things alpha is pretty impressive and has some good UI design, it still falls short of a professional-level GTD app, I think. I just don’t see how it can deal with the volume of stuff that you need to deal with in a busy professional environment.
Over the last 18 months I have tried lots of Mac GTD apps: ThinkingRock, OmniOutliner with Kinkless GTD, Actiontastic and have now settled on iGTD, which has worked brilliantly for me, despite some limitations.
Omnifocus is a real disappointment after the long wait. It tries to look too much like OOP and doesn’t add much to it.
The iGTD2 alpha has just been released and looks like it is setting a new standard.
Nevertheless, I’ll keep an eye on Things :)
My email from CulturedCode on 23 November indicated all the folks (at that time ~10k) who had signed up for beta would receive a preview release copy by Christmas.
I didn’t even get a lump of coal….