Clear: doing for To Do lists what Dropbox did for file syncing | Hacker News Reader

Clear: doing for To Do lists what Dropbox did for file syncing

elezea.com

64 pointspascal0757 comments

I feel like there's a massive PR campaign to get us to check out this app, which is seemingly a yet another todo list without any kind of syncing (which automatically means I won't even bother checking it out). Can someone who did buy the app say whether the hype is justified?

Buy?

This costs money? (I just checked, and it does.)

Wow, I'd never pay money for a todo app, especially since Evernote is free.

One of the people behind it, Philip Ryu, is also one of the creators of MacHeist. That was basically a giant sceme to gather a large mailing list of folks. He also works with tap tap tap, who makes use of that mailing list for marketing purposes. He calls himself a designer, but he's essentially an online marketer. And he's really fucking good at it.

Geez... Do you know who did their PR? What does a PR campaign like this cost?

I bought it, it has some of the nicest interaction design I've seen in an iPhone app, and is worth the 99 cents just to see a product that rethinks some of the interaction metaphors that dominate the platform. I don't see this replacing my todo list of choice workflowy, mainly because it is iPhone only and doesn't follow my todo list metaphor of choice, which is org mode style collapsible outlines.

I was wondering the same thing. I've come across a multitude of articles (on major sites) claiming this is a "highly anticipated new app".

The funny thing is, I keep reading these articles and finding myself thinking I must be missing something. There doesn't seem to be anything remarkable here.

Aside from the design, which does look pretty good, I'd say there's nothing at all distinguishing about this app.

Guess it just goes to show how far some good PR people can get you.

Agreed.

Requirements for any todo app I'd use:

* Sync across all devices and computers

* Desktop version

Requirements for any todo app, and specially for one that claims to be the "Dropbox of todo lists"

1. There is a focus on the design of the app. The App didn't change what To Do lists are. It implemented them with a fancy interface imitating a gradient metro style.

2. Dropbox is about simplicity and syncing. Simplicity, we are can argue. But where is the syncing? It syncs with what? How? I don't bother with an app that don't sync to the cloud. But don't compare to DropBox. Misleading title.

To-Do lists are broken. If many people have agreed (me included) that they don't work for them, so re-inventing them is useless. We need something different, focused more on the long term growth rather than killing tasks.

I'm using an Excel spreadsheet that records my performance as a Stock Index. I follow the stock and update with real values (perceived values of productivity and real work getting done). I'm looking for patterns to sync between perceived achievements and the stock indexes. I might work an App for that.

That's a cool idea :) You should give it a shot! Or at least prototype it and let us hounds feast on it a bit and give feedback.

Thoughts: Don't make it too complicated for the user. Let us prioritize to-do items in terms of productivity value (low, medium, high) and time value (urgent, non-urgent) and let your app assign a "value" to those to give our personal stock price. It could be fun...

Here is how it looks like if you are curious (http://i.imgur.com/VYG0G.png). Nothing fancy, it just calculates the variation and the sum. Also no history :( for the moment.

And it's not only about work, the "Fsap" stock measures my progression in social life. Analysts expect it to double if I get a girl-friend, but investors thinks it's very unlikely.

Prices are in TND (1/1.5 USD), the total market is worth around $9000. It's pretty much undervalued now. Investors are afraid of putting money in the market because we have been recently (last year) in a bubble burst. (in real terms, I'm not putting real $$ into my current business and waiting that it turns real income $$ before investing further $$ and hours)

> To-Do lists are broken

mine isn't. I have a whiteboard with magnetic white strips that I can reorder. Each strip with it's own task.

"if only I had an amazing to-do list app, then I'd get stuff done". No, you wouldn't. No matter how good the app is, it will never actually do the task for you. That's the part that needs solving, the actual doing part. If you're good at doing, then you'll nuke a to-do list in any format.

Unless you hook my to-do list into something like task-rabbit where a "clean the car" task magically happens after I confirmed a $20 premium at the time of adding the task, then I don't think that changing the way I input and reorder tasks is going to make a difference to be me being lazy.

I do the same thing, but it rather manages my current time and the short term of things. It's work-focused too. It won't remember you for example, that little task, when you are driving.

Mine is mostly work focused too. i always found that if I forget a task while I'm out, then I'd equally forget to look on my phone for outstanding tasks.

Shopping lists are just pen/paper. And if it's important enough, I trust my brain with the info :)

I guess the only other case is google calendar alerts for time sensitive to-dos like "cancel LoveFilm subscription by today"...

Dropbox takes something hard and makes it easy.

A to-do list is already easy.

My todo list is a text file in Dropbox, edited on mobile with plaintext :)

This. Because if my task list isn't in lots of places then it will not be used. A pretty interface to a text file would be fine, but I also want that text file catted out when I open my terminal and accessible to edit on all of my computers. Simplification is one thing, but some features are too important to leave out. In a way, comparing to Dropbox is a very unfortunate choice.

For some reason my iOS device can't edit a .txt file from Dropbox... silly :( Evernote for me.

Plaintext works fine. There was a bug with text files from windows causing it to crash. Make sure the text file is unix/macos format (end of line difference).

Thanks for the recommendation, I'll grab that application. Seems silly to me that the Dropbox app doesn't contain that feature as standard.

I use a repeating "all day" event in Google Calendar, which I can easily update via Web or mobile. Added benefit: I can email it to myself every morning, to see what's on deck.

In the past I've used .txt scratchpads and note files in the old Palm/Palm desktop application. I've tried various To-Do apps, including the one that works with Google Calendar, as well as the Palm To-Do list, but they never quite worked for me. I found activating priority, expiration dates and other app settings generally got in the way.

Actually, I hated the design.

The vertical pinch is awkward and if you try a horizontal or diagonal pinch (which is more natural) then it deletes or completes a task. Also, scrolling up too quickly suddenly puts you in new task mode.

And while there's some innovation (or experimentation) with the user interaction, there's been no real innovation which how a todo list should function. In this respect, I much prefer TeuxDeux. It's still clean and unfettered by tags and descriptions etc but adding tasks to particular days gives you a really good overview of you day/week. It also removes the resistance when you start the day because you're not thinking "what shall I work on today" or "what shall I cherrypick from this humongous list".

I wish more apps would get out of their own way and employ standard UIKit. I'm all for experimenting with UI on a new-ish platform like iOS, but the amount of parallel energy expended on checklist UIs is just depressing to me – esp. when the standard Cocoa libraries are more than adequate. There are just so many cases where turning the UI upside down is counterproductive.

...but then it would be just like an iOS todo list tutorial app

"Clear feels a lot more Metro than iOS. Not that that's bad." - @agnoster

I find that a very insightful remark. I always did like Metro's UI "feel" - simple and sleek with clear edges and clean colors on a black background. Clear is a near-perfect execution of that concept. Very inspiring stuff.

The responsiveness is great, and the interface is nice, but the fact that you have to create all lists on the device is a significant limitation.

This is where Trello, Evernote, etc. have an advantage - it's a lot easier for me to make a large list (like a grocery list) on a PC via a website, and then just use my phone or whatever while I'm shopping or for minor edits.

It's definitely fun to use, but since it's gotten such glowing press, I'll be a negative nancy and point out the flaws :).

The biggest one is that it's hard or impossible to do a few important things with the same hand that's holding the phone. The pinch-open gesture can be worked around by adding and rearranging items, but the pinch-close gesture (to go up a level) is pretty near impossible.

The other rookie mistake is that because eight items fit precisely on the screen, you can't tell if there are more items below the fold without trying to scroll (and they don't flash the scroll indicators when the list appears).

Finally, it would be nice if there were a setting to show the status bar. I might want to know what time it is while I'm organizing my to-do list.

Does this sync data over icloud or some other cloud? Would this integrate with my iphone or ical?

If it's only a mobile tool. It becomes very limited.

It's difficult to build a great interface but even harder to build a great product.

Ambiguous headlines: Doing for readers what George Bush did for the world

There is atleast half a dozen TODO apps on the store that are superior. TODO.txt Pocket Lists Wunderlist Producteev.. I am sure there are another 50 that I never heard off.

Having gone back to Things after walking in the ToDo wilderness for a year or two (the lack of cloud sync was killing me), it seems to me that there is a necessary complexity to real ToDo list organization which Things' GTD-inspired interface does very well.

The main distinction is that you really have to have a way of saying "These are the tasks for today" or "These are the tasks I can do now" and clear out the other ones. Too many of these new ToDo lists create a sort of productivity anxiety, shouting in your face ToDo items which are not completable yet, or not feasibly completable today.

I haven't found an app which decently replicates Things' Today view, where ToDo items you said you'd do Today appear, and if you can't do them, you just click "Not Today" and they'll come back tomorrow (or you can schedule them if you have a better date idea).

I'm now in the Things Cloud Sync beta, and can't talk about it due to an NDA, but cloud sync for Things is coming, and it'll be great when it arrives.

I use Trello like this. I have a list marked "To do (unplanned)", "To do (this week)", "Doing (today)", "Done (yyyy-mm-dd)".

At the end of each week I archive the last list and shuffle items around depending on what happened that week.

I'm not a big fan of gestures _purely_ to control or input to an app - gestures are not discoverable at all by new users. Looking at this page I see that a lot of things are only (?) controllable by a big list of gestures I have to remember. I pretty much closed the page right there - I'll stick to the Reminders app and my text-file list in Simplenote, thanks.

I've personally been very surprised at the lack of restraint some people have with regard to gestures. Gestures are nice and all but as you said, they're hardly discoverable. People make the claim that gestures are intuitive, but aside from he native pinch, pull and swipes, gestures are hardly that.

The app offers nothing except gesture when compare with Reminders.

Some are calling this the future of interfaces. As a designer, I'm curious as to how you would prototype these interactions. Are there tools out there that could do this? Seems to me you need to have out of this world design and development skills to bring this from idea to app.

Once you think of the concept, it's pretty easy to make some demos to get an idea of how they would feel. I use Flash with a mix of keyframe animations and actionscripted animations and interactions. Sure, you can only really us it in the browser, but it still lets you try out the concept. Also great for demoing to developers (assuming that's how your company is structured).

I really can't immagine that hidden non-standard gestures ever becoming the future of interfaces. Its beautiful, but wtf how am I supposed to remember how to use it?

Why not use a pen on the back of an envelope?

I suspect that searching for the perfect to-do app is a displacement activity.

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?DisplacementActivity

Though I'm blown away by it's simplicity, design and speed, Clear's biggest challenge (beyond syncing) is intuitiveness. You can read my thoughts about the app on Quora at http://www.quora.com/Clear-iPhone-app/How-could-the-Clear-iP...

tl;dr Almost nothing is intuitive and the interface will be jarring/polarizing to the (average) user.

Any.DO is an excellent alternative with a similar UX-oriented approach. It also syncs with Google Tasks. iOS, Android and web.

Direct link to the App home page: http://www.realmacsoftware.com/clear/

Evernote already did that.

This is a nifty UI feature that the Evernote guys can add to their iPhone app, if they want to...

I played with it last night. The UI is really intuitive and the model makes sense - worth a dollar.

Stay Useful fills this niche for me and stays in sync with my iPhone and Chrome browsers.

Why do I get the feeling that this stupid little app is going to keep being shoved in my face?

It looks pretty, but, honestly, I can't see it getting me to leave OmniFocus.

Except Dropbox is multiplatform, which is essential to its success imo.

I like it. Seems doable in HTML/js, I might work on a clone.

Talking about Dropbox, dropbox syncing would be good, no?

Why is it better than Wunderlist?

i just hate the theme, perhaps just me.

Why does every damn developer have to make a todo list application nowadays?

The "hot app" lately has been these supposed productivity apps, e.g. Wunderlist, Evernote, Clear, Document Cloud, kippt, ...

It's getting a little tiring :(

Document Cloud doesn't strike me as a "productivity app", at least not in the same vein as Evernote and Wunderlist (not familiar with Clear or kippt). As far as I know, it doesn't incorporate "to do" functionality at all. It's targeted at journalists and (presumably) provides real value by helping analyze, research and annotate supporting documents.

I stand corrected, what they're doing is pretty cool. I was under the impression that it was just an application to save highlighted passages from articles but after poking around it's obvious that it's much more.

If every company had 'creating an internal to-do list app' as its number one (and initially only, for obvious reasons) priority, then we would soon end up with a natural "survival of the fittest" scenario. Pretty soon there would be a victorious company with a to-do list app the likes of which the world has never known. The minute they make that public, we will have a productivity singularity. I would pay five thousand dollars for that winning app: the to-do list app behind the next Google or Facebook. /s

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