Earlier this week a nostalgic OmniWeb user emailed in looking for release notes from the early days of OmniWeb. Back when we were apparently trying to find the right pixel-width for IFRAME borders. This is all before my time at Omni, but luckily I can still go through our entire OmniWeb mailing list archives.
OmniWeb 1.0 was free to regular folk and $120, per seat, for organizations. It was exclusive to NEXTSTEP and OpenStep and kind of a great value: you could access the internet!
The printed documentation had some blood, sweat, and tears, too.
It’s with great excitement we’re able to introduce OmniPlan for iPad — a great new way to manage and create projects on the go. You can get it right now on the App Store for $49.99.
OmniPlan is the last of our core applications to hit the iPad, and we’re delighted with the app you’re now able to use. The first bits were checked in over a year ago—we even showed off a fairly functional app at Macworld this year—but the last few months have brought an absolute flurry of changes.
Behold! A new cloud-y day is upon us. We shall make backups of old, look to the new, and say goodbye to MobileMe.
Apple decided about a year and a half ago to shut down MobileMe, iCloud would be the new, better solution, and iDisk functionality would cease to exist.
That affects some OmniFocus users: if you’re still using MobileMe to sync your OmniFocus data, you need to switch. Our latest updates to OmniFocus remove all mention of iDisk and MobileMe, but your existing settings will continue to work up until the day the service is shut down, June 30th.
Afterwards, take some time to make the transition from MobileMe to iCloud. (Don’t miss out on the improved calendar, contact, and bookmark syncing, along with Photo Stream and Document Storage.) You can do that at me.com/move, and there’s a great Apple Support page here. (Update: Apple has removed both pages after the transition.)
Now a look at options:
The Omni Sync Server
Our own Omni Sync Server is fast, free, and extremely easy to set up (25 seconds if you move fast), and is run by a team of folks that are determined to craft the best server specifically for our applications.
You’ll also benefit from future, device-agnostic features.
Alternatives
If your data can’t leave the network, Bonjour syncing is handy. Public networks and firewalls occasionally cause pain, but can (usually) be remedied.
If you’re not using an iPhone or iPad, (physical) Disk syncing is another option. (Don’t use your Dropbox folder!)
Finally, use pretty much any WebDAV server. Search one out, set one up yourself if you know how, or have a friendly sysadmin set one up.
After picking a method or service, head to our “How do I Migrate?” page and finish up.
“How Do I Migrate” tl;dr: Sync all your devices, then sync your primary device again. Switch to your new sync server on each, starting with your primary device.
If you’re concerned about transitioning from MobileMe to something else, don’t hesitate to email us here or call at 800 315-6664.
Know of an encrypted (on disk), secure, or otherwise trustworthy WebDAV service worth passing on? Let others know in the comments.
The latest update to OmniPlan is here, and it’s a good one! It comes with new support for balancing resource loads across multiple projects, auto-leveling of resources, localizations for Apple’s Tier-1 languages, and a whole bunch of crash fixes, interface clarifications, and bug fixes.
278 fixes, to be exact! Get your release notes here.
It’s also identifiable by this brand new icon, following in the footsteps of seven new (Omni Group) icons before it.
Resource Load Sharing
One of the biggest requests for OmniPlan 2.1 has been the ability to manage multiple resources across multiple projects. With Resource Load Sharing, we’ve developed a great way to do that.
Use our Sync Server or your server repository to publish and sync all of your projects.
Assign an email address to each resource. (This is how OmniPlan keeps track of, say, two John Smiths.)
Make sure “Subscribe to other projects’ resource loads” is checked in your Publishing & Subscriptions configuration.
And here’s a friendly video about exactly that:
Our Transmogrifier
One of the changes that we introduced in the first beta of 2.1 was a switch to a new Microsoft Project importer/exporter. Because of the Mac App Store’s restriction on optionally-installed software, we had to make our converter—the Transmogrifier, as we call it—a downloadable add-on. We decided the best option for everyone was to completely rewrite it.
In the final version of OmniPlan 2.1, it’s turned off by default. If you have the time to try it, please do. We’d love to get a wider swath of test files to really put it though its paces.
To enable the new importer/exporter, use the following hidden defaults (in Terminal):
We receive a lot of emails and phone calls every day. Some asking for Feature X, others to report a bug. A fair amount, though, are stories from customers about how they use our applications. Each story leaves us feeling grateful to be in the business.
About a year ago, we decided to bring a few of these to video. We sincerely hope you’ll find them as inspiring as we do. More stories are in the pipeline, and we’re always wanting to hear more.
This story is about Tim Stringer and OmniFocus. In 2008, Tim Stringer’s daily schedule went from busy and productive to monofocused: heal. He was able to pick up a new habit during the process, though, and the outcome was—and remains—a very good one.
Late last week we released updates to OmniFocus for Mac and iPad — OmniFocus for iPhone came a bit later.
All three updates include the extremely useful and oft-requested feature of flexible weekly repeats. Set up an action to repeat every week on certain days: every weekday, every weekend, just Mondays, etc.
Previously, the best way to create a weekday-only or weekend-only repeating action was to create one action for each day, and set to repeat every 1 week. That method worked, but admittedly required a bit too much initial effort.
Set up a configuration with a few clicks or taps: on the Mac, open up the Inspector; on the iPhone and iPad, bring up the Action Details editor and tap the Dates column like usual. Choose the “every” repeat type, pick a few days, and done.
This makes things easier for many customers, and we’re very happy to have it available. We’d like to add more functionality for repeating actions in the future, too.
Finally, OmniFocus for Mac has a new icon, OmniFocus for iPad has been retina-ized, and we’ve fixed a few more bugs! For full release notes: Mac, iPad, and iPhone.
Now we can schedule around them.
Update: OmniFocus for iPhone 1.14 was just released! Update when you see it and don’t forget to turn iCloud Reminders back on.
Bill, our User Experience Lead, traveled to Malmö, Sweden, in November of last year to give a couple of talks at Øredev, a conference focused on “the whole software development process.”
There are a few talks from Øredev that we’d especially like to pass along:
The first talk from Bill explores development lessons learned going from the Mac, to the iPhone, to the iPad, and back. Watch it here!
His second talk, Designing Graceful, Gracious Interfaces for iPad, has been given a few different times at the Voices That Matter conferences. You can find it over at Vimeo.
OmniPlan has a new Sneaky Peek* out there for everyone to enjoy — especially if you’re an importer/exporter.
Our Microsoft Project import/export functionality has been rewritten, so we’d love it if you relayed any and all bugs back to us; if you can send us the Project file as well, that’d be even better. We really want to make sure this new process works well.
(For those wondering why it’s been rewritten: with the Mac App Store, we had to move our Project importer/exporter functionality to a plugin—installed separately—because it required Java. We want that to be built-in.)
Also new and notable! We’re getting started on multi-project support.
If you select an Address Book entry (with an email address) for a resource and then publish your plan files to our Sync Server, we’ll determine just how much that person can do for each project they’re participating in. All other Sync Repository projects are leveled as you update them.
Speaking of leveling: we now automatically level resources on the fly. It can be turned off, though, by visiting the Project menu.
Keep in mind that we’re not yet done and there may be issues we’re not aware of. (Issues we’d love to hear about!) If you need help getting it figured out, shoot us an email. Multi-project support has been a popular feature request for a while now, and we’re happy to push out what we’ve come up with so far.
It’s now also possible to resize Gantt chart bars; they’re now equivalent to the “Whole Document” font size.
“Anything else?” you’re asking. Well, sure. We’ve fixed quite a few bugs!
*Standard warning: Our Sneaky Peeks are not for the faint of heart. There will be bugs. We want to know them.
Join us, if you would, on January 26th, 27th, and 28th at booth 802. (There’s no need for a map; it’s extremely close to the Exhibit Hall entrance.)
We won’t beg, but we’d love to see long-time users, show our stuff to some new users, and give away some Pretty Cool Things we had made up.
This is actually our 12th straight attendance, but I’m calling this Number One, because Frakes. And Ihnatko! No big deal.
There’s always something worth checking out at Macworld — at the very least, follow along with our Instagram (omnigroup) feed or our posts on Twitter: @omnigroup. We’ll be posting awesome things throughout our stay which will all be newsworthy, I’m sure.
Also: OmniPlan for iPad previews and a quick presentation on Friday at noon!
Take a gander at our presentation lineup by heading over to our permanent Macworld page, or read ahead.
Lastly, if you know of a fantastical ramen or dumpling place we should check out while we’re in San Francisco, comment or email!
