I really wish there was an Android version, or some way for a thrid-party app to sync with Things on the Mac.
Now I have to use a note taking app on my Android phone and tablet, then manually copy them into Things when I get back to my computer. It’s a bloody hassle but Things is so much better than anything else I tried that it’s the only way.
As much as I agree with you and as much as I'm displeased with people having trouble selling things they worked on for months for over 0.99$ I would never be able to live if I had to pay 50$ for every little piece of software I use. 50$ is a LOT for a todo app.
Imagine a world where you had to pay 50$ for every app on your phone (I personally have 10-15 that I use regularly), every web app that you use (these guys have bills to pay too) and everything installed on your desktop computer. You wouldn't be able to use as much as you use today.
The fact is, this app seems great, I might try it, but I usually shell out 50$ for software on either an exceptional game that I know I will be playing for a long time (often multiplayer) or some development tool/license (for example Apple dev program). Organizing my life into items that I can tick doesn't seem that complicated or essential to me that it's worth 50$.
There's a trial for the Mac version, I recommend it highly. The iOS version is cheaper than the Mac version if that floats your boat a little more. I won't try to imagine a world where I would pay $50 dollars for every app that I use but I can imagine one where I pay that much for something that is very well done and helps me do things I need to do.
It's time to realize that software is worth something. The flood of the 99 cent apps in the App stores have really ruined software development for people who can't price their apps higher because they wont sell and they can't make money off of the way they price them now. I bought Things almost 5 years ago and I've never once regretted paying as much as I did. I tried to switch away from it for a while but kept coming back.
I absolutely agree with "[...] I pay that much for something that is very well done and helps me do things I need to do." I'm also on your side as to what the App Store has done to software's perceived value.
Todo lists just don't happen to be something I value enough to shell 50$ for. I might look into the iOS version though, I like portable todo lists a lot more.
I use OmniFocus and not Things, but if you are serious about GTD and put your life in the hands of an app, $50 is absolutely nothing. OmniFocus could be $50 a month and be worth it most of the time. (I do a lot of traveling, freelancing and I am rather scatterbrained to begin with.)
If I could put my finger on why I love the Mac version of Things, it's that I use just shy of every single feature in there. To me, that shows the right balance between simplicity and capability. I gather OmniFocus is far more extensive.
2.0's new "Daily Review" feature encompassing the previous Move-to-today vs. Highlight distinction looks spot-on.
I consider my to do list highly private information and will not consider using any syncing application that doesn't encrypt my data at rest.
Perhaps that makes me a unique snowflake, and perhaps a true Scotsman.
The convenience of ubiquitous sync is undeniable, but there's more personal data in my todo list than in my email spool. I use it for notes, ideas, trivial record keeping, etc.
It's private, and there are a dozen little companies who offer to sync my stuff. I don't trust any of them. I don't trust Google or Apple with that data either, but I wish someone would do it right so I could.
Not for me. I think the issue for you is that you use a to-do app for "notes, ideas, trivial record keeping, etc.". I use other apps for those things. I do have personal things in my to-do list but nothing I would be worried about anyone else seeing.
Not at all. I refrain from these apps (and most note-taking apps) for the same reason. I dump everything from passwords to CC-numbers into my notes and todos. If I had to start thinking about what to put there and what not it would kill half the utility.
It's beyond me why the vendors don't add this comparably trivial, yet critical feature (client-side encryption).
It's a matter of time until Evernote and friends get hacked, if they haven't been already. That day you will see many sad faces, when people begin to realize that over time they've probably put more than "get milk"-notes and the latest cat pictures in there.
He was talking about 'in my notes and todos'. I guess his passwords end up in his notes, not in his todos.
Then, I think it all boils down to personal preference. In the limit, you have diehard emacs users, who store everything (notes, todos, spreadsheets, word processing aka TeX documents, playlists (http://www.gnu.org/software/emms/), encryption utilities, etc) in 'emacs files' :-)
Have you tried Toodledo? That's a pretty awesome one and they use SSL for all iOS traffic to their server. I've been using it for 2 years now and I have pretty much no complaints.
It is - and I am thankful that OmniFocus lets me sync via Bonjour or custom DAV. I just set up the latter and it syncs way faster than the OmniSyncServer ever did while I used it. (I am in Germany and so is my DAV server.)
I loved the original release of Things on the desktop, but wish I had never bothered with the iOS app. It took far too many taps to do anything and syncing was clunky to the point of uselessness.
It was the wait for over-the-air syncing, with months of overwrought blog posts, that led me to abandon Things. I recreated my use in the Reminders app and have been much happier since. With this 2.0 I see they have finally, years later, released "cloud syncing".
I don't see $50 worth of functionality, but still, wish them well with the new release.
I too tried to love Things, but just couldn't get into it. The to-list needs to be simple enough to use without thinking, yet powerful enough to offer a specific set of features.
With the release of Mountain Lion I am getting along fine with Reminders. I use Fantastical in my menu bar to add things, it's always synced to my phone. Has priority, time & date, and geolocation.
Ah hah, I forgot about Fantastical. Looks like it will do the trick for quick entry of reminders which was one of the few features I was missing after Things. (Plus there's a 50%-off sale).
Using an Fn double-tap to dictate makes it Siri-esque, only more reliable :)
If you're a hacker in need of a Mac/iOS todo list, I couldn't recommend TaskPaper (http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/taskpaper/) enough. It's a hybrid outliner and todo list, but scales from simple lists to multi-project, tagged lists with loads of notes and documentation.
Best of all, the file format is plain text, so you can keep it in source control, edit it in Vim (there's even a vim plugin - https://github.com/davidoc/taskpaper.vim), or whatever you want.
I bought TaskPaper both for iOS and Mac and I've been very disappointed.
At first, it looks great but the Dropbox sync'ing is completely broken. I was losing data many times a day and ended up giving up on it. Many have reported sync'ing issues on their forum as well. That's too bad because I really liked it otherwise.
What greatly inconvenienced me about MobileOrg was having to manually push and retrieve changes from the app, which led me to the occasional "but I'm sure I've captured this!" moment. Call me stupid, or even inconsistent for hoping something a little more brainless (it's an emacs mode I'm trying to sync with, after all), but eventually it put me off from adopting it in full.
Yeah, that is definitely a pain point with it. I have a list of things I would like to change, but it is pretty low on my list. Also the code isn't exactly how I would've built the app, so it is a little discouraging to work on in my free time.
When did they announce that cloud sync was coming soon? 3 years ago? I'm not sure if I trust them to continue updating Things on a reasonable schedule. I have a lot more trust in Sam Soffes adding lots and lots of features to cheddarapp.com
There's a slightly creepy (unacknowledged) clone of Things for Windows. I can't recommend it though. When I tried it at my previous job it wasn't as capable or well designed as the original.
I have to be offline at multiple times, unfortunately. Some of the HTML5 clients are getting (like Todoist), but not so completely that I'm comfortable about it.
Really great, it took them like ages to get the cloud sync done but I believe they have done a great job with it. I've been using the Things beta for some time now and the Daily review feature is a winner. It's a best practice to review your todo's each morning and they just made it super easy and hard to forget.
On the other hand, I feel that there is really too little to justify tagging it v2. What's really new and noteworthy? Cloud sync, perhaps but that's in no way a revolutionary feature. Daily review? Really really nice but it's more of an addon/improvement rather than a full feature. And then we have it ... next to those there isn't anything really new and groundbreaking.
I sure hope they can get their team working on some other great new features now that cloud sync is finished. Time to move on and innnovate!
The cloud sync is just too little, too late for them. iCloud and the Reminders app on Mountain Lion covers 99% of the iOS/Mac cloud-sync'd task management needs now. They definitely took far too long to release v2.
I was really looking forward to the next release, and I'm really happy for them. But it's taken years for them to do cloud sync... and the feature I was waiting for was teams. I'm personally disappointed in how incredibly long it takes them to roll out any feature.
I like Things, it's great... but until it's collaborative, it doesn't work (for me).
49 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 81.9 ms ] threadNow I have to use a note taking app on my Android phone and tablet, then manually copy them into Things when I get back to my computer. It’s a bloody hassle but Things is so much better than anything else I tried that it’s the only way.
Imagine a world where you had to pay 50$ for every app on your phone (I personally have 10-15 that I use regularly), every web app that you use (these guys have bills to pay too) and everything installed on your desktop computer. You wouldn't be able to use as much as you use today.
The fact is, this app seems great, I might try it, but I usually shell out 50$ for software on either an exceptional game that I know I will be playing for a long time (often multiplayer) or some development tool/license (for example Apple dev program). Organizing my life into items that I can tick doesn't seem that complicated or essential to me that it's worth 50$.
It's time to realize that software is worth something. The flood of the 99 cent apps in the App stores have really ruined software development for people who can't price their apps higher because they wont sell and they can't make money off of the way they price them now. I bought Things almost 5 years ago and I've never once regretted paying as much as I did. I tried to switch away from it for a while but kept coming back.
Todo lists just don't happen to be something I value enough to shell 50$ for. I might look into the iOS version though, I like portable todo lists a lot more.
It's certainly a bargain compared to a $10/month service like Flow.
2.0's new "Daily Review" feature encompassing the previous Move-to-today vs. Highlight distinction looks spot-on.
Perhaps that makes me a unique snowflake, and perhaps a true Scotsman.
The convenience of ubiquitous sync is undeniable, but there's more personal data in my todo list than in my email spool. I use it for notes, ideas, trivial record keeping, etc.
It's private, and there are a dozen little companies who offer to sync my stuff. I don't trust any of them. I don't trust Google or Apple with that data either, but I wish someone would do it right so I could.
Is this not a concern for others?
Not at all. I refrain from these apps (and most note-taking apps) for the same reason. I dump everything from passwords to CC-numbers into my notes and todos. If I had to start thinking about what to put there and what not it would kill half the utility.
It's beyond me why the vendors don't add this comparably trivial, yet critical feature (client-side encryption).
It's a matter of time until Evernote and friends get hacked, if they haven't been already. That day you will see many sad faces, when people begin to realize that over time they've probably put more than "get milk"-notes and the latest cat pictures in there.
Why not store your passwords in a purpose built app like 1password and use the todo software for todo's (get milk, finish project etc.)?
Then, I think it all boils down to personal preference. In the limit, you have diehard emacs users, who store everything (notes, todos, spreadsheets, word processing aka TeX documents, playlists (http://www.gnu.org/software/emms/), encryption utilities, etc) in 'emacs files' :-)
edit: Spelling mistake
http://culturedcode.com/things/cloud/
I would be surprised/shocked if any To Do app did not yet use HTTPS.
It was the wait for over-the-air syncing, with months of overwrought blog posts, that led me to abandon Things. I recreated my use in the Reminders app and have been much happier since. With this 2.0 I see they have finally, years later, released "cloud syncing".
I don't see $50 worth of functionality, but still, wish them well with the new release.
With the release of Mountain Lion I am getting along fine with Reminders. I use Fantastical in my menu bar to add things, it's always synced to my phone. Has priority, time & date, and geolocation.
Using an Fn double-tap to dictate makes it Siri-esque, only more reliable :)
Best of all, the file format is plain text, so you can keep it in source control, edit it in Vim (there's even a vim plugin - https://github.com/davidoc/taskpaper.vim), or whatever you want.
At first, it looks great but the Dropbox sync'ing is completely broken. I was losing data many times a day and ended up giving up on it. Many have reported sync'ing issues on their forum as well. That's too bad because I really liked it otherwise.
http://codea-dev.com/gtd/
Things initially crashed when converting my DB, I am not sure yet if that is recoverable. Fortunately I had a iOS backup - hope that helps.
Anyway - I suggest backing up before upgrade, and wait for a 2.0.1! :-)
If this problem ouccurs for you, try this: 1. Download a fresh Things.app from http://culturedcode.com/things/ 2. Replace your current one 3. Enjoy
Should have tried that myself - but was to scared it would destroy my db. :-)
On the other hand, I feel that there is really too little to justify tagging it v2. What's really new and noteworthy? Cloud sync, perhaps but that's in no way a revolutionary feature. Daily review? Really really nice but it's more of an addon/improvement rather than a full feature. And then we have it ... next to those there isn't anything really new and groundbreaking.
I sure hope they can get their team working on some other great new features now that cloud sync is finished. Time to move on and innnovate!
I like Things, it's great... but until it's collaborative, it doesn't work (for me).