Despite having been previously burned by the ToDo Sync Helper and having always hated iCal’s approach to task management, I’m trying 2Do 2.0 ($6.99, lite version) out as my full-time task manager…again. This won’t be a complete overview of the app like my last video of the 2.0 release, but we do have a review of 1.0 here and a post on 1.2 here, if you’d like to get acquainted with the app before reading on.
I’ve got Things 2Do? (Skip this section if you don’t use the Things task manager)
Moving back to 2Do from Things isn’t all that difficult, provided you also use the Things Mac client and plan to sync with iCal. You can tell Things to sync with iCal through the Sync tab in settings, and, although you won’t be able to specify which iCal calendars to sync to, all of the relevant tags and Areas will be exported to iCal as a portion of the task name. Tasks from my JAiB Area of Responsibility, for example, were exported with “JAiB:” as a prefix and Tags were added as @tag at the end of each task name, so it was very easy to simply drag and drop the relevant tasks into their iCal calendar equivalents (all JAiB tasks went into a “JAiB” calendar).
None of the actual tags survived the export since iCal doesn’t support tags (why?!), but the Notes fields of my Things tasks transferred perfectly into iCal.
Syncing: faster and easier (Skip this if you plan to sync with Toodledo, the online task manager)
One of the things that made me abandon 2Do in the past was its questionable syncing client on the Mac. 2Do is built to sync over wi-fi with the system-wide tasks used in Mail and iCal (or Outlook on the PC, but I have no experience with that end of things), and developer Guided Ways has provided a free utility called ‘ToDo Sync Helper ‘ for just this purpose. Previous versions of the utility were quite slow and were very inconsistent when it came to pairing, but the helper that shipped with 2Do 2.0 is much improved. Everything seems to work, and the connection between the two clients is made in seconds. I still have a bit of trouble getting 2Do to auto-sync whenever I load it up (the sequence seems to time out too quickly), but I ‘m so used to manually syncing that I don ‘t really mind.
iCal sucks, but…
The other major point of suckage (to coin a new and crappy phrase) in my return to the land of 2Do has been dealing with iCal. What a bloody disaster. Apple ‘s default calendar app works just fine for organizing your scheduled events, but it ‘s a complete mess when it comes to dealing with tasks.
Everything is on a separate line, and the app is horrific at showing tasks spread across multiple calendars. One of the reasons I ‘m even considering syncing with iCal is because it can function as a decent backup that can also be re-imported to Things, should this all turn out to be a big mistake.
The second reason is that I don ‘t really need iCal to manage my tasks. I just need it to be a decent interface for entering new tasks. My iPhone is almost always at my side, so I can use 2Do ‘s excellent UI to tick tasks off when they ‘re done.
All I need iCal to do is sit there, take in new tasks, and look messy.
Honourable Beta mention: The Hit List
I don ‘t really have enough material to write much on the Hit List, but I thought it deserved at least a mention. It’s a Mac-only task manager that ‘s still in beta (with a partner iPhone app in development as well), and it looks really fantastic. The UI seems even more keyboard friendly than Things’, and it certainly beats the pants off of iCal. The Hit List can use its own task database, but it can also sync with system-wide tasks in OSX, so it could work with 2Do through the ToDo Sync Helper. Theoretically, anyway.
After following the app instructions word-for-word, all of my iCal tasks promptly disappeared and the Hit List remained completely empty. So either the beta version is so incredibly efficient that it finished all of my tasks instantly, or it ‘s still just a little bit buggy. It ‘s a good thing I made an iCal backup using ToDo Sync Helper beforehand.
Parting Thoughts
I ‘m still getting used to the whole 2Do interface, but I ‘m loving what I ‘ve used so far. Creating tasks is simply effortless, and deferring them is also incredibly easy (probably not a good thing from a productivity standpoint ” but oh, well!).
Navigating from calendar to calendar in 2Do is much easier than moving from through the various sections in Things Touch, and the ability to drag and drop tasks into other calendars is awesome. I ‘ve also found a delightful ‘secret ‘ animation that is only displayed when you delete a task. It may have existed in previous versions of 2Do, but it ‘s so quaint I ‘ll sometimes make a blank task just for the sake of having something to delete.
I ‘m probably still in the honeymoon phase with this 2.0 update, but I simply haven ‘t found any significant feature gaps or oversights in the app ‘s design: wherever I turn within 2Do, there ‘s always some sort of nifty feature or pop-up menu to help me get something done. I suppose that ‘s rather appropriate for an app developed by Guided Ways. I certainly wouldn’t mind a 2Do for Mac, though 🙂
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TAGS: iphone task manager, iphone todo list
