Now that Things 1.3.5 for iPhone and iPod touch has been approved by Apple and is now available on the App Store, we are announcing the release of Things 1.1.2 for the Mac.
Besides a host of bug fixes and smaller changes, there are three major areas of improvement which are important enough to deserve their own blog posts:
- Things 1.1 Brings Extensive AppleScript Support
- Things 1.1 Brings a New Model for Working with Delegated Tasks
- Syncing Areas of Responsibility and More…
There are also many smaller (but not less important) improvements we couldn’t fit into one of the articles linked to above. Some of them fix issues that were driving some of our users crazy, such as keyboard shortcuts. ⌘S is no longer used to move a to-do to the Someday list. While the letter “S” is certainly not completely unrelated to the word “Someday” ;), pressing ⌘S is too deeply associated with saving a document in many user’s muscle memory. Therefore, the keyboard shortcut ⌘Y now toggles the active/inactive state of an item, moving next-action steps and active projects to Someday, or – vice versa – items from Someday back to the Next or Active Projects list.
Another keyboard shortcut that has changed is ⌘→ to bring up the dialog for moving items. The new shortcut is ⇧⌘F. The letter “F” refers to the corresponding menu command “File…”.
Due dates! There are so many different ways for using, or even not using, due dates to get organized. Some users found themselves having many overdue items, but ended up being reluctant to move the dates farther into the future. After all, changing a due date is probably not going to help you reach your goals earlier next time. Previously, when you you set an overdue item to “Not Today”, it was still moved back to the Today list when you re-opened Things or when you synced with your iPhone or iPod touch. The new versions of Things for the Mac and Things for iPhone and iPod touch will instead keep the items in the Next list until the next day.
If you are syncing with your mobile device, please be sure to update both Things for the Mac and Things for iPhone and iPod touch to get a consistent behavior across sync sessions.
Other improvements include:
- A faster and more reliable software update mechanism
- A unified way to send support inquires
- An updated iPhone preference pane that provides even more help and feedback to new users
- A more robust mechanism for discovering and pairing the desktop version of Things with its mobile sibling, in particular with busy networks
Don’t miss our more detailed articles below, and please don’t forget to download the new version of Things for iPhone and iPod touch. On both your mobile device and iTunes you might have to manually check for updates before Things touch 1.3.5 shows up. Enjoy!
41 Comments
Just updated successfully! Till now i was looking forward your AppleScript Support… i will start to try it out the next days. Hope to find the time, ähm i will add a new to do “Test Things Apple Script Support”. ;-)
On the way: Do you provide some examples or an overview of the AppleScript Support in Things? (could not find anything in the local help, after update)
Yeah, Delegated Tasks! I waited for them a long time! You finally do a really great work guys! Stay on target!
@viados: The AppleScript article below has more info and pointers to resources in our wiki.
Appreciate the improvements a lot, specially AppleScript support. But I have been really lookinf forward to MobileMe support. Any news?
Thanks for listening and for changing the Cmd-S shortcut. I was one of the people who this was driving nuts.
@mahmood: We anticipate that there will be more questions like the one you just asked. We will post a “roadmap” article next week where we will talk a little about our plans. A quick heads up: we have already been hard at work to implement Mac to Mac sync, as it is one of our top priorities.
@Jürgen: Oh, sorry. I posted the comment without to completly read the AppleScript article. Thx.
First off, your wiki help page consists of nothing but a URL?
Can you share any plans to allow keyboard entry of todos where the date field can be left blank? Currently, once you tab into the field, there is no way that I can see to clear the field. It takes a mouse to do so.
This is exactly what I was looking for!!!! thanks so much.
I’m with mahmood, and looking forward to the roadmap. For what it’s worth, I’m a paid up user, but I’m not using — and can’t use — Things until sync is a feature.
It’s nice to see an update, but when I saw this mentioned on tuaw I rushed here hoping for news on MobileMe syncing. It’s hard to work up much enthusiasm for the other changes when the flaw that is stopping me using Things as I’d like is still there.
Ah well. Maybe next time.
I too am saddened by the lack of MobileMe support. I had been holding off on buying TM until that was available. I’ll look out for the roadmap article. (Jurgen, thank you for replying on this point.)
Thanks for the update guys. I much appreciate the inclusion of AREAS in the iPhone App ;-)
However, my most needed function is “Sub Projects”. Is there a plan to introduce this in the future versions?
Good job, updated successfully, thank you.
Thank you for the updates! 3 of my top 4 issues have been resolved:
1. overdue items and ‘Not Today’ = OK
2. scheduling tasks in projects = still to do, please soon!
3. better synching = OK
4. Areas on Things touch = OK
Keep up the good work –
Regards, Marcel
I wonder if you guys are going to implement a cloud-sync. That would REALLY improve the sync issue! Any plans on that?
With the new shortcuts how do I move a task from the Inbox to Someday? From the Inbox ⌘-Y is Move To Next. I thought maybe ⇧-⌘-F would work for filing, but that requires you to select a project inside Someday.
When I check a task in the inbox with ⌘Y to inactive, it first moves to “next”. Is this useful, as I marked it as “someday” and not “next”?
Thanks for the update. I waited for the overdue items not to show up in Today if I moved them away from Today -feature. Thanks.
Still, I guess I have to change my workflow, or maybe my habits because I find next day too short for overdue items to show up in Today.
Have configurable alerts been implemented yet? That’s when I make a purchase…
Thanks CC for your updates but where is the French version ??? The iPhone version is in French, why the Mac version isn’t ? Please fix this quickly.
Thank you so much for the inclusion of Areas in the iPhone app. This was the one addition I craved to really make the sync’ing feature sing!
Nice work!
Please add some sort of internet interface! If there was a way to make changes to my Things from *any* computer, that would be awesome. Especially integration with G-Mail tasks… ;-)
Keep up the great work!
⌘→ to ⇧⌘F change is great towards supporting OS X standards.
It would be nice if when editing Notes, when pushing enter (⌤) it would equal same as pushing it in the Title field. So only return (⏎) should insert new lines.
Thanks for these great updates !
I’m worried by all the people casually mentioning “MobileMe sync”
Having internet syncing tied to a paid-for secondary service would be horrible.
I too was hoping for a MobileMe sync, I find Things some what useless without the ability to sync between multiple machines. I really hope the mac to mac syncing doesn’t involve having two copies of Things running on a local network, this will be NEARLY USELESS too. Please just implement MobileMe syncing like so many of your users are asking for. Syncing MUST be totally automated and work across the internet, anything less and you will have wasted your time developing the feature.
First of all thanks for those great improvements. Things is almost perfect for me now.
However there is still one big issue and that is PERFORMANCE. The funtionality has almost reached the perfect level now.
Only little little things are maybe missing and more features would actually ruin Thing’s great simplicity approach.
Opening Things always takes around 2-3to launch the app and transmissions within the app sometimes take longer as they should take as well.
One of the great things about the iPhone- and also its great advantage over Symbian & Co is for me is that I don’t have this feeling of waiting longer than I want for the things I want to do.
Especially for a Todo app something like quickly taking a note is one of its vital features and if it takes longer than just this “little moment” people are less likely to use it to note just this little idea..
Please don’t forget this in all of the various requests and request and request…
Thanks for all the great work so far! Keep it on! Cheers Moritz
Areas of responsibility are great!! However the main screen can become a long long scroll list if you have 10 or 15 areas….. so two suggestions to maintain simplicity:
1. Put areas as a button on the lower grey bar next to the +. Tapping will open a window only for areas.
2. Have a badge on the areas to show how many are due today, and also an optional filter to display ONLY today tasks on each area, thus reducing the clutter (I know you can use tags for this, but I would prefer to have the “today only” choice)
Same for me: I`d really appreciate mobilme-sync, as it`s the one way to not have to think about when and how to sync!
Hum… Lots of us ask Cloud sync, but not MobileMe sync.
I don’t want buy MobileMe. And I’m not alone in this situation.
Incredible! I’ve been using Things Touch since december. Implementing the Areas, was just great. This really made my day. Now I feel I have an excellent overview of things to do. Keep up the good work.
Another thing, I like is viewing the “Next” list and filtering todo items with the tags. Just the abililty to set multiple tags on a todo item is awesome. I’ve tried other apps, and no one comes close.
I see no mention in the changelog so I put here again my vote for a configurable day rollover time. I work very often after midnight and mixing up the tasks from “today” with the tasks form “tomorrow” is always a mess. :(
That’s my only gripe with Things, and that’s a feature changed and then promised to change again since january. :/
Please! :)
Areas rocks.
Be nice to see ‘People’ area on TT now.
That would make my day. Also hyperlinks in the notes section and an ability to attach documents in the notes section. Maybe when the new iPhone software hits the market we’ll get that chance.
Keep up the great work guys. This is a great system and I’m converting people to it with missionary zeal
Thanks a lot for the update; especially Area implementation!!!
@Barry,
Having MobileMe Sync doesn’t preclude having WiFi network Sync. I believe that Mac to Mac Sync will function a litle like Mac to iPhone/iPode Sync when both are on the same network.
MobileMe Sync on Things gives users the option to having an automatic Sync from anywhere using a Mac or iPhone/iPod to your Macs at Home, using the Internet access. This has got to be important for a lot of users, and also for me.
Best
Carlos
I’m also waiting for sub-projects. Also, notes on projects don’t seem to be accessible on the iPhone app – is this by design?
Things is my first choice for To-Do and Project management.
But what I most want to see is subprojects. That would increase the value of the software dramatically to me.
TD MobileMe TT should definitely be implemented as soon as possible… Being on the same network is just not realistic most of the time except when at home.
Mobile me syncing please.
@Scott Plumlee: This is indeed an issue we need to address soon.
@Matt Good: Good point. Thanks for pointing us to this omission.
@Stefan: ⌘Y actually works as a toggle between Next and Someday. Select an inactive to-do and go to the Item menu. You will see that the wording of the menu command also reflects whether you selected a project.
@Xav’: More localizations are indeed on their way.
@Vesa Nieminen: I guess Ctrl-⏎ is what you are looking for.
@Moritz: I completely agree with you that we need to improve performance for large libraries. This is indeed on our radar.
@Hope Dundas: To add a note to a project on the iPhone, tap the blue arrow next to the title of the project, then tap the edit button.
@many: We have been very hard at work on Mac-to-Mac sync and also over-the-air sync for iPhone users. We believe that our solution will be a very solid one and accesible to everyone too.