I’ve tried. I’ve tried really hard to simply not care about Things and its terribly pretty interface, and its native clients across the Mac, iPhone and iPad. After all, it is still missing over-the-air (OTA) syncing capabilities, despite the fact that most every other task manager out there offers it. Even Patrick Jordan, iSource editor […]
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If Only Things Weren’t So Damn Pretty [Rant]

Sep 19th 2011 by

I’ve tried. I’ve tried really hard to simply not care about Things and its terribly pretty interface, and its native clients across the Mac, iPhone and iPad. After all, it is still missing over-the-air (OTA) syncing capabilities, despite the fact that most every other task manager out there offers it. Even Patrick Jordan, iSource editor and long-time Things fan, has switched over to OmniFocus in the last few months due to the lack of this important feature set.

But as much fun as I’ve been having with 2Do running on my iPhone and iPad, there’s still a part of me that wishes that my current task managing application was cleaner. I love 2Do’s task creation dialog, but I’m not a big fan of its pop-up tabs – something about them just makes the app feel crowded. It seems that I’ll only ever be truly happy with a minimal Things-like UI with OTA sync (and maybe 2Do’s simplified task dialog – if I’m allowed to get really wishy washy).

So it was with a hop, skip, and a jump that my heart reacted to the e-mail notifying me that I had become a part of the Things Beta Sync earlier this week. Finally. At long last, I thought, a chance to send my list of upcoming articles from Things on my to Things on my iPhone regardless of what kind of internet connection I’m using. Geeky? Yes. Awesome? Also yes.

But then I read the fine print: “this invitation is for testing of the Mac version only – an invitation for iOS testing will come at a later time, in a separate email.”

Aaaaaaargh.

I suppose this should come as a bit of a reprieve. I’m in the Mac beta program now and will be invited to the iOS beta soon enough, but having gotten this close simply drives home how pointless the Mac syncing is to me. First of all, I don’t actually have another Mac to sync with, so I can’t really test this well, anyway. Secondly, I only signed up for this beta for the iOS side of things, and so receiving this e-mail just feels like the Things developers ruffling my hair and saying “soon enough, kiddo”.

I’d like to threaten to leave Things behind forever, to move to OmniFocus (not really) or just use a pen and paper (maybe), but I know that’s not going to happen. OmniFocus is powerful, but really isn’t my style, and I already have too many things I carry around with me tote a small notebook around as well.

So it seems I’m still somehow hooked on – or at least morbidly curious about – how the Things ecosystem will feel when their free cloud syncing solution is up and running. I do love the feeling of creating and managing tasks within Things clients, but I hate how much of a pain it currently is to sync everything through my Mac. I don’t own the iPad client yet, but if the developers at CulturedCode can just manage to roll their OTA sync out before I stop caring, they’ll have secured $20 from me.

If only this app weren’t so damn pretty.

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