Comments on: Alpha version of Things finished – Screencast available

By: Dave Goad

Dave Goad — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 21:53:13 +0000

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….

By: bushford

bushford — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 16:14:23 +0000

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 :)

By: Jeff Thompson

Jeff Thompson — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 02:45:45 +0000

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

By: Rudy

Rudy — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 18:30:12 +0000

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.

By: greg Bachand

greg Bachand — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 01:55:59 +0000

Please send me an Alpha!

By: Paolo

Paolo — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 23:34:36 +0000

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