Giving Cultured Code a hard time is the cool thing to do these days. Folks all over the great series of tubes we call the internet are ragging on CC and their flagship product, Things. Anybody who's everybody is speaking their mind about Things. Most of these folks are converts, or thinking about becoming converts, to Omnifocus.
Two months back, I wrote about my thoughts on the matter. The great Things vs Omnifocus matter. If you haven't read that article yet, you should. It's not very long, as is the case with most things I write. For those of you who prefer pictures, I think this should explain pretty well why I'm not going the Omnifocus route.
Things works as advertised
When I bought Things, the only sync option was for WiFi sync. It's an imperfect solution, to be sure. However, it works exactly as promised. Cultured Code has been working on an Over the Air sync solution for a long time now... probably too long. However it's a future feature, and should not be considered for a purchase today.
Omnifocus gives me seizures
Sure, it has OTA sync. No matter where you add / complete / edit tasks, you always have the most recent version. The sync works across multiple Macs, iPhone, and iPad. That's a serious advantage, to be sure. However, the user interface gives me seizures. I literally have no idea what to do when I open OF.
Projects, Contexts, Due, Flagged, Grouping, Filters, Sorting, Status, Library, etc etc. I'm a smart guy but that makes my head absolutely pound. Folks have told me to give it a change. They've told me to try training videos.
Training videos. For a task manager.
Sure, if I invest hours into training... hours into learning how to maximize my use of Omnifocus, I don't doubt that it could be a great system. But this doesn't seem very, well, simple to me. Task managers are supposed to help you get things done. They are supposed to be simple to use, and get out of the way. I feel like I need a task manager full of projects and tasks just to help me learn how to use Omnifocus.
I'll pass on the bandwagon
Even though it's the cool thing to do these days, I won't be bashing Cultured Code or Things. Things isn't perfect by any means, but it's a great piece of software that does what I need. It gets out of my way and lets me get work done. Using Things is simple and intuitive. Isn't that exactly how it's supposed to be?