Microsoft To-Do Preview | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft To-Do Preview

products.office.com

116 pointsmpweiher71 comments

There's a trend these last few years to launch cross-platform todo apps with non-standard backends. It's really a PITA.

I've been using CalDAV / icalendar for my todos and it works great. I actually wrote my own small app to do this via cli (todoman), months later got an iPhone, and guess what? iOS actually supports CalDAV out of the box. All my todos worked on a brand-new device, with no forward planning, because I just followed an IETF spec.

Meanwhile, half a dozen companies (eg: todoist) have been working on their own non-standard reimplementation, and it bugs me greatly. Why are we so quickly moving away from standards that work really well?

A plug for 2Do (http://2doapp.com, iOS/Mac/Android) which supports CalDav and scraping your IMAP email for keywords that trigger todo item creation. It has reliable sync with 3rd-party CalDav servers, including self-hosted. The developer is super-responsive.

Cool! I wish that using standard protocols/formats was more the norm than an exception.

+1 to this. I use CalDAV and Google Calendar for an online version. It's funny how they support these standards but always tend to bury them in the feautures.

Google's CalDAV implementation does not expose todos/reminders. Trying to upload one results in an error.

Are you sure it's not just events, and not todos (CalDAV does both, as per the original spec).

Google's CalDAV auth is also VERY user unfriendly. FLOSS apps are not allowed to include API tokens, so end-users have to sign up as google developers, and get their own API keys, which immediately kills UX.

That may be a trend, but we actually moved away from the purely proprietary Wunderlist backend to Exchange.

Which, while technically also "proprietary", has several public APIs, isn't going anywhere and is supported on all major platforms. So my To-Do items also show up on my Mac in BusyCal (or Reminders, Outlook, etc.), I can enter new To-Dos using Siri etc.

There's a difference between having "a single standard", and having "a few popular ones" (which Exchange contributes to).

The big downside it that apps still need to either support two protocols, or live inside on of two bubbles. I really with Exchange would adopt IETF standards (but I guess that's not in their best interest).

These companies want to lock you in. It's that simple.

I already use OneNote on my Android phone, Mac computer, and Windows tablet. I love the desktop version for longer planning sessions and researchy stuff. The phone is really good for quick notes, ideas, and stuff I will do later...

That said, I hope they build this into OneNote as it is hands down the best "brain capture" software I have ever used. Keep it up MSFT, you are kicking ass!

Edit to add: The only thing missing from OneNote is notifications. I can and do make todo lists all the time. I just need notifications on all platforms. Until then, I will keep using Google Calendar and Inbox for gmail.

I was a big advocate of OneNote until I got burned just last week. Windows Phone 8 devices suddenly stopped syncing. The outage lasted over a week. Today it seems to be back, but 10 days without the ability to view my notes was enough to make me think twice about using it

It actually prompted me to start building a simple note / list app for WP8 to replace it (not to compete - I just like building things for myself). I got a working beta before OneNote started syncing again, and I'm going to press on. It's super simple - just opens text files from Dropbox, either as lists (like todo.txt on android) or notes (simple textbox). If I ever switch phones all my notes are in plain text / md files.

Tried SimpleNote? www.simplenote.com

It's been mentioned here already, but this is the evolution of Wunderlist. Which, apparently is being sunsetted at some point:

> That said, Wunderlist and Wunderlist Pro will eventually be retired, but not before we incorporate your valued feedback and the best elements of the Wunderlist experience into To-Do. There won't be any new features brought to Wunderlist and Wunderlist Pro but we will continue to prioritize the security of your experience. In addition, we have built an importer to help you easily transfer your to-dos from Wunderlist or Todoist to To-Do.

I was hoping for more power features in Wunderlist for business teams, considering that we recently started using it pretty heavily. At the moment, this seems pretty focused on individual use.

https://www.wunderlist.com/blog/your-preview-of-microsoft-to...

Presumably that stuff is coming, but only in Office 365.

It's interesting, an intelligent version of how Any.Do makes you plan your day every morning with the tasks you have added. But why couldn't they build it on top of all the features that wunderlist already provides. It is very basic right now.

No collaborative lists, no assignment of todos, no subtasks, no marking priority of todo, no grouped lists.

One step forward (maybe), 10 steps backward. Why should I as a user care whether an app is new and will improve features over time?

The most valuable part of Any.Do for me is the way the notification nags work. When something pops up, it takes the bare minimum of clicks to select when I want to be nagged again, and then it nags me again at that time. The way it pops up at the bottom of your screen as an overlay on top of whatever else is also part of its brilliance instead of getting lost in my list of notifications (on Android).

I really hope this integrates something like that. A ToDo app is only as useful as it is religiously used and followed-through on. I often forget to go back and mark things as complete, or even to check what I have coming up. So the ability to just constantly nag myself until it gets done, at which point I can mark it complete at the next nag is critical.

On that note, if anyone has any handy documentation links on how to code something for Android that does the pop-up notifications with button options like Any.Do has, I'd love to read up as I have an idea I want to test with that approach for another area of my life.

Another feature it is lacking straight out the gate is being able to read things like "Pick up milk tomorrow at 3 pm" and then automatically set the due date for tomorrow at 3 pm. (Even Wunderlist did that.) It is definitely an early stages product. Unless it comes out with some incredible feature, I'm sticking to Todoist.

With the current landscape of To-do list market (Any.do, Wunderlist, Todoist, etc. etc. etc.) this doesn't even feel like a MVP, more like an early alpha without the label.

You should actually remove Wunderlist from your list since their team announced that they will no longer be working on the product. They are working on Microsoft's To-Do now.

It will still exist as a product for awhile though, so I think it warrants it place on the list even if I transitioned over to Todoist a few months ago.

Todoist is fantastic. The only thing I'd like to see them add - maybe - would be the ability to start, suspend, and finish tasks and to time them.

I transitioned to Todoist as well. I really love its rich feature list.

Wunderlist hasn't given an exact date for when they are retiring the product but they have said it will be retired at some point. (Probably once the feature list of To-Do moves up to where Wunderlist is.)

The huge downside, IMHO, is that they decided to reinvent the wheel completely instead of using existing standard for file-format (icalendar?), sync(caldav), etc. :(

I live in Wunderlist right now. Totally sucks they're sunsetting it. It's hard to imagine the new thing will be any better. Weird to see them building something new, instead of just adding more improvements to Wunderlist.

Oh well -- I think my next move is to find something open and standardized, and something I have a control over. Personally I'd see myself living in Wunderlist-land for the next 20 years. IMO I don't think I need any new features there.

The one awesome feature I've been enjoying so far with TODO that Wunderlist doesn't have is the tight integration with Outlook. Right now, 90% of my Wunderlist lists are work-related projects, and the fact that I can sync TODO and Outlook tasks is going to be killer.

From what I hear (from people working at Microsoft on the Office team more broadly, so take it with some salt): the Wunderlist team has been taking more leadership roles within Office, and the goal was to integrate Wunderlist in about every product. However, much of the back-end needed to be moved to Microsoft's tools and services, which needed a virtual re-write & reboot of sorts.

The one holdup is out IT team hasn't enabled TODO yet for our company's Office 365 account yet, so I need to use my personal Outlook account.

I was pleasantly surprised at the "My Day" feature and the task suggestions so far. I have about ~150 tasks in TODO at the moment, and the suggestions for adding to my day were a good balance of newer urgent items and older backburner items that I had forgotten about.

It's a funny thing. I rely heavily on Ecco Pro, developed some 20 years ago. Still going strong on Windows 10, using 1.5MB RAM (Wunderlist takes up about 70MB on my Nexus 5). The point, with nowadays web/mobile offerings, is that you don't really own them. They just come and go. No matter how useful or integrated into your work/life routines. I suspect a corresponding analogy can be made for could-based target environments. Something to think about.

I'm getting to the point where I start planning an alternative as soon as a big company buys a tool I'm using. Wunderlist was spot on for my work patterns, oh well.

Yeah and it really lacks the soul that Wunderlist had. It was the right visual presentation of the right features. I'll miss it. :(

Here's my hope for this product.

1. From within Outlook, I can mark an email to disappear from my inbox and re-appear at a set date (e.g. similar to Boomerang).

2. For any email I "boomerang", have that show up as a to-Do in the To-Do app on that date (while also re-appearing in my inbox).

Essentially, hope they integrate To-Do with Outlook.

edit: typo

Isn't Boomerang already part of Outlook now?

As a developer, what am I supposed to do? We live in such a saturated world. Everything has been invented and reinvented dozens of times. Every book written and rewritten dozens of times. My (re)invention or (re)write will probably fail, because large companies have a near monopoly on resources. Specializing is equally unlikely to bear originality; how many academics devote their lives to trivial (if any) advances?

I want to get out of this industry.

Look around at all the businesses in your area. Are they all unique? Of course not. Software isn't any different. Don't get fixated on the idea that a new software product has to be one of a kind.

I generally agree. However, one difference is that software does not necessarily have to compete in the physical dimension. This app works equally well wherever I live, whereas a local business is at least unique by location even if the same as others in every other respect.

Well, there is the L in URL. You can carve out your own location on the web.

Here's the Wunderlist announcement (I submitted it, but it looks like this one is more likely to be popular): https://www.wunderlist.com/blog/your-preview-of-microsoft-to...

Here is a little video of it in action:

https://www.wunderlist.com/blog/your-preview-of-microsoft-to...

I see a lot of wasted space; none of my to-do items are short like "go to the store"... they have details like order numbers and certain contact details or instructions. Not sure this fluffy interface would work well with the rigors of my daily notes. I hope they thought of that. Has anyone used it yet?

I've been using Google Keep for years now, do you guys see an advantage in To-Do?

Looks pretty similar to Wunderlist. I don't find Wunderlist like task managers to be very useful for serious task management since I am mostly hooked on Todoist's Comments, Priority and Labels features. They seem like very trivial features but you won't believe how many task managers don't implement such features (eg. Wunderlist )

It is Wunderlist:

https://www.wunderlist.com/blog/our-future-wunderlist-joins-...

It feels a bit like they rushed the announcement on this one. In Microsoft's windows 10 store the app. still seems to be called "Project Cheshire" and (at least in the UK) I'm not seeing it in the iOS App store...

I'm a fan of Wunderlist, so kind of hoping this'll turn out well.

I missed the news that Microsoft acquired Wunderlist in 2015. I'd have assumed the access to additional infrastructure would've resulted in higher uptime. Instead, I've experienced enough outages in the past couple years to seriously consider making my own to-do list.

Oh, a new To-Do app? Cool, I'm always looking for one that gives me more control so that I can sort, organize, and plan

/clicks link/ "Microsoft Intelligent Suggestions use a smart algorithm to.." /closes window/

"NOPE"

Quick shout out for Remember the Milk (http://rememberthemilk.com) which already does most of this and to which this looks quite similar.

Whats with that clippy-chat-girl?

Text-field is fake and just a big button and positioning is done via JS or something instead of pure CSS, jitters like hell on scrolling.

Such a disappointment. Wunderlist was the best in a very crowded market. It would have been ok if they had launched with something comparable to what it intends to replace. But this is missing so many key features (yes, many are planned) that it is a huge let-down to long-term paid-up users.

Doesn't work with Office 365 accounts yet. It will be a great addition once it's available.

Shameless plug for a friend, he asked me to QA his to-do app and now i guess he is competing with microsoft

http://codedo.thatsoftwaredude.com

and a billion other devs

When the page is loading I do see an icon for the iOS App, but not when the page fully loads. I see an iPhone pictured. What's going on here?

Also, how does this integrate with other products such as Outlook?

I do everything with events/reminders in my google calendar. I don't see what this offers above that. I also like with google now, I can schedule events when my hands aren't free.

this is an interesting app domain, and i believe very hard to get right

in my opinion the best to-do app is orgmode

i think if you need a web-app or your needs exceed what orgmode offers, you are solving the wrong problem, and you probably need an issue tracker not a todo list

a smart text file for personal is all what a todo list should be, anything more, you are crossing the boundaries of a todo list to an issue tracker

What do I search for in the App store to find this? "Microsoft todo" does not turn it up.

Aw man, fuck this shit, I am going back to Apple Reminders. Seriously tired of favourite apps dying.

no mention or picture of Windows Phone?!

There's a Windows Phone app. The Windows app is UWP and it looks like it runs on Windows Phone (from the screenshots provided in the Windows Store).

For whatever reason it's named Project Cheshire and not Microsoft To-Do in the store.

Windows version is UWP app and it works on Windows 10 Mobile (or how it's referred in the name of a recent update, "Windows 10 for arm-based Phone Devices") despite a circle jerk in other comments.

Windows Phone = Windows 10

I would be very surprised if even Microsoft was not supporting the Windows Phone. I am sure it will pop up.

Isn't Window Phone dead? Last December it's word wide market share was just 0.1% (the same as Blackberry), down from 1.3% twelve months before (Dec 2015). Also the most recent Win10PhoneOS release only runs on merly 12 supported devices.

Globally maybe. There are still some markets where it's fairly popular. That being said, I fear that those won't be enough to keep supporting it for MS. While they haven't exactly announced anything, they might very well end Windows 10 Mobile in the near future.

Can Microsoft afford to let the mobile market go? Building mobile for others means you're a sharecropper and not the landholder...Microsoft has been the biggest landholder for decades. Do they know how to compete without owning the playing field?

More on Windows phone app -> http://gunnarpeipman.com/2017/04/microsoft-to-do/

That ship has sailed, and they are playing the long game now.

I think there's one way for them to rise and completely dominate the market: have some intel CPU based type phone which can run normal Windows 10 and all Windows applications.

I feel like this is sort of like 10 years ago time... when we were just introduced of the idea of a tablet and no-one serious (besides small Indian startups) was doing it... and then the iPad came and suddenly this tablet thing was everywhere you looked. I wonder who will be the first (big company) to make a serious attempt of a usable phone-PC.

They actually have an x86/x64 emulation layer for ARM well underway, so most likely they'll release such a phone soon, and have it run PC apps via emulation.

The performance should be decent, considering most apps are no longer CPU intensive.

Nah, I disagree... my Windows 10 - 8 inch tablet is pretty terrible for proper applications. I can get by in a pinch, but much prefer a proper laptop. I also don't want to put anything larger than the S8+ in my pockets.

I am disappointed Windows Phone has not survived.

Sure, it's going to be used by a lot of people because it will get bundled with Windows, and will appeal to those who used Wunderlist.

However, it doesn't seem that newsworthy to me. It's just a todo app like any OS bundles with their software, like Google Keep, Reminders, etc.

I did sign up and tried it, but didn't think much of it. Won't switch to To-do from Keep.

As far as newsworthiness, one thing that stood out to me here was "Suggestions." Does this mean I can expect it to say, "looks like so-and-so-'s birthday is coming up, you should buy them a present today since you're already going shopping"?

Yes, that would be cool.

Fascinating move, a tech giant publishing a ToDo app as a flagship product. I kinda like it.

You could pretty much replicate this entire app in an hour or two, including multi-device sync/collaboration, we have a 10 minute tutorial on this here: http://gun.js.org/think.html . As most people do, but what I think is interesting is this:

Microsoft doesn't need to worry about how easy it is to build, or how many thousands of even polished competitors there are. All they need to be is Microsoft, and make a stance of "competing" with basic products that Google and Facebook keep pushing out: Duo, Allo, Messengero, Yellow, Chello, Instagramcopysnapchato, Pillow, Fellow, Hippo... ahem. Or else Microsoft doesn't seem "relevant" if lay people aren't bombarded with news article after news article about some new app. :/

Shameless plug here. I built a small todo app that works very well with a large number of tasks. The app is 99% keyboard driven, supports Markdown, custom CSS and uses GitHub Gists for storage.

https://github.com/mstijak/tdo

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