I was sort of happy with iGTD, but I had always issues with syncing. Regularly I had to interfere in task and calendar conflicts. More on Leopard than on Tiger. I was never certain why I had those conflicts. Additionally iGTD always felt a bit crude. So I decided to actively switch to OmniFocus. I had played a bit with OmniFocus already the last five months, but not used it actively.

I have used OmniFocus for two full weeks now.
I don’t regret it! Syncing with iCal, Mail (without MailTags) and my Palm is faultless, a much better experience than with iGTD.
The OmniFocus user-experience is also much better. The sidebar in project mode can contain folders and I really appreciate that extra structuring option.

Task notes and calendars were always taking way to much screen estate in iGTD. They are not visible in OmniFocus unless you want them to.
And I am really getting used to typing friday, tomorrow, today or next week in the Action field. I don’t need no stinking calendar!

Outline in planning mode is a nice overview of your projects, a feature which I haven’t found in iGTD and which I deemed unnecessary. But I started to use it for the big picture progress overview. Not GTD I guess, but still damn handy.

Leopard coolness: Attachments in actions can be opened with Quicklook!!

Eye candy in my opinion, but nice nonetheless.

One thing I miss from iGTD is the automatic syncing. As far as I know OmniFocus can only do this manually, a thing which I often forget.

iGTD was a nice application, but I haven’t really missed it since embracing OmniFocus.

It did not transfer everything. It had some issues. However I was able to play a bit with OmniFocus with some real data, which was nice.

Somehow I missed my due dates in the main window. However you can clearly see Merlin Mann’s influence in the un-distract-ifying way of life. It is there, you just have to enable it. If you look at the date in the Action you wonder how to change it. Hovering over it and a small calendar icon appears. Also a project does not seem to have a date. However hovering over it it is there.

But I’m not sure. Un-distract-ifying is all nice and dandy. But do I need it, if I decided to activate my OmniFocus window on my Mac? I already decide to have a look at is. So it may distract me. Actually hiding is more distracting to me. Perhaps I get used to it. For now I’m still leaning towards iGTD.

And OmniFocus needs a QuickSilver plugin. I don’t want another hot key, which does not add anything. I know you can immediately assign a project and context to it, but I don’t want that, since the inbox is fine by me. I can review it later.

to be continued…

Reading the reviews it seems most people like it. Some are missing priorities. I’m not using that right now in iGTD so that’s fine by me.

What I immediately noticed is the uncluttered and simple interface OmniFocus presented. Just like OmniGraffle it feels natural. With inspectors you can manipulate the Actions, projects or context. But without the inspectors it presents such a simple interface. Only when doing the review step you will need the inspectors I guess.

See the difference?

I’m going to play a bit with it and see if it is really better than iGTD.