I learned two important things while writing this review of Egretlist.
The first is that I was probably mistaken in comparing Egretlist to Awesome Note. Now that I ‘ve spent a little more time with the app, I think Jesse Grosjean ‘s Taskpaper (REVIEW) makes a much better comparison, since both Egret and Taskpaper have an unorthodox, free-form take on task management. However, instead of creating task lists out of plain text files, Egretlist uses Evernote notes ” and this can be a good or a bad thing, depending on how you feel about the free note-taking cloud service.
The second thing I learned is that the (cattle) Egret is a bird that has been known to accompany elephants (Evernote’s logo), and that the two creatures have an established relationship. This made the name and app icon make a lot more sense.
Egretlist
The developers over at MindsMomentum have dreamed up a very different kind of interface that will remind you more of a Moleskine notebook than an iPhone app. All you have to do get thing ready is sync Egretlist with your Evernote account, and the UI will auto-populate with any notes that have tasks in them.
While a lot of the app ‘s buttons almost blend in with the stylized background, the basics still stand out. You tick tasks off to complete them, tap the ‘+ ‘ button to create new ones, change notebooks by tapping on the legal pad, and sync with the very obvious sync button in the lower-right corner. Tasks are archived in a separate area at an interval of your choosing.
One of the major strength Egretlist is how the app manages task entry. Entering tasks is as simple as typing out a name and pressing ‘save & close ‘, but there are also options to add another task to the same list (without loading a new screen), and you can even turn plain text lists into tasks. This last bit is ingenious: all you have to do is find a list of plain text items, copy them to your iPhone clipboard, and tap the clipboard pop-up in Egretlist ‘s media menu. You ‘ll then have the option of posting the clipboard contents as one task, or having each line entered as a separate task.
Freed by Evernote
For those (like me) who are used to a very structured approach to task management, Egretlist can feel very foreign. However, before I begin describing the advantages of using Evernote as a sync partner, consider this tidbit from Juan Arzola, the developer of the app:
Evernote is not even made for tasks – it is made for notes which happens to have checkmarks. You give checkmarks the definition that you want: a thing to do, a thing to follow up, a checklist…it does not impose the definition [on] you…The lack of format makes it easy to start writing anything without feeling that I am filling a form. ‘
I ‘m still not sure if I ‘ve warmed to Juan ‘s approach, but I can definitely see some distinct advantages to using Evernote ‘s established organization methods. Task lists can already be organized and filtered in a number of different ways:
- by notebook
- by different Evernote notes
- by tag
- by saved searches
Then there ‘s the fact that Egretlist allows you to add pictures and audio to an individual task. You can do this from an Evernote client (simply place the media under a single task item) or from Egretlist itself, and added media will show up in scrollable single file right below the title of a task.
Evernote also brings with it a fast and flexible two-ways syncing solution that doesn ‘t require wi-fi, which is something a lot of other task managers lack.
Limited by Evernote
There are distinct advantages to using Evernote ‘s free-form system for task management, but there are significant drawbacks as well: a lack of due dates and priorities, the inability to move tasks easily from one list to another, and the desktop Evernote ‘s ‘oh, that ‘s nice ‘ reaction to all of Egretlist ‘s formatting.
The lack of due dates and priorities is pretty self explanatory, and Taskpaper suffers from a similar issue. Unlike Taskpaper, however, there doesn ‘t seem to be any easy way to shift tasks around from a ‘Someday ‘ list to a ‘Today ‘ list. You can star task lists to set them as priorities, but you can ‘t star individual tasks.
The final disadvantage of using Evernote for all of this free-form task management is the fact that the desktop client doesn ‘t seem to care. That is to say: as fantastic as your intricate, media-rich task lists may look within Egretlist, they look like a mess of text and pictures in the Evernote desktop client. I consider this to be a failing and weakness in Evernote (something Egretlist can ‘t do much about), but it does make you wonder why the developers concentrated on making things so beautiful on the iPhone when they end up sprawled all over the place once you return to an actual Evernote client.
Conclusion
There are still a few minor issues I have with Egretlist (buttons can be difficult to distinguish from the background, task list names don ‘t show up if there ‘s only one task left), but the app is quite feature complete for a 1.1 release. The developers have told me that they might explore other Evernote features (aside from checkmarks) for task management, but I wouldn ‘t expect the iPhone-to-desktop experience to change very much.
In other words, the Egret and Elephant ecosystem is here to stay.
Whether or not you buy into this bird depends a lot on what you think of Evernote and how it will organize and display your tasks. If you love the clean and polished look of Things or 2Do, then this might not be the app for you. However, if you found Taskpaper’s text-only approach intriguing and you don’t mind a bit of a mess when managing content on the desktop, then you probably won’t regret buying Egretlist.
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Egretlist is available for $2.99 on the App Store.
The app was bought by JAiB for review on the site. For further information regarding our site’s review policies, please see the “About” page.
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TAGS: Evernote, JAiB, task manager, to do
