OmniFocus alpha – first impressions

So, I finally got a chance to put my hands on a bleeding-edge version of OmniFocus. This is alpha software, and I only had access because in a moment of inspiration i signed up their mailing list. Now, that was a good decision.

Omni has asked me nicely to keep those builds private and this is exactly what I intend to do, however, since we already have the excellent video tutorial from Ethan (beware, around 25 megs to download), I think some screenshots are allowed. So, here we are:

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  • there are a lot of things form other Omni products: inspectors, styles, etc I use OmniPlan and Omni does look familiar to me…
  • there is also a very subtle resemblance to kGTD, at least at the colour level, this is nice also
  • the Filter thing, this is definately the most important feature for me so far: you can filter on almost any parameter you can think of
  • seems like a little cumbersome, iGTD gave me a “flexibility” impression, and OmniFocus gave me a “corporate” impression
  • seems also a little resource hungry, but this is just an impression, I haven’t had time to test it as I should be

Omni main screen:


You will notice that this is the Projects view, there is also the other one, with a “@” sign, called the Contexts view.

Below are the inspectors:


Task inspector


Context inspector


Project inspector


Dates inspector

My first impressions after less than 48 hours since the first opening is that is usable software. Is it alpha, so you may encounter surprises, but it’s usable. Unfortunately, my other projects are keepeing me from filling it with serious data and start fiddling with the Filters feature (which I consider to be the most important one) but I guess in a few days I will be able to do that. Fortunately, until then we may have a public beta.

What I like:

What I don’t like:

Again, those are first-look impressions, not reviews, so take them with a little bit of salt. I really look forward to write stuff about it as I go along. Until then, as dani suggested, I updated my list of GTD application in the sidebar with iGTD.

Tagged as: getting things done, omnifocus, software review

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