The Omni Group

Hello World!

Allow me to introduce myself. I'm Aaron Bendickson and I'm Omni's Friendly Neighborhood Systems Administrator. Most of the time you never hear from me, which is probably an indication that I'm doing my job well. However, I wanted to let y'all know about some upcoming scheduled network downtime. This Saturday night, March 26th, starting at around 10pm PDT I'll be performing a migration on all of our production servers. Typically in sys-admin parlance the term "migration" means copying a bunch of files from one place to another and changing some configs but in this case it means *actually physically moving* all of our servers!

I'm hoping to have things back up and running within a couple hours. If you do happen to surf on over to our little corner of the web during the maintenance window you'll be greeted by a friendly little "We'll be right back" page. Consider this a perfect opportunity to chill out and spend a little time catching up on your Netflix Instant queue (something I know I'm always WAAAAY behind on).

Anyway, back to the dungeon... er, I mean data center. If you have any questions just drop us a line at support@omnigroup.com.

Thanks!

As you may have heard, we were once again bit by the Macworld bug. It was great to see those who could make it in the flesh and hear what's going on inside those those big brains of yours! If you missed any of our talks, or you'd like a refresher, you can find them here.

Chalk it up to sleep deprivation, dehydration, or blood pooling in our lower extremities (thus starving our thinking-meat of oxygen), but somewhere on day two (or 28) of the conference, something happened. It was something so... so... terribawesome that not sharing the results of our pre-show time-wasting Idle Hands experience would be a great disservice to the not-yet-undead segment of humanity.

Okay. You get it. We're zombies. (Subtlety? Not my forte.) And—fair warning—we make quite frightening zombies. Especially Brain. I mean Brian! And Lotus the cat.

Drag your feet if they're still attached cursor here to watch a thing that is scary and silly (but more scary than silly).

Now available on the App Store, OmniFocus for iPhone v.1.9 improves the basic workflow by offering immediate access to View settings that display Next, Available, Remaining, or All items. It also improves the experience of choosing dates and setting up repeating items, and contains many other improvements to the interface.

A detailed list of changes is available on our forums; as always, we'd love to know what you think! Drop a comment below or on the forums; if you need help, give us a call at 800.315.6664 (OMNI) or email our support ninjas and we'll be happy to help. Enjoy, folks!

Weren't able to make Macworld this year? Came to the show, but weren't able to check out that one presentations you were totally into? The hour of your rejoicing is at hand! We're uploading the videos to our Vimeo page as we speak. Several of the videos are up now; the rest should be up in the next day or so. (Once we upload them, Vimeo's data-crunchers have to "process" them. We don't know exactly what that entails, but we assume the result is something smooth and creamy. In our experience, smooth and creamy is good.) We know folks are really looking forward to these, so we figured we'd give folks a heads-up now, rather than wait.

We want to give a special shout-out to Merlin Mann and David Sparks, who were both kind enough to prepare and give presentations, despite, you know, not actually working here. Service above and beyond the call of duty, gentlemen; thanks very much!

Touching on something from the last blog post: this is the first time we've done screencasts "live" like this, and it turns out that the Macworld show floor is a pretty challenging place to capture audio. Our video camera was completely overwhelmed, so we ended up recording the audio separately, then synching it up and filtering as much of the background noise out as possible. Needless to say, we learned a lot that'll help for next years' videos. 

In any case, enjoy the videos and we'll see everyone next year!

It's that time of year again: the Golden Gate bridge is hitting snooze and the warm glow of Moscone's florescent lights are calling to us, like moths to an energy efficient bulb.

That's right, gang—Omni's going to Macworld.

If you, like us, are headed to San Francisco later this week, please feel free to stop by! Ask questions, pick up a little swag, take our apps for a test drive (iPad too!), or check out one our many presentations from David Sparks, Merlin Mann, and members of the Omni Staff. (You can find the schedule here.)

We're really excited to put in some face time with you guys and show off what we've been up to here in the Pacific Northwest. We're going to be sending real, live Omni-ites Omni-ans Omni-ers Omni-vores Omni folk to chat with real, live Omni users like yourself (and those who might be curious, of course).  If you've ever sent us support email or a love letter, you might put a name with a face! While these ladies and gents are on the show floor, please keep in mind that they won't be able to answer email so support response time might be a bit longer than usual.

We're looking forward to going and hope to see you there!

I'm very pleased to announce that all of our paid apps are now available through Apple's new Mac App Store! The Mac App Store is the most convenient way to buy our software, letting you purchase, download, and install our apps with just one step, and easily update our apps at the same time as you update other apps you've purchased from the the store.

But to be clear, the Mac App Store is not the only way to buy our software:  we'll continue to offer direct sales and updates through our own website as well.  Through our website, we can offer much more flexible terms and options: trial and beta downloads, upgrade pricing, and discounts for volume, bundle, and educational purchases.

No matter which way you buy our software, you'll be getting the same product:  all of our Mac App Store apps are exactly the same as the apps we sell through our website (except for a few minor changes made to work with the store).  We'll also keep future updates to our apps in sync—apps you've purchased directly through us will continue to update themselves as they always have, while App Store updates will appear on the App Store (after a slight delay due to the App Store's review process).  And either way, you'll have the same great support from our team here at Omni.

—

A few quick questions that I know a few people are wondering about (because I've already been asked!):

"Why doesn't the App Store recognize that I've already purchased an Omni app?"

The Mac App Store only supports software which you've purchased directly from it.  That's even true of Apple's software, as I found out this morning while testing Keynote.  And unfortunately, there's no way for us to tell the Mac App Store that someone has already purchased one of our apps.  (Though really, that wouldn't be fair to Apple since they wouldn't get their 30% of the purchase price to help support the store's infrastructure.)

There's been a bit of confusion over this point, since the App Store does notice when the exact same version of the exact same app is already installed:  it displays "Installed" instead of a price tag.  But that doesn't mean it will update that software: as soon as the version number changes (on either side), it reverts to showing you a price tag for that app instead.

"If I'm purchasing from the Australian Mac App Store, why are your prices so much higher than they are through your own website?"

On our website, we sell all our products in our local currency—and since we live in Seattle, that currency happens to be US dollars.

For the Mac App Store, we don't set prices directly; we choose a price tier which Apple uses to choose a price for each region.  We've chosen the price tier which is closest to our own online store pricing (just a few cents different in our local currency), but exchange rates fluctuate and this week you might happen to get a better deal buying directly from us than you do when purchasing locally.  Please feel free to take advantage of that if you wish!

"Where do I find your apps on the Mac App Store?"

We've added links on each of our product pages, or you can go straight to the Mac App Store's page for the Omni Group.

"Does your 30-day money-back guarantee apply to Mac App Store purchases?"

Absolutely! But please remember that the 30-day guarantee is not intended to take the place of a trial period: we pay 30% of our App Store sales to Apple whether or not we refund a purchase. If you'd like to try one of our Mac apps, we have two-week trial downloads available on each of our product pages. (If you need more time than two weeks, please contact sales@omnigroup.com for an extended trial license.)

—

As always, if you have a question I didn't answer (or any other feedback you'd like to share), please let me know! Either leave a comment here, or send me a message on twitter (where you'll find me at @kcase).

Our devices have voices.

And they have these voices to let us know everything from "someone is trying to get in touch" to "it's your move in [popular letter-adorned tile placement game]". When they speak, it sometimes sounds like they're saying "FIRE!" when they mean to say "You've got some spam to delete, buddy." Sometimes it sounds like they're whispering "Hey, there are kittens batting at dandelions in a meadow." when they really mean "No, seriously, FIRE!" And more importantly, any sound that is repeated with enough frequency will turn itself into a distant peep that you ignore or an in-your-face racket that turns you into The Hulk.

These were the challenges we considered when creating a notification sound for OmniFocus for iPhone and iPad. The job of the OmniFocus notification sound is to alert you to items that are due. So not only is it an alert, but it's an alert that lets you know you have some work to do — talk about a potential double whammy of irk.

So how do we combat this? There are a few things that make sense to do: keep it short; make sure it's in a range suited for the device's speakers; don't repeat it a bajillion times; and make sure that its voice lands somewhere in between DEFCON One and DEFCON Fun.

This gets us pretty far. To take us the rest of the way, we relied on the comfort found in familiarity and a voice that says simply, "I have something for you."

Here comes the music theory:

For the enforcement of familiarity, we chose a chord that has the same root and inversion as a sound with which many of us are well-acquainted: the Mac start-up chime. (The low low fifth is eliminated to accommodate the device's speakers.) It's not likely that most people will be able to say "Hey, that's like the start-up sound!" or even have a conscious response to it, but it's ubiquitous enough that the sound should *ahem* strike a chord. To make sure we find the right words to say, and for further familiarity, we had the root come in a touch late. With the third on top, this creates the notion of a descending major third or the same ding-dong sound a doorbell makes. The timing is different, of course, to make sure you don't look at the door when OmniFocus tells you it's time to take the trash to the curb or your Really Big Project is due.

All that said, everyone's ears are conditioned differently and our hope is that, in the end, it's unobtrusive without being too shy. Really, we just want it to be useful. 

Thanks for taking a minute to read about our one-second sound. If any of this resonated with you, please take a listen and feel free to drop a note in the comments. (Might I recommend F#?)

It's been another crazy busy month here at Omni! In the last four weeks, we've celebrated Thanksgiving and somehow survived Seattle's snow, we've started private beta testing of OmniPlan 2 and shipped updates to OmniFocus and OmniWeb for Mac. Oh, and that's not counting the 13 app releases we've submitted to the App Store this month: 2 iPhone updates, 4 iPad updates, and 7 "new" Mac apps (OmniFocus, OmniGraffle Standard and Pro, OmniOutliner Standard and Pro, OmniGraphSketcher, and OmniOutliner).

"OK," I hear some of you asking, "15 app releases this month? That's great and all, but really I only care about one release: where is OmniOutliner for iPad?"

Well, given that we're at the end of November and we have yet to reach beta, I think I can predict with confidence that OmniOutliner for iPad won't be shipping this year. We did finally come up with a design that makes us all reasonably happy on paper, but we're still busy implementing that design in code—after which we'll be running it through its paces to make sure it works as well on an actual device as it does in our imaginations.

(Not that our engineering team has been idle while all this design work has been going on. They've been busy working on all the nuts and bolts which make up the unique functionality offered in OmniOutliner!)

For those who prefer pictures, here's an updated graphic:

"You're really going to sell your apps through the Mac App Store?" I hear others asking. "What about all those questions and challenges you mentioned in your last blog post? How will you handle upgrade pricing and volume discounts, for example?"

We've decided the best way to solve those problems is to recognize that the Mac App Store isn't an exclusive distribution channel, so it doesn't need to solve every problem. We will continue to sell our apps through our own website (in addition to the App Store), where we can continue to offer discounts for upgrades, bundles, and volume purchases. We still think the Mac App Store will be the most convenient way to purchase apps for the average consumer, but those who prefer more flexible terms and options will be able to continue to purchase and install apps directly from us.

"Hey, wait, those weren't my questions at all!"

Hmm, um, OK, sorry, my magic 8-ball palantír must be broken! If you have a question I didn't answer (or any other feedback you'd like to share), please let me know! Either leave a comment here, or send me a message on twitter (where you'll find me at @kcase).

Here's a small update to OmniWeb that will provide relief to users on Mac OS X 10.4. On Tiger systems you were probably encountering a crash that is now fixed. 

You can grab the latest version via "Check for Updates" in the File menu or by visiting this page:

http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omniweb/download/

Please let us know if you encounter any issues!

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