

After 2 weeks of intensive usage, I can say that OmniFocus has changed my iPad perspective, and that I’m sticking with it. OmniFocus for iPad comes with the UI guidelines and interaction methods you’re accustomed to, but it also lays out innovative patterns and ideas you didn’t see in any iPad app before. Lucky me, there are some great developers in the Apple community. It’s not that I didn’t trust the OmniGroup enough - I just saw what other developers were doing (hello, NetNewsWire) and thought the worst. When the OmniGroup announced they were working on an iPad version of OmniFocus, I feared they were going to jump on the “Let’s copy Mail.app” bandwagon and provide nothing but an unattractive rip-off of Apple’s elements and UI patterns. OmniFocus for iPad offers all these features, and a lot more. I also need smart filtering tools and contexts.

Plus, I want to be able to create custom views for my tasks and projects (more on this later) and easily share / delegate activities. Smart clipping tools and bookmarklets that allow me to quickly capture information no matter the device, app or website I’m using. What am I looking for when I want to “do GTD” on the iPad? A powerful engine with customization options for all kinds of users. They did so by shipping the finest example of a productivity app for iPad. With the recent release of OmniFocus for iPad, the OmniGroup developers reinvented my GTD workflow. I can’t remember why I deleted it (maybe I liked Things’ UI more back then?) but I know now that it was a mistake.
Workflow omnifocus mac#
I had tried OmniFocus in the past: in fact, looking back today, I think that OmniFocus was the only application that managed to stay for more than 3 weeks on my Mac and helped me Getting Things Done. I found it surprisingly good, even though it wasn’t officially optimized for the tablet. I installed OmniFocus for iPhone on my iPad (with some FullForce magic) and started to play with it. I guess the fact that a third device entered my workflow helped in realizing I needed tasks easily synced and available anywhere.


Don’t get me wrong, Things was good - I just missed OTA sync. I tried Evernote and got some actual things done with it, but dumped it due to all its instability and sync issues. I felt it was about time to make up my mind, take a decision in regards to GTD, and stick with it. If they wanted to make the iPad the new center of our digital lives, then I had to try to find the right app for me. Everyone was (is?) talking about using the iPad as a content consumption device, but I knew Steve Jobs and his crew had bigger plans for it. The iPad was released and I thought “Hey, I could get stuff done on this thing”. I tried Things, iCal to-dos, Basecamp, Backpack - all sorts of productivity apps / project management tools out there. I had an iPhone (a 3GS, to be exact) but I just didn’t see it as a device to carry my GTD database around. Before the iPad came out, I organized all my tasks and projects on my Mac (whether in a desktop app or online service) and didn’t really care about achieving a cloud-based workflow. To better understand the situation, it’s important to specify the workflow I used to have, and the one I have now. I was a GTD user who couldn’t manage to find an actual GTD to get going with. You know - that new kid on the block could be better and has a beautiful UI.
Workflow omnifocus how to#
Yes, even worse than financial apps: I didn’t know how to choose one and keep rolling with it. To me, GTD apps used to be worse than Twitter clients on the iPhone before Tweetie: ephemeral.
