RIP Things
brooksreview.net
brooksreview.net
What's sad is that it's the worst kind of corporate laziness and suck to throw up gorgeous graphics (ex:http://culturedcode.com/status/) and create a false connection to reliability and customer commitment. These guys have lost a lot of trust and there is no evidence that even after this release that they'll continue innovating at any reasonable rate.
I did a presentation once on the topic: http://iphone2009.crowdvine.com/talk/presentation_file/5104/...
Also, if you bought a product, you've signaled that the current feature set was worth the price. If the developers want to add new features for free, that's a nice bonus.
I question whether this is the consumer expectation for iOS apps. Updates for apps are fast and free, and oftentimes apps are sold with the explicit promise of future updates that will contain various anticipated features. This and the fact that many apps are platforms that consumers expect will be maintained over a reasonable amount of time verses those of competitors.
Evernote is web, desktop, ios, etc, etc
Remember the milk is everywhere... so is Simplenote
> Implementing syncing as an independent developer kind of sucks.
> the app determines which one has the last state and updates accordingly
I'm not saying Things isn't worth the money; I bought a copy and frequently recommend it.
Edit:
Found it in case someone else was interested:
/* Mozilla based browsers */
::-moz-selection{background-color:#e12000;color:#fff;}
/* Works in Safari */
::selection{background-color:#e12000;color:#fff;}So, if you've got a black background of a super-parent element, and an light-colored image background for the parent or the element, your text will highlight white, ensuring that selected text is unreadable in certain situations.
Either the posted hack or setting a background color fixes it.
Wow. This has to be the fastest I've ever stopped reading an article halfway through.
Has this guy considered that, just maybe, the world does not revolve around him, and that other people might not know what OTA sync is? Especially considering the audience of Things.
By his logic, Apple waiting months before letting the iPhone have 3rd party apps should've killed it; or Apple not having copy+paste until version 3.0 should've killed it. But neither of those happen because Apple was patient enough to do it right the first time.
Cultured Code ALREADY has app to app syncing via WiFi. This works pretty well to sync your tasks between Mac, iPhone and/or iPad. They have had this feature for YEARS.
They don't have Cloud Syncing yet, and that would be very cool and useful. If all they wanted to do was replace WiFi syncing with the Cloud, they could probably have used WebDAV, iDisk, Dropbox, etc. They have stated that they considered these options.
Based on what I have read over the years on CC's website, they are looking to Cloud Syncing for a far larger solution than syncing your personal tasks between your devices. I believe they are planning to add Groups and Workflows. Presumably, you will be able to delegate tasks to other users and monitor progress. This adds much more complexity to the server infrastructure and the software design.
CC has also said they looked very closely at how GIT works. Clearly, CC does not think a simple solution will fit their use case.
Yes, they have been slow to deliver both Cloud Syncing and work groups. Maybe they are clueless or taken on too much at the expense of a steady stream of smaller improvements. But I do believe CC is trying to solve a much bigger problem than simply syncing devices belonging to one person.
But, it's a moot point. The Cultured Code guys are very technically competent, this doesn't seem like they're unable to do the technology, but rather the project management or discipline to get it out there.
The cloud infrastructure I'll grant them, but 2 years is certainly longer than I anticipated waiting as a customer... mostly because of statements made by the company in question.
Ever since they released their iPhone app customers have been asking them for sync. This being a productivity app sync is very important. Things for the longest time has had WiFi sync. It is a pain for two reasons:
1. I have to remember to sync my devices every time I make changes. This is not rest of my productivity apps work. My calendars sync automagically, my email inbox sync automagically, my filesystem syncs automagically, BUT my _productivity_ app does not!
2. Wireless syncing doesn't always work because in some environments they block the underlying protocol. Then I have to setup an AdHoc network etc. etc.
Failure on CC's part, IMO, is the lack of understanding, perhaps, of how important sync is to their customers. A good approach would have been to incrementally introduce support for sync, using Dropbox or MobileMe or what not. Instead what it looks like happening is they are building a whole new infrastructure that we will have to use to sync Things. My problem is that I already pay for two good sync solutions that work well. I don't see the point in paying for another one just for syncing.
And the most irritating thing of all is the "sync is a solved problem" armchair architect knee-jerk responses. If you really believe that then you're happy with half-assed, poor user experience solutions that aren't tailored to specific data.
“We have created and deployed both server and client-side sync components. Both components are completely general and can be used for any application. They have been successfully tested using a special demo program. We are now in the process of integrating this technology into Things.”
There is a fundamental difference in the way CC is approaching sync. They are trying to sync by moving the actual database around instead of using a protocol based service. They must have some reason for why they need to move the actual database file around but I don't know what that is.
I will say that getting the edge cases for sync is difficult (We also integrate with email which has made it even more complex). Having spent the last several months fighting through it I can empathize with Cultured Code's perspective. But the user community has been vocal about this issue for years. OTA sync is a critical piece of a task management workflow, you've got to have it.
The development overhead of maintaining separate code for each OS is too great which is why there are essentially no task management tools that cross platforms. I'd like to think that the ability to run on any platform brings considerable value to our users. For those of us that use both Mac and PC everyday, this is something we could never do with Things or OmniFocus.
Give it a second look. It may be worth rethinking the value of AIR.
Fingers crossed they truly have re-architected to something useful. Sure, synching presents some challenges, but it is hard not to wonder how multiple programmers need over 2 years to add their #1 needed feature.
The type of syncing that Things wants to accomplish is probably different enough from other products to warrant a new approach.
But at least Andy (the guy behind THL) is showing some progress: http://www.thehitlistapp.com
Cultured Code mentions some internal problems. I wonder what happened?
Also, see http://culturedcode.com/status/
Why can't they use the me.com sync, like omnifocus?
Ah, okay. Upon forcing myself to read the rest of the article, I infer that Cultured Code is a blog maintained by the guys who make this software called "Things," which I had no idea existed until just now. And I also infer that the guy who wrote the linked article (I have no idea who, of course, because the site has no author listing for its posts and no "About" link to be found) is kind of an obnoxious blowhard. As a fellow obnoxious blowhard, I applaud his ranting chops, but I guess I just wasn't the target demographic for this post.
In my completely non-expert world view, I think that blogs (and websites in general) have three types of visitors: Committed, Unqualified Leads, and Uninterested.
Committed visitors will dutifully read and re-read all available information, regardless of whether it is presented clearly. These are people with a personal interest or responsibility related to the subject matter, like devoted Apple users reading Steve Jobs' latest address, or competitive Street Fighter players reading about how to execute a special move or winning strategy. As soon as they detect that the information is within their purview, they will consume all of it thoroughly.
Uninterested visitors are simply not in the target demographic; if they clicked on the link at all, they will close the window as soon as they process that the content is not relevant to them.
Unqualified visitors are people who might be interested, or maybe even want to be interested, but require extra context or a "hook" to get them going.
I feel like "visitor interest" is a spectrum, with "committed" on one end, "uninterested" on the other, and "unqualified" representing the vast gradient chasm between them.
TL;DR:
I am probably not the only reader that Brooks Review lost by catering only to committed visitors.
Long version:
Clicking the link for the article, I was an unqualified visitor. I literally had no idea what "Things" was, so I thought "RIP Things" might have been some kind of metaphysical rant about getting rid of superfluous material possessions. Instead I was dropped, in medias res, into a contextless rant about OTA sync (what does that have to do with "Things", I thought?), and how it's "still a few months away." From what? For whom? Then he transitions jarringly into "The Wallpaper." At that point I knew I had to click on the Cultured Code link, because obviously I was missing too much. Upon clicking through, I was faced with an equally contextless long-winded article about "cloud sync" that made no mention whatsoever of wallpaper. That's when I gave up.
All of this could have been very easily remedied if Cultured Code's site had a tiny slogan or product description at the top of their page, or if the Brooks Review guy had a link to something explaining OmniFocus, or a blurb on the page explaining if he has any stake or connections to OmniFocus.
So, to be clear, I did not Google for "Things," because long before the source article mentions that "Things" is something that you can purchase and interact with (and thus, perhaps Google for), I had already given up reading, because I didn't know what OmniFocus was, what wallpaper he was talking about, who the article was written by, who the linked article was written by, or why OTA sync was a big deal, or in which world of computing OTA sync was being discussed, and neither Brooks Review nor Cultured Code had designed their sites in such a way as to explain why I should care.